A Prayer for Rome

This note is interpretation, not translation. It is Jon’s prayer for Rome, in his own voice, with the scriptures set out under each part of it. It goes with Revelation and Rome, which sets out the facts; this one is an appeal. It is about doctrine and canon law, not about people, and it names no one as anything in this book. Its point fits in one sentence: what Leo XIV is saying is good, and the canon should match what he is saying.

The lion’s name — Jon. It seems to be happening over time, and they are getting closer to the scriptures. In 1567 Pius V ended the sale of indulgences for money, fifty years after Luther wrote against it. In 1999 Rome signed the Joint Declaration with the Lutherans: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works” (§15). In 2025 Rome said it is not appropriate to call Mary co-redemptrix. And Leo XIV, in his first homily, called Jesus “the one Savior, who alone reveals the face of the Father,” and said the one in his office must “move aside so that Christ may remain, … make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified.” When he closed the Holy Door at the end of the Jubilee, he said, “This Holy Door is closed, but the door of your mercy is not closed.”

Leo is Latin for lion, and it is the word Rome’s own Latin Bible uses at Revelation 5:5: ecce vicit leo de tribu Iuda. In scripture a lion is bold: “the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a young lion” (Proverbs 28:1), and the Hebrew verb there, yivtach, is the verb for trusting, so a lion’s boldness is trust. It is courageous: “whose heart is like the heart of a lion” (2 Samuel 17:10). And it speaks of kingship: “the lion, mightiest among the beasts, which does not turn back before anything” (Proverbs 30:30), listed with a king among the things that walk with stately step (30:29–31), and “a king’s anger is like a young lion’s roar” (19:12). But Jesus is the true King, “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16), and the Lion from the tribe of Judah is His title (5:5). Leo seems to acknowledge that, which is wise and honest. He said he chose the name for “different reasons, but mainly” for Leo XIII, whose Rerum Novarum “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.” The meaning I give the name is the word’s meaning in scripture, not his reason.

He has not changed the canons yet. Everything below is still in force, and the Jubilee he closed on 6 January 2026 granted indulgences until its end. What he is saying is good, and the canon should match what he is saying. I pray that what was added to the King’s law is abolished, as the Anointed “abolished the law of commandments in decrees” (Ephesians 2:15), and that the King’s law is acknowledged as the only law for believers: trust in His Son and love for one another (1 John 3:23), the “royal law” of liberty (James 2:8, 12), “the law of the Anointed” (Galatians 6:2). “There is one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save” (James 4:12). I pray he has a lion’s courage to do it. I am not telling him what to do; he can weigh these arguments for himself.

Why it matters — Jon. This is not a quarrel about wording. Paul says what happens to anyone who rests being made right on keeping law: “all who are of works of law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the things written in the book of the law, to do them’” (Galatians 3:10, from Deuteronomy 27:26). “And that no one is made right before God by law is plain, because ‘the righteous will live by trust.’ And the law is not of trust; rather, ‘the one who does them will live by them’” (3:11–12, from Habakkuk 2:4 and Leviticus 18:5). Then the answer: “the Anointed bought us out of the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,’ so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in the Anointed Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through trust” (3:13–14, from Deuteronomy 21:23). He became the curse so that no one would have to stand under it again. A law added to trust for being made right does not add to that; it puts people back under what He already carried. That is why I pray. The verse in the middle, “the righteous will live by trust,” is quoted three times in the New Testament: here, at Romans 1:17, and at the end of Hebrews 10 (10:38). And the verb Paul uses for what the Anointed did, “bought us out” (exēgorasen), is the verb this book sings before the throne: “you were slaughtered, and with your blood you bought (ēgorasas) people for God” (Revelation 5:9).

Not all the way there. Rome has moved, but its canons still say otherwise in five places.

