Rock or Sand?

Giovanni Battista Castello | Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter

1. Peter is the rock upon which Jesus builds His Church. Peter and faith are a package deal. Any attempt to disregard Peter as the first Pope and the full authority Christ entrusted to him and continues to entrust to Peter's successors is a harmful attempt to rob the Church of a necessary ministry of authority in service of the truth and unity.
2. The rejection of Peter as pope and the rejection of the Office of Peter is iconoclastic and anarchic. When non-Catholics object to the Papacy they are merely buying into a rejection of legitimate authority, an agenda first vomited into the world by Luther and others which now fuels anti-Catholic bigotry and a rejection of accountability to the common good that fully occupies the hearts and minds of politicians and secular media.
3. The rejection of Peter's role and the role of the Bishop of Rome is a rejection of Christ's will for His Church. One can argue until one is blue in the face with someone who (wrongly) believes that Jesus built the Church merely on Peter's kind or example of faith. It is easy to see how "faith alone" adherents fall prey to that errant teaching about Peter and the Church. A sufficient defense of the true doctrine, an article titled Peter the Rock, may be found at Catholic Answers.
4. The Catholic Church has, since Apostolic times, asserted that the Petrine Ministry, the Office of Peter, is essential to the governance and teaching of the Church. That the early church universally accepted the assertion that the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, has universal jurisdiction, is well attested to in the writings of the Church Fathers, the early bishops of the Church: https://www.catholic.com/tract/peters-primacy; https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-authority-of-the-pope-part-i
5. Theological confusion and division rampant among non-Catholic communities that claim to be Christian should prove the necessity of having a pope who ensures the unity of the Church, a pope whose office or ministry is synonymous with the conservation of the Truth handed on to us by the Apostles.
6. Those who attempt to undermine the continuous teaching of the Church should realize that their misrepresentation and distortion of scripture, i.e., their denial of the authority of the Office of Peter, is behaviour unbecoming for a Christian. “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ!” So saith St. Jerome, a 5th Century Doctor of the Church. Saint John Henry Newman, a convert from Anglicanism, said: "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."

That's the rock. Here comes the sand.

1. Sola scriptura, the 'sola' of Luther, has enabled everyone to be the judge of Scripture rather than its servant. Sola scriptura has produced division practically beyond measure. Scripture has for centuries been subject to the whims of many and, as a result of the loss of the Christ-given Petrine ministry intended to preserve, among many things, the authority of the oral and written Tradition (2 Thess 2:15), each community separated from the Petrine authority has contributed to a loss of scriptural authority and confusion.
2. Non-Catholic communities have, despite claiming a scriptural basis for their doctrines, abandoned the teaching of the Apostles who handed on the teaching of Jesus. For example, most if not all non-Catholic communities permit divorce and remarriage, which amounts to sanctioning adultery. Communities that condone mortal sin cannot be the Church that Christ founded.
3. Non-Catholic communities have abandoned the historical Christian opposition to contraception, another mortal sin. Pressures culminated at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, where bishops heard an address by birth-control advocate Helena Wrighton on the advantages of contraception for the poor. On a vote of 193 to 67, the bishops (representing not only England but also America, Canada, and the other former colonies) approved a resolution stating that: In those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. This was the first official statement by a major church body in favor of contraception. Thus was Christian unity on the question broken. (Dr. Allen Carlson).

The sand of "protest" is not something one should build their house upon. The sand of liberal religion does not jibe with historical Christianity, the Catholic Faith demonstrated by the Church Fathers.

The Rock

Saint Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200 to 258)

“There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering” (Letters 43[40]:5 [A.D. 253]).

Pope Saint Leo I (the Great), Sermon 3. (c. 400 to 461)

2. From Christ and through St. Peter the priesthood is handed on in perpetuity.

Although, therefore, dearly beloved, we be found both weak and slothful in fulfilling the duties of our office, because, whatever devoted and vigorous action we desire to do, we are hindered by the frailty of our very condition; yet having the unceasing propitiation of the Almighty and perpetual Priest, who being like us and yet equal with the Father, brought down His Godhead even to things human, and raised His Manhood even to things Divine, we worthily and piously rejoice over His dispensation, whereby, though He has delegated the care of His sheep to many shepherds, yet He has not Himself abandoned the guardianship of His beloved flock. And from His overruling and eternal protection we have received the support of the Apostles' aid also, which assuredly does not cease from its operation: and the strength of the foundation, on which the whole superstructure of the Church is reared, is not weakened by the weight of the temple that rests upon it. For the solidity of that faith which was praised in the chief of the Apostles is perpetual: and as that remains which Peter believed in Christ, so that remains which Christ instituted in Peter. For when, as has been read in the Gospel lesson, the Lord had asked the disciples whom they believed Him to be amid the various opinions that were held, and the blessed Peter had replied, saying, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord says, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and flood has not revealed it to you, but My Father, which is in heaven. And I say to you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock will I build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven (Matthew 16:16-19).

III. Saint Peter's work is still carried out by his successors.

The dispensation of Truth therefore abides, and the blessed Peter persevering in the strength of the Rock, which he has received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church, which he undertook. For he was ordained before the rest in such a way that from his being called the Rock, from his being pronounced the Foundation, from his being constituted the Doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, from his being set as the Umpire to bind and to loose, whose judgments shall retain their validity in heaven, from all these mystical titles we might know the nature of his association with Christ.