The Historical Roots of Catholicism

Published in Pasugo, Nov-Dec 1988


History and Catholic literature show that the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are not one and the same entity.

AS A CATHOLIC seminarian, I was imbued with a lot of Church and secular history. Armed with this knowledge, I was of the same thinking as my friend, Oblate Priest Rev. Ben Carreon – indeed as other Catholics worthy of the name – that the historical Church of Christ which was established in Jerusalem in 33 A.D. is the Catholic Church. I was firm in that historical conviction. Until 1981, I thought the claim of the Iglesia Ni Cristo as being the true Church founded by Jesus Christ in Jerusalem was presumptuous, preposterous, if not downright deceptive and vicious. Why then am I now a member of the Iglesia Ni Cristo?


Catholic Claims of Historicity

The Catholic claims of being the historical Church of Christ is written in a host of history books and encyclopedias. Thus, my friend Rev. Ben Carreon, whose historical errors have already been exposed, feels so confident in asserting that no other church existing today can validly claim any historical linkage with Christ and the Apostles except the Catholic Church. A survey of such books reveals that Rev. Carreon is right.

“Roman Catholicism – a Christian church characterized by its uniform, highly developed doctrinal and organizational structure that traces its history to the Apostles of Jesus Christ in the 1st century AD.” ¹

“ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, collective designation for the portion of Chistendom that acknowledges the supremacy of the pope and considers submission to papal authority in matters of faith an indispensable condition of membership in its ranks. The Roman Catholic Church regards itself as the only legitimate inheritor, by an unbroken Episcopal succession descending from Saint Peter to the present time, of the commission and powers conferred by Jesus Christ upon the twelve Apostles.” ²

These two passages coincide with Rev. Carreon’s claim of Catholic historicity. Yet the next passage states that the Church founded by Christ is not just the Catholic Church but other churches as well:

“Founded in the 1st century AD by Jesus of Nazareth (the Christ), Christianity has become the largest of the world’s religions. Geographically the most widely diffused of all religions, it has a membership of over 1,000,000,000. Its largest groups are the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches; in addition to these churches there are several independent churches of Eastern Christianity as well as numerous sects throughout the world.” ³

Thus, the New Encyclopedia Britannica disputes Rev. Carreon’s claim that only the Catholic Church is founded by Christ. This is more in tune with what the New Catholic Encyclopedia states:

“Since Christ intended His Church to be universal, all those who claim to be members of the Church must profess Catholicism at least implicitly… the word Catholicism is applied to that Christianity that owes allegiance to the pope… those who do owe allegiance to the pope often see in this designation Catholic an implicit admission that they alone are the true Church of Christ. They do not realize that the term is often used merely as a convenient label and no deep signification or recognition of the papal claims is intended.” ⁴



The Church Founded By Christ And The Catholic Church

Catholic Church authorities make use of Matthew 16:18 to assert that Christ founded a Church. Yet nowhere in the Bible does it say that the members of the Church of Christ owe allegiance to the pope as stated in the citations above. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the name of the Church established by Christ is called Catholic Church nor that this Church is fragmented into sects.

The biblical Church founded by Christ has Christ Himself for its rock foundation (Acts 4:8-11; Eph. 2:20) and not Peter as the Catholic Church claims. It could not be Peter because no other foundation can be laid other than that of Christ (I Cor. 3:11). The name of the Church founded by Christ is not Catholic Church but Church of Christ (Acts 20:28, Lamsa). This fact a Jesuit priest states very clearly:

“5. Did Jesus Christ establish a Church?

“Yes, from all history, both secular and profane, as well as from the Bible considered as a human document, we learn that Jesus Christ established a Church, which from the earliest times has been called after Him the Christian Church or the Church of Christ….This Church, founded and organized by Christ and preached by the Apostles, is the Church of Christ, …It is the only true Church, and the one which God orders all men to join.” ⁵

The Church of Christ as written in the Bible is holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:26-27) and is compared to a chaste virgin (II Cor. 11:2). This is a far cry from the record of the Catholic Church which has shamed herself in history with all kinds of heinous crimes.