Faith alone. This one comes first, because everything else stands on it. The Council of Trent’s canons still say: “If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification … let him be anathema” (Session 6, canon 9), and “If any one saith, that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake … let him be anathema” (canon 12). They have never been withdrawn. The Joint Declaration says the Lutheran teaching it sets out “does not fall under the condemnations from the Council of Trent” (§41), and then, in the next paragraph: “Nothing is thereby taken away from the seriousness of the condemnations related to the doctrine of justification … They remain for us ‘salutary warnings’” (§42). So Rome signed “by grace alone” and kept the anathema on “faith alone” in the same document. If they are honest, the anathema has to come out. The “impious” of canon 9 is Paul’s own word: “to the one who does not work, but trusts him who makes the ungodly (asebē) right, his trust is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). Jesus said “only trust” (monon pisteuson, Luke 8:50). Scripture has an anathema too, and it is Paul’s, on anyone who announces a good news other than the one he announced (Galatians 1:8–9). Rome’s verse is James 2:24, “not by faith alone”; how James reads when it is read whole, with Abraham, Rahab and mercy triumphing over judgment, is set out in This Is the Good News.

Forgiveness. The Code calls individual confession to a priest “the only ordinary means by which a member of the faithful conscious of grave sin is reconciled with God and the Church” (canon 960), and binds every Catholic to confess grave sins “at least once a year” (canon 989). Scripture says the forgiveness is already done: “by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:14), and “where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:18). It is past tense, and it lasts into the ages. That is set out in full in Who Can Forgive Sins?

The gift. Peter said to a man with money in his hand, “may your silver go to ruin with you, because you thought to obtain the gift of God with money” (Acts 8:20). The sale ended in 1567, so on money they no longer break that warning, though it still stands. But works added to trust for being made right are still leaven. Works are the fruit of trust, not a requirement for being made right: “by grace you have been saved through trust, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; not from works, so that no one may boast. For we are his making, created in the Anointed Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10). Rome itself signed that order: accepted by grace, and then the Spirit “equipping and calling us to good works” (Joint Declaration §15). “Trust working through love” (Galatians 5:6) is trust doing the work, not working to earn. If works are needed in addition to His blood, it is like counting His blood common, as if it were not good enough and our works added something to it. Paul says how serious that is: “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness is through law, then the Anointed died for nothing” (Galatians 2:21). His “for nothing” is dōrean, the same word as the gift itself: “to the one who is thirsty I will give freely from the spring of the water of life” (Revelation 21:6), and “let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge” (22:17). Add to the gift, and His death becomes dōrean in the other sense, for nothing. His love and His faithfulness keep us, not our works. Rome’s answer is that the good works it requires are themselves God’s gift, done in grace (Trent, Session 6, chapter 16). Mine is that a gift that must be completed by our doing is no longer a gift: “if by grace, it is no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6).

Lording over. The Code binds a Catholic’s “intellect and will” even to teaching the pope has not defined (canon 752), and says “the First See is judged by no one” (canon 1404). That is the proof they are not listening, in their own law. Paul wrote, “not that we lord it over (kyrieuomen) your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy, for by trust you stand” (2 Corinthians 1:24). Peter, the man Rome builds on, wrote to the elders as “a fellow elder” and told them to shepherd “not as lording it over (katakyrieuontes) those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:1–3). And Jesus said it first: “the rulers of the nations lord it over them … it shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:25–26). Rome’s answer is that the pope serves as “servant of the servants of God,” that “whoever hears you hears me” (Luke 10:16), and it rests his office on Matthew 16:18–19, Luke 22:32 and John 21:15–17.

The chief shepherd. Peter’s next line is “when the chief shepherd (archipoimēn) appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4). The chief shepherd is still Jesus, and Peter calls himself a fellow elder (5:1). Rome agrees that Christ is the chief shepherd; its canon calls the pope His vicar and “pastor of the universal Church on earth” (canon 331). But Peter gave Jesus’ charge, “shepherd my sheep” (John 21:16, poimaine), to every elder, with the same verb: “shepherd (poimanate) the flock of God among you” (1 Peter 5:2). Jesus is “the shepherd and overseer of your souls” (2:25), and “there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). He sees perfectly, and He shepherds in truth and in love; no man in that office has that. Leo can weigh Peter’s words for himself.

