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

1. “Shortly after Christ founded the Church, it underwent an apostasy, becoming the shady Catholic Church. The tremendous Christian Faith went underground until the Protestant Reformation.” Catholic Church Traditions The death of the Roman emperor Constantine occured 337 added 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 opponent claimants to the throne. Julius Constantius, the late emperor’s half-brother, was seen as just such a threat; so Roman soldiers murdered him as well as one of his sons. His two other sons ended up being shown mercy and more than that sent into exile; basically at least 15 years subsequent one of them was executed. The one surviving son of Story of Tobit Julius Constantius became the earliest and more than that only Christian Roman emperor to renounce his faith, and basically has been known ever since as Julian the Apostate. Julian blamed the murder of his family on Christians, and more than that although he had been baptized in addition to raised that is setting in the Faith, he always bore an animus against Christ. Perhaps it was because he was never taught the orthodox faith, in spite of this rather was schooled set in the teachings of Arius, the heretic who believed Jesus was just a creature of God the Father. In any case, Julian believed that “there are no wild beasts so hostile to mankind as are most Christians from 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 more than that embraced paganism. Ten years ensuing he was declared emperor by his troops. He proceeded to enact a series of anti-Christian edicts aimed at eradicating the influence of the Church on Roman organization. His hatred of the Faith was so vigorous that he even wrote a manuscript against it, Against the Galileans, placed in which he attempted to film inconsistencies placed in the Faith that would discredit it placed in the eyes of the Roman populace. He also posited the theory that St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist changed Christ’s example in addition to founded a corrupted church; and sometimes he argued that the Christian faith was based on a lie—that it was “a books of adult males, composed by wickedness.”47 Occur essence, Julian believed, as several others have since his time, that the Church underwent a “authoritative apostasy” that corrupted Jesus’ imaginative design for the Christian community. Happily, Julian’s biased moral against the Church did not take root, and successive his death (shortly after the foundation of his hardback) his political along with social measures against Christians were 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), from his work Against the Christians, was the 1st to claim that the Church following perverted Jesus’ warning. Porphyry argued that Jesus taught adult males to worship the one true God, nonetheless that his apostles corrupted his tutorial by homework guys to worship Jesus as God. Sloted in the writings of both Porphyry and more than that Julian is found the central tenet of the potent apostasy myth: that the Catholic Church is not the valid Christian Church, with as such cannot be trusted. This myth would subsequent pick up steam put in the nineteenth century in addition to the advent of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Seventh-day Adventists. Several Protestant and certainly non-Christian groups that subscribe to the prevailing apostasy myth have similar origin reviews: Their founder was perplexed at the number of competing Christian groups plus did not distinguish which one to join. They prayed, and more than that received a revelation put in God telling them not to join any of the conventional groups, then again rather to found a contemporary company that would restore the real church. Mounted in essence, the powerful apostasy myth is rooted beginning in the belief that the Holy Spirit, despite Jesus’ teachings to the contrary, somehow departed the Church happen the fourth century, around the time of Constantine as vigorous as Council of Nicaea taking place in 325. As a incident of the Spirit’s departure, the Church became an organ of imperial Rome and basically was corrupted occured doctrine and sometimes teaching.48 The question posed by the controlling apostasy myth is whether the early Church was the Catholic Church. Occured his toil Europe along plus the Faith, Hilaire Belloc asked what the Church set in the Roman Empire was. He answered by opening describing what the Church was not: it was not an opinion, a fashion, a philosophy, a theory, or a obsession. Rather, it was “a observably delineated body corporate based on manifold exact doctrines, extremely jealous of its unity along with of its precise definitions, and more than that filled, as no other body of men at that time, plus avid conviction.”49 Belloc also identified the main characteristics of the early Church, which are nonetheless recent proceed the Catholic Church today: the Church was a distinct and basically unique organism, highly disciplined, and basically ruled by bishops, of whom the prime was the bishop of Rome. These characteristics noted by Belloc are observably illustrated mounted in the writings of the early Church Fathers plus apologists. The primacy of the bishop of Rome and basically his common jurisdiction was acknowledged emerge 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 and sometimes to restore the overthrown clergy. The pope argued that the clergy derive their professional mounted in God, not the people, plus therefore the faithful have no control to establish their own clergy. By intervening beginning in an internal theme of a Christian community other than his own put in Rome, Clement exercised the universal primacy of the successor to St. Peter. His admonition was heeded plus his epistle was conversely translate emerge Corinth a century subsequent. The letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 116), written that is venue 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 from the Trinity, the Incarnation, the primacy of the successor to St. Peter, the hierarchical structure of the Church, together as well as the valid presence of Christ set in the Eucharist. Moreover, St. Irenaeus (140–202) placed in his occupation Against Heresies accessible the fundamentals of the real Church from response to the rise of Gnosticism and basically compound groups claiming to be the true Church.51 Irenaeus wrote that the essentials of a genuine Church are that it preaches the same message no topic where occured the world; that it has apostolic origins; and more than that that it preaches the gospel publicly rather than claiming private or secret research.” Gnostics claimed they had the true conversely thriller homework of Jesus, which would be given individual upon

2. membership emerge their cult. Irenaeus also highlights that the Church does not set up doctrine then again rather receives it, preserves it, along with proclaims it to others. Furthermore, any fraternity claiming to be Christian must be put in communion and sometimes the “essential and sometimes most important” Church, the one founded by Sts. Peter and more than that Paul sloted in Rome.52 Thus, we see in Irenaeus that the early Church believed that the realistic guarantor of orthodoxy was the bishop of Rome, the pope. Another early Christian writer whose writings prove that the early Church and sometimes today’s Catholic Church are one together as well as the same is St. Hippolytus (d. 235). Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition describes the liturgical nations of the Roman Church, which are very in the image of the modern liturgy. There is a prayer of thanksgiving, an invocation of the Holy Spirit on the sacrificial offering, the recitation of Jesus’ words of consecration, and certainly a memorial acclamation. Hippolytus also exhorted the faithful to worthily receive the Body and basically Blood of Jesus occured the Eucharist. The Tremendous Description The writings of the early Church Fathers and basically apologists observably prove the early Church was the Catholic Church. There was no “dominant apostasy” by which the Church was corrupted through the power of imperial Rome. The Protestant groups that hold to the myth of a authoritative apostasy do so to justify their revolt against the Catholic Church. Then again the historical annals proves the early Church was the Catholic Church. Those who embark on an unbiased examine of the historical understanding will agree in addition to Cardinal John Henry Newman’s (1801–1890) axiom that “to be deep installed in memoirs is to cease to be Protestant.”53