Although it asserts that indeed there were other things done by Christ which were not written (Jn. 21:25; Rev. 10:4; Dan. 12:4), the Church of Christ considers what was written is enough to save man (Jn. 20:30-31), that what was written was inspired by God and should be used to teach men perfection (II Tim. 3:16-17), that what is not written was not necessary and ordered forgotten (Rev. 10:4), that one should not go beyond what was written (I Cor. 4:6), and that most of all, there is a dire warning on those who add to or subtract from what has been written (Rev. 22:18-19). This is a far cry from the Catholic Church which has these claims:

“ ‘Without the Scripture,’ says Mohler, ‘the true form of the sayings of Jesus would have been withheld from us.’… Yet the Catholic does not derive his faith in Jesus from the Scriptures.” ⁶

“We Catholics acknowledged readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ…” ⁷

Where then does the Catholic Church get her teachings? From paganism!

“In her methods she has borrowed from many sources…from the Jewish ecclesiastical system, from Roman, and hence pagan, religious and civil procedures…” ⁸

“Thus it is true, in a certain sense, that some Catholic rites and ceremonies are a reproduction of those of pagan creeds…” ⁹

Thus, history and Catholic literature show that the Church of Christ and the Catholic Church are not one and the same entity. Why then does the Catholic Church claim to be the true Church of Christ?



What Happened To The Original Church of Christ?

The claim of the Catholic Church that it is the original Church of Christ lies on the assumption that the Church of Christ as originally built by Christ was a tiny acorn – primitive and undeveloped – but now has grown and developed into the great oak called the Catholic Church:

“We Catholics acknowledged readily, without any shame, nay with pride, that Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity, nor even with the Gospel of Christ, in the same way that the great oak cannot be identified with the tiny acorn. “ ¹⁰

This is the key to their claim that the Catholic Church is the original Church of Christ ( a tiny acorn when built by Christ) but now grown and fully developed as the Catholic Church( the great oak). That’s why Catholics are proud of being Catholics and scoff at the claim of the Iglesia ni Cristo as being the true Church of Christ.

“Apostasy? How can this be?” they ask. “Did not Christ promise in Matthew 28:19-20 that He will be with His Church up to the end of the world? Did He not say in Matthew 16:18 that not even the gates of hell will prevail against the Church of Christ? Apostasy? Impossible!” Is it?
`

Such promise, however, is premised on the Church’s keeping all the commandments of Christ. Read closely and attentively Matthew 28:19-20. John 8:31 is even more specific. In order that Christ will be with the Church up to the end of the world, her elders and members must teach and obey everything taught by Christ – no more, no less. If the Church ceases to obey Christ in everything, then the members have rejected Christ and thus, He will not have any reason to be with this Church anymore. In fact, Apostle Paul vehemently says that:

“…though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1:8-9, King James Version)

Strong words from Christ’s Apostle!


The Metamorphosis

That the Church of Christ gained a foothold in Rome through the missionary works of Apostle Paul is indisputable. But even during his lifetime Apostle Paul spent a lot of energy warding off false teachings as can be seen in his sometimes very angry letters. And when he died, history records that false teachers, now rid of the presence of the Apostle, finally succeded in infiltrating the Church of Christ:

“At first the history of the Roman Church is identical with the history of Christian truth. But unhappily there came a time when streams of poison began to flow from the once pure fountain.” ¹¹

The poison referred to are the false teachings which came from the false teachers who were now in positions of authority in the Church after Paul’s death – poison because such false teachings will lead to man’s eternal damnation.

Apostle Paul warned that this poison would come from the overseers of the Church of Christ who would do the evil work after his death (Acts 20:29). This was fulfilled.