The throne of grace. That is why scripture says so often to hold fast and to go to the throne. “Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession … Let us draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14, 16). “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for faithful is the one who promised” (10:23). Not to a priest on earth, and not to our own works, but to the throne. It is the King’s throne, the Father’s and the Son’s: “I came through it myself and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21), and the river comes “out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (22:1). It is even in the law, where it is called the mercy seat, the kapporet, the lid of the ark. God said, “there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim” (Exodus 25:22), and the high priest sprinkled the blood on it (Leviticus 16:15). The LORD is called the one “who sits enthroned on the cherubim” (1 Samuel 4:4; Psalm 99:1, “the LORD reigns”), so the mercy seat was His throne. The Greek translation calls it the hilastērion, and Hebrews uses that word for it (9:5). Paul uses the same word for Jesus: “whom God set forward as a mercy seat (hilastērion), through trust, in his blood” (Romans 3:25). And this book sees it opened: “God’s temple in the sky was opened, and the chest of his covenant could be seen inside his temple” (Revelation 11:19). The place of mercy is the King’s throne, the blood is His, and the way to it is trust. Leo said it himself at the Holy Door: the door of mercy is not closed.

Leaven. Jesus warned, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees,” and the disciples understood He meant “the teaching” (Matthew 16:6, 12). He said it in the same chapter where He gave Peter the keys (16:19), and four verses later He told him, “Get behind me, accuser … you are not thinking the things of God but the things of people” (16:23). Paul says how leaven works: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:6). In Galatians the leaven is law added to trust (5:4), and he says where it comes from: “this persuasion is not from the one who calls you” (5:8). God does not change: “I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6); “Jesus the Anointed, yesterday and today the same, and into the ages” (Hebrews 13:8), and the next line is “do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings” (13:9). Teaching that keeps changing did not come from Him. That is why I pray that what was added is abolished and the King’s law acknowledged as the only law for believers. A little of it reaches the whole.

Only discipline? Rome says much of its canon is discipline, rules of practice it may change, and not doctrine. But scripture asks for no such law and gives no room for it. “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17): complete, not waiting for more. “You shall not add to the word I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2); “do not add to his words” (Proverbs 30:6); “the faith once for all handed to God’s people” (Jude 3); and this book ends the same way, “if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues written in this scroll” (Revelation 22:18). Any law added to the King’s is leaven, and Jesus warned of it: “teaching as doctrines the commandments of people” (Mark 7:7). Paul says it of rules people make: “why do you submit to decrees … according to the commands and teachings of people?” (Colossians 2:20–22). Where a discipline is bound on the conscience, it is no longer only discipline: missing Sunday Mass without a grave reason is called “grave sin” (Catechism 2181), and confession is required yearly (canon 989). Rome’s answer is that the apostles also made decrees (Acts 16:4), and that what the Church binds is bound (Matthew 18:18). Mine is that their decree is now scripture, and it refused to add more: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these necessary things” (Acts 15:28). The verb there, to lay on, is the verb of Revelation 22:18, to add; and Jesus says to Thyatira, “I am not putting any other load on you” (2:24), with the noun of Acts 15:28. So their added law holds no weight over a believer, and no one is bound by it.

Red flag That Rome’s canons are the leaven, and that believers are not bound by them. No verse names Rome’s canons. Jon’s answer: of course it does not; scripture does not acknowledge them at all, because the law is the King’s and a man cannot change it. “There is one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save” (James 4:12); “the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our King; he will save us” (Isaiah 33:22, in the Hebrew); and even a man’s ratified covenant no one “sets aside or adds to” (Galatians 3:15). The texts on the other side are the apostles’ decrees, given for the assemblies to keep (Acts 16:4), “whatever you bind on earth” (Matthew 18:18), and “obey your leaders” (Hebrews 13:17).

