You know, some Protestants have nutty notions about the Catholic Church. This post proves they are not to be outdone. Are you really under the impression that this is what all Protestants believe?
Christ started the Church - at Pentecost. Not Peter. Not Andrew. Not Luther. Not Calvin. Christ did. And true Catholics are not idol worshippers, or sun god worshippers. They are Christians.
And Protestants aren’t all “prideful, and arrogant, and out protesting”. They’re Christians, too, trying to worship as they believe proper.
Jon
Ah, but the answer to that is, that the very fact of not “coming home” to the “True Church” PROVES that Protestants must be all those bad things. 
Needless to say, people who reason in that way never apply their reasoning to their own religious positions. That is the fallacy of “poisoning the wells” - This form of it makes a reasoned defence of Protestantism impossible, by disqualifying the use of reason by Protestants in advance. So if people are Protestants, they can, by that “argument”, not possibly have good reasons to be Protestants; so their reasons must really be excuses for selfishness, pride or lust; which of course means that Catholics have even more reasons to be anti-Protestant.
This kind of unreason is typical of Fundamentalism - Protestant and Catholic. It’s toxic, because it destroys the possibility of treating other people’s convictions with respect. So some Protestants & non-denominationalists, on their side, argue that RCs are “judicially blinded” so as to be idolaters & satanists; so, once more, no reasoned defence is possible: every denial can be countered as a lie of satan, who has deluded those reprobate Pope-worshippers.
That attitude is not dead, unfortunately. As is clear, it makes possible the most disgraceful accusations, & makes disproving them impossible
That is how powerful the fallacy of “poisoning the wells” can be. Needless to say, love either is trampled underfoot, or, is redefined, so that refusal to listen to others becomes a great virtue; even a duty required by God.
This has everything to do with the thread - for the events of Constantine’s reign are not difficult to interpret as an ossification of Christian feeling within a sectarian society. The result - only in the Church is there charity; heretics & schismatics (who were not really differentiated at that time) can, by definition, not have charity. But whatever the Church does, becomes charitable: including its policing of the various sects. One can go further, & suggest that it fell for one of the Temptations, & made a devil’s bargain so as to gain power in this world at the cost of its soul. This can be seen as a critical
point in a long process of accommodation to the world, resulting from the difficulties of moving from being a Jewish apocalyptic sect living in hope of an imminent Second Coming, to being a largely Gentile religion on earth for the long haul. The first Christians had a very strong sense of the ending of “life as we know it” by the coming of the Kingship of God; as the NT makes abundantly clear; by 300 if not earlier, this has been lost, or transformed beyond recognition. The difference between its immense importance in the NT & its later eclipse requires explanation.
This is not very flattering to the Church - but whether it is or not, is beside the point; which is, that the reign of Constantine does seem be of critical importance for the life of the Church in the Roman Empire, & to have been a Very Bad Thing for it in some extremely important ways. Maybe those who speak much of Constantine are sensing, however inadequately, the difference between the NT Church & the Church under Constantine.
). But his conversion was genuine, that is clear.