Roman Catholicism

I'm very excited about this page on Roman Catholicism!

Originally, I had no idea what to write. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I made a firm choice to leave Catholicism as a teenager. What could I write that wouldn't be tainted by my own negativity?

Another difficulty I had in writing this page is how it fit into the purpose of this site.

I do not just want to teach history. If you only want to learn historical facts, you will learn more from Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church in 8 volumes.

I want to introduce history to committed, devout Christians, so that we, together, can learn from our ancestors how to prosper in the faith, maintain unity, and be filled with God's Spirit and power on the earth. How would a negative page on Roman Catholicism help that purpose?

It wouldn't, so I was thrilled as I remembered all the sources of modern Roman Catholic traditions. What a great framework to share insight into the "religious" side of the faith of our fathers.

In order to do this site, I had to shore up my knowledge of the time from the Council of Nicea to the Reformation. In doing so, I discovered an unbiased tack to take.

I was reminded that there is good to address along with the bad, all of which is known to history and much of which is admitted by the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) itself.

The only exception to that is my dissertation on the papacy in the early Church. Roman Catholics would vehemently disagree with me, but no other historians would, and I establish my case beyond any reasonable doubt in those videos.

But, as I mentioned, there are two sides. Let's get to them!

The Good

The Roman Catholic Church, as an organization, is in some way the direct descendant of the apostolic churches.

There are two facets of that descent that are important to us:

1. Their traditions are almost all based on some original apostolic practice that we can learn from.
2. Two, the claim to descent has important flaws.

The Two Important Flaws in Roman Catholicism's Claim of Descent from the Apostles

Hierarchy Above Local Church Is Not from Apostles Except the apostles themselves, you will find no hierarchy above the local church in the New Testament. There are no archbishops or metropolitans ruling whole regions, and there are no popes. The same is true of the Pre-Nicene writings. In fact, the Council of Nicea makes the first mention of official archbishops, now called patriarchs, who ruled over whole countries (Canon 6). Those bishoprics were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. Further, when the apologists spoke of the unity of the church in the late 2nd century, they spoke of churches appealing to other churches, not of officers of the church who ruled over them. That is because a hierarchy did not exist then. There is a spiritual, universal church, but it has no earthly officers. There was no "Roman Catholicism" in the early churches. As Tertullian put it: What that was which they preached … can … properly be proven in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person. (Prescription Against Heretics 21) You cannot have a descent of rule over whole regions when it was unknown in during the entire Pre-Nicene era, over two centuries long.

Spiritual Descent Is Based on Common Faith If Israel, which was a fleshly nation, could not count its descent based on the flesh, how much less can the Church? Both Jesus and Paul stated this clearly. Jesus told the Pharisees that their descent from Abraham was meaningless unless they did the works of Abraham (Jn. 8:39), and Paul said plainly that physical descent is meaningless period (Rom. 9:8). Cyprian, a bishop in Carthage around A.D. 250, states it well: Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating [i.e., breaking bread] with an elder who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer … On which account a people obedient to the Lord’s precepts, and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate. ("To the Clergy and People Abiding in Spain," par. 3, from Epistles of Cyprian 67, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. V) In other words, it is not okay to believe that God will preserve true doctrine through a sinful pope, bishop, or priest, as most have been throughout the centuries since Nicea. Instead, you must separate yourself from a sinful prelate and refuse to break bread with them. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church killed people for a thousand years for obeying that admonition only cements it as true advice from God. Breaking bread with murderers is not acceptable, even if they claim political right to do so. No murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Descent is spiritual. It is those who have the faith of Abraham and the apostles who are true children, not those who claim to have received an organization from them. It is equally apparent that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches, those molds and original sources of the faith, must be reckoned for truth … In the same way, all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savors of disagreement with the truth of the church and apostles of Christ and God. (Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics 21)

I'm going to make a list here of links to some of the more interesting traditions.

• Purgatory
• Infant Baptism

The Bad

The bad mostly involves their awful history of corruption and persecution. The situation was so bad that Philip Schaff tells us that when Pope Leo IX tried to reform the priesthood in A.D. 1049, they found that enforcing their reforms "would well-nigh deprive the churches, especially those of Rome, of their shepherds" (vol. V, p. 13). In other words almost every priest, especially those in Rome had one, purchased their position with money and two, had a concubine.

Ouch.

I promised to give you history in stories. Rather than give you a long, detailed history of the RCC, I am going to give you tastes and visions of what it was like with the stories below.

• Pope Damasus and the Antipope Ursicinus: Taking the Papacy by Violence
• Pope Vigilius: Purchasing the Papacy
• The Western Great Schism: Two Popes at One Time

The In Between

I said above that I do not want to merely teach history. I do, however, want to teach history where you need a basic overview, where it's really interesting, and where there's something pertinent to our lives as Christians today.

So here's some of that stuff:

Needed for Basic Overview

• Chronological List of All Popes
• The Orthodox Church: This is the eastern equivalent of the West's Roman Catholic Church. I'm limited to a brief explanation with the most important events and doctrines so you know who they are.
• The Donation of Constantine
• Quotes on Roman Catholicism

Really Interesting

• The Filioque: This simple Latin phrase created the largest division in Church history, which is still known as the Great Schism (not to be confused with the Western Great Schism, addressed above).
• The fascinating story of Pope Liberius and Antipope Felix II

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