Infallible? Rome holds that its defined doctrine cannot err. Scripture says that of one thing only, itself: “the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35); “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35); “the word of the Lord remains into the ages” (1 Peter 1:25). Of people it says, “let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:4), and the man Rome builds on was opposed to his face at Antioch “because he stood condemned,” over the truth of the good news itself (Galatians 2:11, 14). The Bereans checked even Paul against the scriptures and were praised for it (Acts 17:11). Rome reads Matthew 16:18, John 16:13 and 1 Timothy 3:15 otherwise, but 1 Timothy 3:15 says “pillar and foundation of the truth” of the assembly, God’s household, not of an office. Trent’s canons are what Rome counts as defined doctrine, and canon 9 anathematizes “faith alone” for “the impious,” while Paul says God “makes the ungodly right” by trust (Romans 4:5). Faith and love cannot be made more certain by law added to the King’s. Scripture defines them: trust is “the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), and “by this we know love: he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). And it puts them beyond law: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trust, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22–23).

When Peter turned back. Rome reads Luke 22:32 as a promise of unfailing faith in Peter’s office. The verse goes on, “and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers,” and two verses later he is told he will deny Jesus three times (22:34). He did turn back. When John said “It is the Lord,” Peter threw himself into the sea to reach Him (John 21:7); he was asked three times “do you love me?” and grieved at the third (21:15–17), after three denials (18:17, 25, 27); he preached at Pentecost; and he was shown a vision three times (Acts 10:16, the same word Luke uses of the three denials), “what God has cleansed, do not call common” (10:15), before the sermon at which the Holy Spirit fell as he said, “everyone who trusts in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (10:43–44). What he strengthened his brothers with is written down: “we trust that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they” (Acts 15:11), and in his letter, with the verb of Luke 22:32, “the God of all grace … will himself restore, strengthen, establish you … this is the true grace of God; stand in it” (1 Peter 5:10, 12). If they stand on that verse, they should examine the vision and the sermon after it.

Who can be saved. Rome says the understanding of what was handed on grows (Dei Verbum 8), and that defined doctrine is not reversed. On who can be saved, the teaching reads differently from one century to another. In 1302 Boniface VIII wrote, “we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Unam Sanctam). In 1442 the Council of Florence said that all those outside the catholic church, “not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire … unless they are joined to the catholic church before the end of their lives.” In 1964 the Second Vatican Council said, “Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience” (Lumen Gentium 16). Rome’s answer is that the older texts meant that salvation comes only through Christ and His Church, and that those who do not know it through no fault of their own are joined to it in a way known to God, so that this is development and not reversal. This note does not say which of the two is right; scripture’s answer is that salvation is by trust in His name (Acts 4:12; 10:43). The point is only that what was “defined” in 1302 reads differently in 1964, and that is the leaven made plain.

The King’s law, and the Shepherd who keeps His people. What I pray they release their people into is not lawlessness. It is the King’s law, and only the King’s. James calls it “the royal law” and “the law of liberty,” where “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:8, 12–13), and he warns that “not many of you should become teachers, knowing that we will receive a heavier judgment” (3:1), and that blessing and cursing should not come out of the same mouth (3:10). John gives it as one commandment: “that we trust in the name of his Son Jesus the Anointed and love one another” (1 John 3:23). Paul calls it “trust working through love” (Galatians 5:6) and “the law of the Anointed” (6:2). They are saying the same thing, and all of it is the King’s. We were “released from the law … so that we serve in newness of Spirit and not in oldness of letter” (Romans 7:6). We were “made slaves to righteousness” (6:18), and Paul says what that righteousness is. In Romans 6 he pairs it with holiness, “slaves to righteousness for holiness” (6:19), and in 1 Corinthians he names the one who became both: the Anointed Jesus, “who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Romans 6 names the master as God (6:22) and ends “in the Anointed Jesus our Lord” (6:23).

