Pastor aeternus

Pastor aeternus ("First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ") was issued by the First Vatican Council, July 18, 1870. The document defines four doctrines of the Catholic faith: the apostolic primacy conferred on Peter, the perpetuity of the Petrine Primacy in the Roman pontiffs, the definition of the papal primacy as a papal supremacy, and Papal infallibility – infallible teaching authority (magisterium) of the Pope. There is general agreement among scholars on the preeminence that the historical Peter held among the disciples of Jesus, making him "the most prominent and influential member of the Twelve during Jesus' ministry and in the early Church".It was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said You shall be called Cephas, that the Lord,...spoke these words: "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the underworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven". The Primacy of Simon Peter is essential to the vision of papal primacy as papal supremacy: that is, the idea that the papacy by divine institution enjoys delegated authority from Jesus over the entire Church. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the whole Catholic Church is derived from the pope's status as successor to Peter as "Prince of the Apostles" and as "Vicar of Christ" (Vicarius Christi). The First Vatican Council defined papal primacy in the sense of papal supremacy as an essential institution of the Church that can never be relinquished. Magisterium In the Catholic Church, the word "Magisterium" refers to the teaching authority of the church. This authority is understood to be embodied in the episcopacy, which is the aggregation of the current bishops of the church, led by the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), who has authority over the bishops, individually and as a body, as well as over each and every Catholic directly.