“When the original Apostles died, the leadership of the Church was taken over by local pastors, known as bishops. Under them were ministers of lower rank, known as the presbyters and deacons. The Church organized the area of the Roman Empire into provinces. The bishops at the head of the Christian communities in the large cities such as Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage ranked highest.” ¹²

A stream of poison flowed from one of these bishops:

“ ‘Catholic’…was first used by St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria, who was martyred about A.D. 110. The Church founded by Christ is here, for the first time, called ‘the Catholic Church’,…It was to stress the unity of the universal Church that St. Ignatius invented the name.” ¹³

This is lethal poison! The only name through which man can be saved – the name Christ (Acts 4:10,12) was rejected by this bishop and replaced by an invented name! How can you now expect Christ to be still with this Church that has now rejected His own name? This Church has now become poisonous!

Both God and Christ abhor paganism (Jer. 10:2; I Cor. 10:19-22). This makes paganism poison. But what did the first-century Church of Christ, now transformed into the Catholic Church, do with this poison of paganism? It absorbed such poison into its very own system!

“Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The Greek mind, dying, came to a transmigrated life in the theology and liturgy of the Church; … the Greek mysteries passed down into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas of the divine trinity…the adoration of the Mother and Child…From Phrygia came the worship of the Great Mother; from Syria the resurrection drama of Adonis;…The Mithraic ritual so closely resembled the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass…Christianity was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world.” ¹⁴

“The cult of a host of saints and martyrs sprang up to take the place of the many local gods of pagan mythology. The pagan who had relied on the protection of the homely gods of the hearth found similar comfort from the adoption of a patron saint. Christian celebrations were created to replace the feasts and holidays of the older religions. The assimilation by Christianity of so much of popular belief and practice was in no small degree responsible for its almost universal acceptance during this period, but at the sacrifice of its early purity and simplicity.” ¹⁵

Loss of Divine Guidance

Before ascending into heaven, Christ promised the Apostles that He would send the Holy Spirit to guide them and to remind them of whatever He had taught them (Jn. 14:26;16:13). Such divine guidance is very evident in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:4-11; 8:29-31; 13:2-4; 15:28-29; 16:6-7). Even when disputes arose, no division resulted because of the decisions from the central administration were accepted with gladness (Acts 15:1-31).

But now with the Apostles gone and with the apostasy of the first-century Church of Christ a matter of fact, such divine guidance was totally absent.

“When Nero died and Titus demolished the Temple, and again when Hadrian destroyed Jerusalem, many Christians hailed these calamities as signs of the second coming. When chaos threatened the Empire at the close of the second century, Tertullian and others thought that the end of the world was at hand; a Syrian bishop led his flock into the desert to meet Christ halfway, and a bishop in Pontus disorganized the life of his community by announcing that Christ will return within a year. As all signs failed, and Christ did not come, wiser Christians sought to soften the disappointment by reinterpreting the date of his return. He would come in a thousand years, said an epistle ascribed to Barnabas; he would come, said the most cautious, when the ‘generation’ or the race of the Jews was quite extinct, or when the Gospel had been preached to all gentiles; or, said the Gospel of John, he would send in his stead the Holy Spirit or Paraclete….Even the belief in the millennium – in the return of Jesus after a thousand years – was discouraged by the Church, and was ultimately condemned.” ¹⁶

This belief in the millennium was revived as the year 1000 A.D. drew near when the Church saw that it was materially profitable to do so. A rumor was spread that the world would end by the year 1000 A.D.

“As the year 1000 drew nearer, they go rid of their possessions with increasing speed. How? By donating them to what they were told was Christ’s bride on earth, the Roman Church. And so it came to pass that monasteries, nunneries, abbeys, bishops’ palaces and the like bustled with activity. Believers came and went, not only to confess their sins, to repent and to prepare for the end of the world in purity and poverty, but also to donate and give to the Roman Catholic Institution all they had. They gave her their money, their valuables, their houses, their lands. Many of them became total paupers, since what would it avail them to die as the owners of anything when the world was destroyed? Whereas, by giving away everything they were gaining merit in the eyes of the Great Judge!

“The Church, via her monastic orders and clergy, accepted the mounting offers of earthly riches. This she did by duly recording them with legal documents, witnesses and the like…To prove with matter-of-fact concreteness and the possessions of those who had given were, from then on, the possessions of the papacy!