That is the only thing a believer is bound by: His faithfulness to keep them. The Good Shepherd holds the rod for the wolves and the staff for the one who wanders, and you are stuck in righteousness. (The psalm says only that the rod and staff comfort, Psalm 23:4; what each is for is the shepherd’s trade, as The Good Shepherd sets out.) If you wander, He pulls you back in: “the Lord disciplines the one he loves … for our good, so that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:6, 10). “No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). “Faithful is the one who calls you, who will also do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).

Hebrews 10, read whole. The law was a shadow; the same sacrifices every year could not make anyone perfect, but were “a reminder of sins every year,” because “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:1–4). “A body you prepared for me … I have come to do your will” (10:5–7, Psalm 40 in the Greek), and “by that will we have been made holy, through the offering of the body of Jesus the Anointed once for all” (10:10). Every priest “stands daily” offering the same sacrifices again and again; this one “sat down,” having perfected for all time those being made holy (10:11–14). (Rome holds that the Mass makes present the one sacrifice and is not a new one, Catechism 1366–1367.) “I will put my laws on their hearts” (10:16, from Jeremiah 31:33): the King’s law, written inside a person instead of handed down from outside. “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more,” and where there is forgiveness, “there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:17–18). So we draw near with boldness, “in full assurance of trust,” holding fast, “for faithful is the one who promised,” stirring one another up to love and good works, and not abandoning our gathering together (10:19–25). Then the warning: “if we go on sinning willingly after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (10:26). The sin is against the truth itself, the covenant of His one sacrifice, after knowing it. 10:29 names it as trampling the Son of God, counting the blood of the covenant common and insulting the Spirit of grace, and 10:28 sets it beside setting aside the law of Moses, which in Deuteronomy is the one who “transgresses his covenant, and has gone and served other gods” (Deuteronomy 17:2–3, 6). It is not ordinary sin, which that one offering covers for all time (10:14, 18). Where I take this further is set out, and flagged, in Sin vs. Knowledge of the Truth. And then: endure, “my righteous one will live by trust,” and “we are not of those who shrink back” (10:32–39, from Habakkuk 2:4). The chapter ends on the verse Luther’s turn is tied to, Romans 1:17.

The cry, the time and the witness — Jon. The fourth seal is death over a quarter of the earth, which I read as the plague of 1347–1351 (as the reading on the fourth seal sets out). The fifth seal follows it: “I saw under the altar the lives of those who had been slaughtered because of God’s message and the testimony they held on to. They shouted in a loud voice: ‘How long, Master — holy and true — before you judge the ones living on the earth and settle accounts for our blood?’” (Revelation 6:9–10). Hus was burned in 1415, and Wycliffe’s bones were dug up and burned in 1428. At Worms in 1521 Luther refused to recant unless he was shown wrong by the testimony of the scriptures or by clear reason, and he joined that cry. God does not always answer at once; He gives time to change one’s mind. The souls are told “to rest a little longer” (6:11), and the word for time there, chronos, is the word Jesus uses of Jezebel: “I gave her time to change her mind” (2:21). And He bears witness: “the Lord, bearing witness to the word of his grace” (Acts 14:3). In 1567 Rome itself ended the sale Luther wrote against, and in 1999 it signed “by grace alone.” That is God bearing witness to what he wrote and taught. It is not finished yet, and that is why I pray.

Red flag That the fifth seal lines up with this history. No verse names the plague, Hus, Wycliffe, Luther, 1567 or 1999, and the souls of 6:9 had been killed, which Luther was not; the reading is Jon’s. And 6:11 gives its own reason for the wait, “until the number was complete of their fellow servants”; that the time is given for a change of mind is said at 2:21 and 2 Peter 3:9, not at 6:11.

Where this stops. This reading names no one as anything in this book: not Leo, not Rome, not any council. Its two red flags mark where it goes past the text. Rome’s answers are given beside each point, from its own documents, so that a reader can weigh them.

How sure I am — Jon. I am not fully confident of the readings flagged above. They are my best explanation of what I have studied here. If I learn otherwise, I will take them down, and my email is on the About page of this site if you want to show me.