“Shortly after Christ founded the Church, it underwent an apostasy, becoming the dishonest Catholic Church. The actual C

1. “Shortly after Christ founded the Church, it underwent an apostasy, becoming the fraudulent Catholic Church. The legitimate Christian Faith went underground until the Protestant Reformation.” Catholic Church Traditions The death of the Roman emperor Constantine occured 337 produced chaos to the imperial palace. Upon the death of an emperor it was familiar for members of his extended family to be murdered to prevent foe claimants to the throne. Julius Constantius, the late emperor’s half-brother, was seen as just such a threat; so Roman soldiers murdered him plus one of his sons. His two other sons ended up being shown mercy with sent into exile; all but 20 years consequent one of them was executed. The one surviving son of Story of Tobit Julius Constantius became the earliest and certainly solitary Christian Roman emperor to renounce his faith, and has been known ever since as Julian the Apostate. Julian blamed the murder of his family on Christians, along with although he had been baptized and raised occur the Faith, he always bore an animus against Christ. Perhaps it was because he was never taught the orthodox faith, nonetheless rather was schooled proceed the teachings of Arius, the heretic who believed Jesus was just a creature of God the Father. That is location in any case, Julian believed that “there are no wild beasts so hostile to mankind as are most Christians taking place in their hatred for each other.”46 He kept his animosity toward Christians hidden until, at the age of twenty, he rejected the Faith of his childhood in addition to embraced paganism. Ten years later he was released emperor by his troops. He proceeded to enact a series of anti-Christian edicts aimed at eradicating the control of the Church on Roman alliance. His hatred of the Faith was so in the pink that he even wrote a essay against it, Against the Galileans, mounted in which he attempted to show inconsistencies occured the Faith that would discredit it set in the eyes of the Roman people. He also posited the theory that St. Paul and basically St. John the Evangelist changed Christ’s period as well as founded a corrupted church; plus he argued that the Christian faith was based on a lie—that it was “a books of adult men, composed by wickedness.”47 Emerge essence, Julian believed, as various others have since his time, that the Church underwent a “powerful apostasy” that corrupted Jesus’ unique design for the Christian community. Happily, Julian’s biased class against the Church did not take root, along with subsequent his death (shortly after the formulation of his volume) his political and social measures against Christians ended up being annulled by his successor, Jovian. Julian was not the initial Roman to float the “influential apostasy” theory about the Catholic Church. The third-century Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (234–305), installed in his labor Against the Christians, was opening to claim that the Church successive perverted Jesus’ lesson. Porphyry argued that Jesus taught men to worship the one tremendous God, yet that his apostles corrupted his message by assignment adult males to worship Jesus as God. Sloted in the writings of both Porphyry with Julian is found the central tenet of the authoritative apostasy myth: that the Catholic Church is not the genuine Christian Church, and as such cannot be trusted. This myth would following pick up steam taking place in the nineteenth century plus the advent of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and basically Seventh-day Adventists. Various Protestant and sometimes non-Christian groups that subscribe to the great apostasy myth have similar origin testimonies: Their founder was perplexed at the number of competing Christian groups and basically did not identify which one to join. They prayed, and received a revelation put in God telling them not to join any of the traditional groups, however rather to found a current fraternity that would restore the beneficial church. Put in essence, the powerful apostasy myth is rooted happen the belief that the Holy Spirit, despite Jesus’ teachings to the contrary, somehow departed the Church set in the fourth century, around the time of Constantine and also the Council of Nicaea installed in 325. As a experience of the Spirit’s departure, the Church became an organ of imperial Rome along with was corrupted occured doctrine and assignment.48 The inquiry posed by the potent apostasy myth is whether the early Church was the Catholic Church. Sloted in his labor Europe together and sometimes the Faith, Hilaire Belloc asked what the Church from the Roman Empire was. He answered by primary describing what the Church was not: it was not an opinion, a fashion, a philosophy, a theory, or a dependency. Rather, it was “a observably delineated body corporate based on several exact doctrines, extremely jealous of its unity plus of its precise definitions, along with teeming, as no other body of gents at that time, with devoted conviction.”49 Belloc also identified the prime fundamentals of the early Church, which are though current occured the Catholic Church today: the Church was a distinct in addition to exceptional organism, highly disciplined, and basically ruled by bishops, of whom the major was the bishop of Rome. These properties noted by Belloc are clearly illustrated proceed the writings of the early Church Fathers plus apologists. The primacy of the bishop of Rome and more than that his frequent jurisdiction was acknowledged put in the early Church as evidenced by the epistle of St. Clement, written before A.D. 100.50 Clement was the fourth bishop of Rome, and he wrote his letter (epistle) to the Christian community at Corinth after word of their revolt against the duly ordained presbyters reached Rome. Clement ordered them to cease their revolt as well as to restore the overthrown clergy. The pope argued that the clergy derive their pro placed in God, not the people, and therefore the faithful have no influence to establish their own clergy. By intervening set in an internal question of a Christian community other than his own pictured in Rome, Clement exercised the ordinary primacy of the successor to St. Peter. His admonition was heeded and more than that his epistle was yet study in Corinth a century following. The letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 116), written happen the early second century A.D., provide proof that what the Catholic Church teaches today is what was taught by the early Church, including belief taking place in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the primacy of the successor to St. Peter, the hierarchical formation of the Church, together and basically the true presence of Christ pictured in the Eucharist. In addition, St. Irenaeus (140–202) emerge his vocation Against Heresies available the fundamentals of the true Church taking place in response to the rise of Gnosticism plus various groups claiming to be the genuine Church.51 Irenaeus wrote that the elements of a true Church are that it preaches the same lesson no subject matter where occur the world; that it has apostolic origins; and more than that that it preaches the gospel publicly rather than claiming private or mystery skill.” Gnostics claimed they had the beneficial but secret lecture of Jesus, which would be given individual upon membership beginning in their cult. Irenaeus also highlights that the Church does not created doctrine yet rather receives

2. it, preserves it, along with proclaims it to others. Additionally, any sorority claiming to be Christian must be that is site in communion as well as the “fundamental and certainly most noteworthy” Church, the one founded by Sts. Peter plus Paul occured Rome.52 Thus, we see emerge Irenaeus that the early Church believed that the bona fide guarantor of orthodoxy was the bishop of Rome, the pope. Another early Christian writer whose writings prove that the early Church and basically today’s Catholic Church are one plus the same is St. Hippolytus (d. 235). Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition describes the liturgical sub cultures of the Roman Church, which are very the image of the new liturgy. There is a prayer of thanksgiving, an invocation of the Holy Spirit on the sacrificial offering, the coaching of Jesus’ words of consecration, and sometimes a memorial acclamation. Hippolytus also exhorted the faithful to worthily receive the Body and certainly Blood of Jesus set in the Eucharist. The Genuine Annals The writings of the early Church Fathers and certainly apologists noticeably prove the early Church was the Catholic Church. There was no “influential apostasy” by which the Church was corrupted through the leverage of imperial Rome. The Protestant groups that hold to the myth of a commanding apostasy do so to justify their revolt against the Catholic Church. However the historical description proves the early Church was the Catholic Church. Those who embark on an unbiased appraisal of the historical information will agree and more than that Cardinal John Henry Newman’s (1801–1890) axiom that “to be deep from description is to cease to be Protestant.”53