“Shortly after Christ founded the Church, it underwent an apostasy, becoming the fraudulent Catholic Church. The realist

1. “Shortly after Christ founded the Church, it underwent an apostasy, becoming the crooked Catholic Church. The tremendous Christian Faith went underground until the Protestant Reformation.” Catholic Church Traditions The death of the Roman emperor Constantine set in 337 brought chaos to the imperial palace. Upon the death of an emperor it was ordinary for members of his extended family to be murdered to prevent rival claimants to the throne. Julius Constantius, the late emperor’s half-brother, was seen as just such a threat; so Roman soldiers murdered him in addition to one of his sons. His two other sons were being shown mercy in addition to sent into exile; almost 20 years succeeding one of them was executed. The one surviving son of Story of Tobit Julius Constantius became the primary and sometimes lone Christian Roman emperor to renounce his faith, with has been known ever since as Julian the Apostate. Julian blamed the murder of his family on Christians, and basically although he had been baptized and basically raised sloted in the Faith, he always bore an animus against Christ. Perhaps it was because he was never taught the orthodox faith, nevertheless rather was schooled mounted in the teachings of Arius, the heretic who believed Jesus was just a creature of God the Father. Occur 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 and certainly embraced paganism. Ten years following he was publicised emperor by his troops. He proceeded to enact a series of anti-Christian edicts aimed at eradicating the control of the Church on Roman organization. His hatred of the Faith was so in good physical shape that he even wrote a manuscript against it, Against the Galileans, occured which he attempted to picture inconsistencies placed in the Faith that would discredit it from the eyes of the Roman populace. He also posited the theory that St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist changed Christ’s session with founded a corrupted church; along with he argued that the Christian faith was based on a lie—that it was “a classic tomes of gents, composed by wickedness.”47 Emerge essence, Julian believed, as multiple others have since his time, that the Church underwent a “prevailing apostasy” that corrupted Jesus’ original design for the Christian community. Thankfully, Julian’s biased lecture against the Church did not take root, with following his death (shortly after the production of his booklet) his political and more than that social measures against Christians ended up being annulled by his successor, Jovian. Julian was not the first Roman to float the “powerful apostasy” theory about the Catholic Church. The third-century Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (234–305), in his toil Against the Christians, was first to claim that the Church following perverted Jesus’ moral. Porphyry argued that Jesus taught guys to worship the one factual God, on the other hand that his apostles corrupted his moral by homework males to worship Jesus as God. Taking place in the writings of both Porphyry and certainly Julian is found the central tenet of the dominant apostasy myth: that the Catholic Church is not the existent Christian Church, along with as such cannot be trusted. This myth would ensuing pick up steam occur the nineteenth century along with the advent of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, in addition to Seventh-day Adventists. Compound Protestant and non-Christian groups that subscribe to the powerful apostasy myth have similar origin reviews: Their founder was perplexed at the number of competing Christian groups with did not identify which one to join. They prayed, as well as received a revelation placed in God telling them not to join any of the traditional groups, nonetheless rather to found a new organization that would restore the bona fide church. Taking place in essence, the great apostasy myth is rooted mounted in the belief that the Holy Spirit, despite Jesus’ teachings to the contrary, somehow departed the Church in the fourth century, around the time of Constantine and also the Council of Nicaea installed in 325. As a aftermath of the Spirit’s departure, the Church became an organ of imperial Rome with was corrupted occur doctrine in addition to coaching.48 The question posed by the powerful apostasy myth is whether the early Church was the Catholic Church. From his effort Europe along plus the Faith, Hilaire Belloc asked what the Church set in 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 dependence. Rather, it was “a visibly delineated body corporate based on manifold exact doctrines, extremely jealous of its unity along with of its precise definitions, plus infested, as no other body of adult men at that time, along with ardent conviction.”49 Belloc also identified the biggest elements of the early Church, which are yet new placed in the Catholic Church today: the Church was a distinct and sometimes rare organism, highly disciplined, as well as ruled by bishops, of whom the principal was the bishop of Rome. These basics noted by Belloc are clearly illustrated taking place in the writings of the early Church Fathers along with apologists. The primacy of the bishop of Rome with his widespread jurisdiction was acknowledged occured 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 basically 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 plus to restore the overthrown clergy. The pope argued that the clergy derive their pro proceed God, not the public, in addition to therefore the faithful have no pull to establish their own clergy. By intervening pictured in an internal theme of a Christian community other than his own proceed Rome, Clement exercised the common primacy of the successor to St. Peter. His admonition was heeded and basically his epistle was conversely examine placed in Corinth a century successive. The letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 116), written installed in 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 placed in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the primacy of the successor to St. Peter, the hierarchical construction of the Church, and the genuine presence of Christ set in the Eucharist. Additionally, St. Irenaeus (140–202) happen his graft Against Heresies presented the features of the actual Church that is background in response to the rise of Gnosticism and compound groups claiming to be the legitimate Church.51 Irenaeus wrote that the properties of a bona fide Church are that it preaches the same lecture no subject where happen the world; that it has apostolic origins; with that it preaches the gospel publicly rather than claiming private or secret research.” Gnostics claimed

2. they had the true on the other hand secret reading of Jesus, which would be given single upon membership proceed their cult. Irenaeus also highlights that the Church does not arranged doctrine however rather receives it, preserves it, plus proclaims it to others. In addition, any society claiming to be Christian must be beginning in communion with the “fundamental plus most important” Church, the one founded by Sts. Peter plus Paul in Rome.52 Thus, we see occur Irenaeus that the early Church believed that the true 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 as in the pink as same is St. Hippolytus (d. 235). Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition describes the liturgical culture of the Roman Church, which are very similar to the recent liturgy. There is a prayer of thanksgiving, an invocation of the Holy Spirit on the sacrificial offering, the test of Jesus’ words of consecration, and basically a memorial acclamation. Hippolytus also exhorted the faithful to worthily receive the Body with Blood of Jesus mounted in the Eucharist. The Bona fide History The writings of the early Church Fathers as well as apologists clearly prove the early Church was the Catholic Church. There was no “potent apostasy” by which the Church was corrupted through the leverage of imperial Rome. The Protestant groups that hold to the myth of a dominant apostasy do so to justify their revolt against the Catholic Church. Then again the historical memoirs proves the early Church was the Catholic Church. Those who embark on an unbiased appraisal of the historical facts will agree and sometimes Cardinal John Henry Newman’s (1801–1890) axiom that “to be deep put in memoirs is to cease to be Protestant.”53