Early Christianity:
read the writings of the early church fathers, the closest we can get to the beginnings of Christianity
http://www.churchfathers.org
I find most protestants study the Bible but fail to study early Christianity in depth. You will find that the beliefs of Early Christians is completely Catholic! They believed in mariology, saints, sacraments, Eucharist, Purgatory, all the Catholic beliefs. Look at all the Eastern Christian (orthodox, etc) that split off early from Catholicism, how come their beliefs are very similar to the Catholic Church? Protestant “dogmas” began in the 16th Century unrelated to earlier Heresies.

â??We must hold to the Christian religion and to communication in her Church, which is Catholic and which is called Catholic not only by her own members but even by all her enemies. For when heretics or the adherents of schisms talk about her, not among themselves but with strangers, willy-nilly they call her nothing else but Catholic. For they will not be understood unless they distinguish her by this name which the whole world employs in her regard.â? Augustine, The True Religion, 7:12 (A.D. 390).

“See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Christ Jesus does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles. Do ye also reverence the deacons, as those that carry out the appointment of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrneans, 8:2 (c. A.D. 110).

Don’t protestants pray in public?
Ritualized Prayer:
I can assure you that a prescribed or written prayer can be just as much from the heart as any prayer off the cuff. And when a priest reads or recites a prayer in the Mass, he can be as sincere as if he had composed the prayer himself. One of the most important reasons that the Church provides these prayers is that it doesnâ??t want the people of God to be misguided by the individual inclinations or, even worse, the false teachings that an individual priest might fall into unknowingly. Standardized prayers are a way of exercising the pastoral care of Christ in his body, the Church.

Repetitious Prayer:
Not all repetition is vain. Consider the prayers spoken of in Revelation 4:8 offered day and night without ceasing: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” Another repetitious prayer pleasing to God is contained in Psalm 136: “For his steadfast love endures for ever.” This phrase is repeated over twenty-five times. Finally, Matthew 26:44 tells us that Jesus himself prayed the same prayer three times in the garden in Gethsemane

Wealth of the Church

A woman came up to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at table. But when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For the ointment might have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” Matthew 26:6

One reason that the Vatican doesn’t sell off such treasures is that the Vatican doesn’t believe that the treasures are the Vatican’s to sell. They are considered the patrimony of mankind, entrusted to the Vatican for safekeeping, and cannot be sold or borrowed against. Indeed, the Vatican values them at one euro each for purposes of internal bookkeeping and spends a great deal of money to preserve the treasures for future generations.

If such treasures were sold and the money given to the poor, that money would soon be gone and mankind would be culturally impoverished by the loss of such artifacts into private hands. Besides, it is not offensive to religious sensibilities for a Church to maintain such beautiful treasures for the glory of God. If the Temple in Jerusalem could be richly ordained in order to glorify God and to inspire human worship, the universal Church of God can be richly ordained for the same purposes.

Ostentation to give dignity to the function and in glorification of God is ostentation used well. Priests have to take a vow of poverty and live on a meager salary, the wealth is not theirs.

Did Jesus expressly denigrate public prayer or did he not?
Catholics frequently pray in public.

Did Jesus condemn formulaic and ritualized prayer, including the Lord’s prayer, or did he not?
Catholics have a standardized liturgy including the Lord’s prayer.

Did Jesus advise people to shun worldly wealth, and especially ostentation, or did he not?
Ostentatious robes, chalices and other accoutrements form an integral part of Catholic ceremonies.

I am not particularly interested in the relationships between all the various Christian factions, but it seems to me that when you claim that the Catholic church continues all the teachings and traditions of the early church you are wildly off course.

Catholicism formed the canon of the Bible, how can it contradict it?

The Bible was written over the course of about sixty years. From Jesusâ?? death in 33 A.D. until the Gospel of John in the 90â??s. During this time, well over 250 documents, letters, books, etc were written that claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Yet only 27 are now in the Bible.

The Holy Spirit guided the canonists as they selected which books belonged and which did not. We can all agree on this. The problem for the protestant is that the canonists were Catholic bishops headed by the pope in the late fourth century.

To make matters even worse for the protestant, the core test that a book had to pass to get into the Bible was for it to conform to all oral tradition of the Catholic Church.

Therefore, it is a FACTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY for a book in the caon of the New Testament to disprove any tradition of the Catholic Church. Each book was hand picked by a team of bishops specifically because it upheld those traditions.

Any time you hear a verse that â??disprovesâ? Catholicism, do this. First, check the context, read the passages before and after. Things are often have different meanings when you understand what the author was actually saying. Next make sure no words were added by the person reciting the verse to you (like â??aloneâ? in faith alone or scripture alone, 2 Tim 3:16 never has the word â??aloneâ?, but Protestants generally ignore that little tidbit). Finally, understand that Catholic Traditions donâ??t need to be explicitly stated in the Bible. For example, the Assumption of Mary isnâ??t in the Bible and is therefore impossible. Four people, not counting Jesus, were assumed in the Bible (Enoch, Elisha, & 2 witnesses in Revelation), so why canâ??t Mary be too? There’s a precedent set that bodily assumption is possible, Tradition tells us Mary was assumed. What’s the problem? The Bible doesn’t say she wasn’t?

