I say the same when Iāve repeatedly defended the Catholic church on issues where it was Catholic individuals, not the church, that committed the wrongs.
Itās always individual members, never the Catholic Church, who ācommit wrongs.ā The Church is the Bride of Christ, His Very Body, āwithout spot or wrinkle or any such thingā Ephesians 5:27. Humans sin. The Church does not, cannot, sin.
Regarding your allegation of apostasy, this was written a hundred years or so after Mormons claim Jesusās inability to keep the Church he founded together became evident. A good dose of early Christian history is the cure for Protestantism, Mormonism, and other false religions.
QUOTE
But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the succession of all the Churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient Church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, that Church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the Apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all Churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world; and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the Apostolic tradition.
The blessed Apostles [Peter and Paul], having founded and built up the Church [of Rome], they handed over the episcopate to Linus. Paul makes nention of this Linus in the Epistle to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus, and after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement was chosen for the episcopate . . .
St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, A.D. 180-189, The Faith of the Early Fathers, William A. Jurgens, Volume 1.
END QUOTE
St. Irenaeus goes on to enumerate all the successors of Peter (the Popes), from the beginning of the Church to the date of this writing. He obviously didnāt get the memo about the āapostasy.ā
Jim Dandy