the former and actual shepherd, as his representative. Shortly afterward, the Church began to think that the important thing was not the person of Peter. The Church decided that the office Peter held was the bedrock foundation of the Church, and that Jesus established it permanently. With this concept we have the popes as Peter’s successors and Christ’s deputies, and the papacy as the foundation of the Church.

25. Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Ibid., p. 215: Jesus has no intention of founding a “church” and certainly not a “church universal.” For an authentic example of Jesus’ view, consider Matt 10:5-6, which expresses the exact opposite of a universal commission: “These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Two further authentic passages are Matt 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and Matt. 10:23, “You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of Man comes.” ...Jesus himself and all theologians have by now acknowleged this believed that the Kingdom of God would be coming soon. But that is the opposite of a world mission in the grand style.

26. Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben, Rome Has Spoken, p. 82: Nicholas V, Dum Diversas, 1452/54: We grant to you (Kings of Spain and Portugal) by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Sacarens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property..and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.

27. Pettifer, Julian & Bradley, Richard, Missionaries, BBC Books, London, 1990, p. 132-133: By the end of the 15th century, (1493), Pope Alexander VI created two spheres of influence; he determined that the whole of the Americas with the exception of Brazil, should belong to Spain, while Portugal would take Brazil and whatever could be seized in Asia and Africa. It was decreed that along with territorial gains whould go the duty to incorporate any native peoples into the Catholic Church..With the invading armies came priests and friars whose presence justified the subjugation of the people and the use of whatever coercion was judged necessary to bring them to the faith.

28. Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 70: ..and it was for God as well as for gold that Westerners went out to

conquer the world in the sixteenth century.

29. Wilson, A.N., Jesus, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1992, p. vii: The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two separate beings, with very different stories. It is difficult enough to reconstruct the first, and in the attempt we are likely to do irreparable harm to the second..

30. Lockhart, Douglas, The Dark Side of God, p.275: In Chapter 14 we considered the humanity of Jesus and concluded that he had been a man like any other. He was subject to anger, pain, thirst, weariness, sadness, fear and death. And he was capable of making mistakes; which is to say that his knowledge was human knowledge, his belief system a reflection of the culture and time into which he was born. He had no knowledge of modern physics. He was not aware of virus or germs or the possibility of antiseptics, knew nothing of the combustion engine, and could not have told you that Mars followed an elliptic orbit. All in all, a diminution of what has