The bottom line is that the Bible is a Catholic book that is a core part of our faith. Yes, our bishops and popes have read it. Yes, they have considered it when they formed this Church. Thereâ??s nothing in there that Catholics didnâ??t put there.

My apologies. Here I was thinking you were a humourless troll, but that was actually quite funny.

“Beer is illegal in my county.”
Is that why your hobby is buttsecks?

I see you can throw random words too. Dingleberry. You aren’t one of those fat slobs with no neck are you? Beer is illegal in my county. You should live here. It’s a dry county. You could sip on dingeberry juice though. Oh, my mistake. Looks like you had your fill already.

If you belong to the Church of England, your religion was founded by King Henry VIII in the year 1534 because the Pope would not grant him a divorce with the right to remarry.

If you are a Presbyterian, your religion was founded by John Knox in Scotland in the year 1560.

If you are a Protestant Episcopalian, your religion was an offshoot of the Church of England founded by Samuel Seabury in the American colonies in the 17th century.

If you are a Congregationalist, your religion was originated by Robert Brown in Holland in 1582.

If you are a Methodist, your religion was launched by John and Charles Wesley in England in 1744.

If you are a Unitarian, Theophilus Lindley founded your church in London in 1774.

If you are a Mormon (Latter Day Saints), Joseph Smith started your religion in Palmyra, N.Y., in 1829.

If you are a Baptist, you owe the tenets of your religion to John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam in 1605.

If you are of the Dutch Reformed church, you recognize Michaelis Jones as founder, because he originated your religion in New York in 1628.

If you worship with the Salvation Army, your sect began with William Booth in London in 1865.

If you are a Christian Scientist, you look to 1879 as the year in which your religion was born and to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy as its founder.

If you belong to one of the religious organizations known as ‘Church of the Nazarene,” “Pentecostal Gospel.” “Holiness Church,” “Pilgrim Holiness Church,” “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” your religion is one of the hundreds of new sects founded by men within the past century.

If you are Catholic, you know that your religion was founded in the year 33 by Jesus Christ the Son of God, and it is still the same Church.

Can you tell me who started the Catholic Church if not Christ?

(Assyrian Church of the East) The Church of the East developed from the early Christian communities in Persia, and at its height had spread from its Mesopotamian heartland as far as China and India. They In 1552 a dispute over patriarchal succession led to a schism, resulting in there being two rival Patriarchs. One of the factions that emerged from this split became the modern Assyrian Church of the East, while the other became the church now known as the Chaldean Catholic Church, which entered into communion with the Catholic Church. While the Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity) also did not accept the Council of Chalcedon, in addition to that it rejected the First Council of Ephesus as well and has, according to the traditional interpretation, an opposite Christology to the Oriental Orthodox. It may thus be called “Non-Ephesine”.

Various heresies have been there throughout history and have died out, but do resurrect again in various forms. But the vast majority of the denominations that you see now are a result of the Protestant Reformation.

There were numerous heresies right from the beginning of the Church. But protestantism is the worst because it has destroyed the unity of Christianity and made difficult the possiblility of reunification. Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East have remained very close to original Christianity and are thus extremely similar to the Catholic Church and also have not split into thousands and thousands of factions due to maintenance of apostolic succession and systems of authority.

Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians reported promising progress on Friday in talks on overcoming their Great Schism of 1054 and bringing the two largest denominations in Christianity back to full communion. Experts meeting in Vienna this week agreed the two could eventually become â??sister churchesâ? that recognize the Roman pope as their titular head but retain many church structures, liturgy and customs that developed over the past millennium.

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/09/24/catholics-and-orthodox-report-promising-progress-in-latest-round-of-unity-talks/

“Whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there was a safe truth, it is this.” – John Newman, Anglican convert to Catholic Church.

Catholicism has nothing that contradicts scripture, Catholics determined what books go in the Bible!

Really? How about the ostentatious public praying, the use of standard, formulaic prayers and the overwhelming displays of wealth? I thought Christ frowned upon all of these.

Julian @50

Christ established the Catholic Church as his official Church. All these 40,000 denominations are from the 16th Century Reformation, a split from the church as much for doctrinal as political, social, and other false reasons.

Where do the Greek, Ethiopian and other eastern Orthodox churches fit in with this?

4 ton buddah lands on his head. plllllllttttttttt! squish!

Zeb: Hey! Where did that evolve from? A statue of a monkey perhaps?

God: No my boy, just recalling another defective product.

Zeb: Whatever happened to prepaid fedex satchels?

God: “snigger” .. Stupid atheist

“Curtains down – Lights up – Audience file out of the theatre to the parking lot, mount their dragons and return to their home planets”

I tell you its gonna be the best cult ever. And I still have the best part of a six pack left!
Join now!