“When, following the long night of terror of the last day of December 999, the first dawn of the year 1000 lit the Eastern sky without anything happening,…Those who had given away their property made for the ecclesiastical centers which had accepted their ‘offerings,’ only to be told that their money, houses, lands, were no longer theirs. “ ¹⁷

This loss of divine guidance has been replaced by false prophets and false teachers who refused in to fill the void! This also resulted in the divisions of the Church. The Bible states that divisions are works of the flesh and hostile to God (I Cor. 3:3; Rom. 8:7-9). And the resulting divisions that followed after the death of the Apostles are again the work of false prophets!

“…the followers of Christ, in the first three centuries, divided into a hundred creeds. “ ¹⁸

Such divisions resulted after disputes which could not be settled. In the biblical Church of Christ,disputes were settled by central authority whose decisions were gladly accepted by all. But in this transformed Church it resulted in schisms.

“As a consequence of the christological disputes, the national churches beyond the eastern frontiers of the Empire separated themselves from the imperial Byzantine church, while Germanic Christian kingdoms of both Arian (Ostrogothic and Visigothic) and Roman (Frankish) observance were formed in the western Empire. The rise of the specifically Roman Church of Gregory the Great and the Arab invasions of the seventh century marked the turning point…the Germano-Roman West became estranged from Byzantium.” ¹⁹

And how were disputes settled? By political considerations!

“The distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, between opinions accepted or rejected by the church authorities, was often decided partly by political considerations and after a bitter struggle between the opposing parties.” ²⁰



How Did The Church of Christ Disappear? Reappear?

The disappearance of the first-century Church of Christ came so gradually that it was almost indiscernible. It changed so gradually as it became the Catholic Church. That’s why Catholics can claim historical affinity with the Church founded by Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, but they cannot show the same with the doctrines of the original Church. What Christ built as the Church of Christ was transformed into the Catholic Church whose official name was formed only at the Vatican Council I in 1870. It was not a case of a tiny acorn becoming a great oak but rather of an oak tree being transformed into a different tree. Such transformation was so gradual that the members failed to notice it as the fact of apostasy.

This disappearance, however, was complete. The two-thirds – the converted Gentiles and Jews of the first century – disappeared. The third part, claimed by Jesus as His “other sheep not yet of this fold” – those still to be called into the Church (Jn. 10:16), identified by Apostle Peter as from afar off (Acts 2:39), specified by the Prophet Isaiah as from islands in the Far East (Is. 41:1-5; 43:5), and to be called at the ends of the earth (Is. 43:6), will appear. This third part arose in the Philippines in 1914, the Iglesia ni Cristo preached by Brother Felix Y. Manalo.


NOTES

1. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, Vol. VIII, p. 644.
2. Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, Vol. 20. p. 349.
3. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, Vol. 4, p.459.
4. New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 338.
5. Francis B. Cassilly, S.J. Religion:Doctrine and Practice, pp. 442,443,444.
6. Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, p. 50.
7. Ibid., p.2.
8. John Gilland Brunini, Whereon to Stand: What Catholics Believe and Why, p. 316.
9. Rev. John C. O’Leary, Ph.D. The Externals of the Catholic Church, p.226.
10. Karl Adam, op.cit. p. 2.
11. The World’s Great Events, Vol. II. Pp. 163-164.
12. The New Book of Knowledge, Danbury, Conn: Grolier Incorporated, Vol. 3, p. 281.
13. Rev. Edward K. Taylor, ‘Roman’ Catholic, p. 3.
14. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization III – Caesar and Christ, New York:Simon & Schuster, p. 595.
15. Wallace K. Ferguson and Geoffrey Bruun, A Survey of European Civilization, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 92.
16. Will Durant, op. cit. pp. 603-604.
17. Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions, USA: Chick Publications, pp. 55-56.
18. Will Durant, op.cit. p. 604.
19. Karl Baus, History of the Church, Vol. 1. From The Apostolic Community To Constantine, p. 7.
20. Ferguson and Bruun. op. cit. p. 92.