Dave Noonan #8
the vast majority of the early church didn’t agree with it,
That anyone disagrees with the definition of Christ’s Church simply expresses the fact that they have cut themselves off from His Church carrying His authority. No other ecclesial community has any authority from Christ to go against His Church on faith or morals. It is a matter “of Faith” through the Council of Trent that the canon of Scripture contains the 46 books of the OT and the 27 books of the NT.
Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Archbishop Michael Sheehan, The Saint Austin Press, 2001, p246].
The third successor of St Peter, Clement, wrote to the Catholics of Corinth in A.D. 95: “If any man should be disobedient unto the words spoken by God through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger… Render obedience to the things written by us through the Holy Spirit.” (I Clem. ad Cor. 59,1).
This Is The Faith, Francis J Ripley, Fowler Wright Books, 1971, p 151; 139-141].
About Pope Victor I’s declaration by edict, about the year 200, that any local Church that failed to conform with Rome was excluded from the union with the one Church by heresy, none other than the radical protestant Adolph von Harnack admitted that Victor I was “recognised, in his capacity of bishop of Rome, as the special guardian of the ‘common unity’… " (See
And On This Rock, p 118, 1987, Trinity Communications, Fr Stanley L Jaki).
Harnack asked: “How would Victor have ventured on such an edict – though indeed he had not the power of enforcing it in every case – unless the special prerogative of Rome to determine the conditions of the ‘common unity’ in the vital questions of faith had been an acknowledged and well-established fact?”
