📜❌⚖️✅ “Essentials: Who Decides?” — If It Matters… Then It Matters Who Decides

📜❌⚖️✅ “Essentials: Who Decides?” — If It Matters… Then It Matters Who Decides

It sounds beautiful.

“In essentials, unity…
in non-essentials, liberty…
in all things, charity.”

But there’s a problem hiding in plain sight:

Who decides what counts as *essential*?

Because if you can’t answer that, you don’t actually have unity—you have a thousand private judgments pretending to agree.

Take baptism.

If it’s just a symbol, then fine—debate it.
Infant or adult, sprinkle or immerse, take your pick.

But if it’s what Scripture actually presents it as—
the ordinary way God brings us into covenant,
cleanses us, and incorporates us into Christ—

then suddenly it’s not optional.

It’s essential.

And now the stakes change.

Now it’s not just preference.
Now it’s obedience.

And baptism is just the beginning.

The same fracture shows up everywhere:

Faith alone—or faith that lives and works?
Private interpretation—or a living teaching authority?
Sacraments as symbols—or as actual means of grace?

Once everything gets pushed into the “non-essential” category…
the word *essential* stops meaning anything at all.

And here’s the deeper problem:

If Scripture is left to private judgment,
then every person becomes their own final authority.

And once that happens?

You don’t get clarity.
You don’t get unity.

You get fragmentation—with Bible verses.

Because yes—
you can find a verse to support almost anything.

But Scripture itself warns what happens next:

The ignorant and unstable twist it
to their own destruction.

So no—the solution isn’t less authority.

It’s the right authority.

Not private interpretation…
but the public, living interpretation of the Church.

Because if everything is optional…

eventually, even the Gospel is.

And in the end?

Everyone has a pope—

either the one in Rome…

or the one in the mirror.

🎶 **“Essentials: Who Decides?”** — a track for converts, cradle Catholics, Scripture nerds, and anyone who’s realized the question isn’t *whether* something matters… but *who gets to say so.*

#Catholic #CatholicFaith #PetersBarque #CatholicMusic #BibleStudy #Theology #CatholicTruth #ApostolicChurch

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Peter's Barque is a catechetical musical project by Justin West. He’s a catechist, not a musician. The music and art are AI-assisted—but the words, heart, and soul are his.
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