IHE well known Bruce Barton reported not so long ago the results of a questionnaire sent out to ten thousand ministers of all religious denominations, in which they were asked to name the ten greatest men in the Bible, exclusive of Christ. St. Paul received the greatest number of votes, with Moses in second place and David in third; and strangely enough, St. Peter was not even listed among the first ten.
We are in no position to judge either the intentions or the learning of those who replied to the questionnaire, butin view of the indisputable and undeniable facts of history and tradition that we have at our disposal and that everyone may ascertain for himself, we might safely venture to assert and defend the proposition that the first place on that list belongs by every right to none other than St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth and the first of that unbroken line of Pontiffs that has maintained the unity of Christ's Church for nineteen centuries.
Not everyone will agree with this assertion, The ten thousand ministers who voted for St. Paul make that plain, So let us paint a brief word-picture of what we know of the life of Peter, The Gospels tell us that Peter was originally named Simon and was the son of Jona.
Along with his brother Andrew, he earned his living as a fisherman. In common so many Jews of that period who were expecting the coming of the Messias, Simon and Andrew were greatly attracted by the Baptist's preaching of penance, and Andrew happened to be with John the day he pointed out Christ to the envoys of the High Council, saying, "Behold the Lamb of God," On hearing this, Andrew and another disciple followed Christ to His house and remained so that if Christ's sentence were translated literally it would read: "Thou art Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my Church," The versions in English, Latin and Greek may be misleading because of the use of a different word or ending, and this has resulted in non-Catholics trying to evade the real meaning of Christ's words by referring the word rock' to something other than Peter, Fortunately, in our day, the more learned non-Catholic writers readily admit that Peter and rock denote the same object,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.