Sorry, but the true “early church” started way before the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was simply a medieval church which was most predominant in the world during the years following the apostles. That does not make it the first church:
You guys didn’t even exist back then.
As both its critics and its champions would probably agree, Roman Catholicism has been the decisive spiritual force in the history of Western civilization. There are more Roman Catholics in the world than there are believers of any other religious tradition–not merely more Roman Catholics than all other Christians combined, but more Roman Catholics than all Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus. The papacy is the oldest continuing absolute monarchy in the world. To millions the pope is the infallible interpreter of divine revelation and the Vicar of Christ
The emergence of Catholic Christianity
At least in an inchoate form all the elements of catholicity–doctrine, authority, universality–are evident in the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles begins by focusing on the demoralized band of the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem; but by the time its account of the first decades is finished, the Christian community has developed some nascent criteria for determining the difference between authentic (“apostolic”) and inauthentic teaching and behavior. It has also moved beyond the borders of Judaism, as the dramatic sentence of the closing chapter announces: "And so we came to Rome " (Acts 28:14). The later epistles of the New Testament admonish their readers to “guard what has been entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 6:20) and to “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), and they speak about the Christian community itself in exalted and even cosmic terms as the church, “which is [Christ’s] body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). It is clear even from the New Testament that the specification of these catholic features was called forth by challenges from within, not only from without; indeed, scholars have concluded that the early church was far more pluralistic from the very beginning than the somewhat idealized pictures in the New Testament might suggest.
As such challenges continued in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, further specification became necessary. The schema of apostolic authority formulated by the bishop of Lyon, Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 200), may serve to set forth systematically the three main lines of authority for catholic Christianity: the Scriptures of the New Testament (alongside the Christianized “Old Testament”) as the writings of the Apostles of Christ; the Episcopal centers established by the Apostles as the seats of their identifiable successors in the governance of the church; and the apostolic tradition of normative doctrine as the “rule of faith” and the standard of Christian conduct. Each of the three depended on the other two for validation; one could determine which purportedly scriptural writings were genuinely apostolic by appealing to their conformity with acknowledged apostolic tradition and to the usage of the apostolic churches, and so on. This was not a circular argument but an appeal to a single catholic authority of apostolicity, in which the three elements were inseparable. Inevitably, however, there arose conflicts–of doctrine and jurisdiction, of worship and pastoral practice, and of social and political strategy–among the three sources of authority, as well as between equally “apostolic” bishops. When bilateral means for resolving such conflicts proved insufficient, there could be recourse to either the precedent of convoking an apostolic council (Acts 15) or to what Irenaeus had already called “the preeminent authority of this church [of Rome], with which, as a matter of necessity, every church should agree.” Catholicism was on the way to becoming Roman Catholic.
The emergence of Roman Catholicism
Internal factors
Several historical factors, some of them more prominent at one time and others at another, help to account for the emergence of Roman Catholicism from the catholic Christianity of the early church. The twin factors that would eventually be regarded as the most decisive, at any rate by the champions of the primacy of Rome in the church, were the primacy of Peter among the 12 Apostles of Christ and the identification of Peter with the Church of Rome. In the several enumerations of the Apostles in the New Testament (Matthew 10:2-5; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13) there are considerable variations, with further variations in the manuscripts; but what they all have in common is that they list (in Matthew’s words) “first, Simon, who is called Peter.” “But I have prayed for you,” Jesus said to Peter, “that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32 ); and again: “Feed my lambs. . . . Tend my sheep. . . . Feed my sheep” (John 21:15 -17). Above all, when Christ, according to the New Testament, said to the Apostle Peter, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock [Greek petra ] I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18 ), that was, according to Roman Catholic teaching, the charter of the church–i.e., of the Roman Catholic Church.
You guys eat, sleep and breath anti-Catholicism. I learned a lot about that faith during that time. We went to lunch and shared constantly. I pray for you guys, but you’ll never make it close to my family without a fight with that belief. But I’m praying for you.
