For Catholic readers

Primacy, and how the Church decides

Does the bishop of Rome hold universal jurisdiction over the whole Church, or a primacy of honour among equals?

Dogmatic definition
Canonical norm
Disputed history

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-09-04

What still needs checking (4)

Obtain Vatican I's constitution Pastor Aeternus so the Catholic doctrine of papal primacy and infallibility can be stated in its own words with its own conditions and limits.
Obtain the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the office of Peter and of the bishops.
Obtain tier D scholarship on the Greek original of the Irenaeus passage, which survives principally in Latin, and on the range of scholarly readings of it.
Obtain an official Orthodox statement on primacy: the Orthodox position is itself internally debated and this page should not flatten that.

Report an accuracy issue on this page (opens in a new tab)

Both Churches read the same fourth- and fifth-century canons and the same second-century witness to Rome's standing, and reach different conclusions about what kind of primacy they describe. This page shows the texts and marks honestly where each side's reading is contested.

What is held in common

Both Churches hold that the Church is episcopal and conciliar, that bishops stand in succession from the apostles, that the see of Rome held a real and acknowledged first place in the undivided Church, and that Peter has a distinctive role in the New Testament. No Orthodox writer of standing denies Rome a primacy of some kind. The argument is about what kind.

The Orthodox position

The Orthodox Church holds that primacy is a primacy of honour and of order within a communion of equal bishops, exercised in council, and that no bishop holds ordinary jurisdiction over another local Church. The final authority in the Church is not a person but the whole Church, expressed conciliarly and received by the faithful.

The canons are read as describing exactly that arrangement. Nicaea's sixth canon confirms Alexandria's jurisdiction by pointing to what is customary for Rome — that is, Rome's own authority is described as a custom of the same kind, not as a source from which others derive. Chalcedon's twenty-eighth canon then grounds Rome's privileges in the city's imperial standing and extends comparable privileges to Constantinople, which is difficult to read as a statement about a divinely instituted universal office.

The texts

which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre- eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.

Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Book III, Book III, Chapter III Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut — public domain Read this work in the archive

On this text. Quoted at length, and with its awkwardness intact, because this sentence is among the most disputed in patristic literature. The Greek is lost; the Latin translation is what survives; and 'agree with' renders a verb whose force is argued over. Catholic and Orthodox readers have drawn opposite conclusions from it for centuries. Anyone citing it on either side should say that they are citing a reconstruction.

Read the conciliar texts

Nicaea, Canon VI — The ancient customs of Alexandria, Rome and Antioch.
Chalcedon and its canons — Canon XXVIII on the privileges of New Rome.

Where the difference actually lies

The question is not whether Rome was first. It is whether being first means holding immediate jurisdiction over every diocese and being able to define doctrine for the whole Church, or whether it means presiding in love among bishops who are sacramentally equal, with doctrinal authority resting in the council.

Because the two Churches disagree about the kind of authority in question, they also disagree about what would count as evidence. An Orthodox reader sees a fourth-century canon regulating Rome's customary sphere and concludes the office is customary. A Catholic reader sees the same canon presupposing a primacy it did not need to establish. Both readings are available from the text, which is why the argument has lasted.

Not yet stated here: the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic doctrine has precise conditions and precise limits, and stating it loosely misrepresents it. In particular, papal infallibility as defined is narrower than most popular accounts of it, on either side. This site will state it when it can quote it.

To write this section, a maintainer must obtain and cite:

Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, on the primacy and the infallible magisterium
Catechism of the Catholic Church, on the college of bishops and its head
Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, chapter III, on episcopal collegiality

Why this is empty. A claim about what another Church teaches requires that Church's own authoritative text — tier E in the source policy. No such text has been obtained, so the claim is not made. This gap is the honest state of the evidence, not an oversight.

Misreadings on both sides

That papal infallibility means the pope cannot sin, or that everything he says is infallible. It does not, on any Catholic account. Attacking that idea is attacking nothing.

That the Orthodox have no primacy at all. They do: the Ecumenical Patriarch holds a primacy of honour, and how far that primacy extends is actively debated among Orthodox themselves.

That Cyprian settles the matter. Cyprian's treatise on the unity of the Church has a fourth chapter surviving in two forms, commonly called the Primacy Text and the Received Text, which differ precisely on the standing of the chair of Peter. The archived edition prints one and notes the other. No argument about primacy should be built on that chapter without saying which form it uses and why.

Sources for this page

Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Council of Nicaea, Canon VI annotated edition of conciliar texts Source record (opens in a new tab)
Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) Council of Chalcedon, Canon XXVIII annotated edition of conciliar texts Source record (opens in a new tab)
Tier C The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.); A. Cleveland Coxe (American ed.) Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter III translated edition of primary texts Source record (opens in a new tab)
Tier C Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (eds.) Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, Chapter IV translated edition of primary texts Cited for the two forms of the chapter, not for a doctrine of primacy. Source record (opens in a new tab)

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.