Protestants: What would Christianity look like if the Catholic Church were to disappear tomorrow?

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My thoiught is the Catholic Church holds the deposit of Faith and truth in faith and morals.
If the Catholic Church would disappear I would imagine it would be the end of the world
as the Christian Church disinitegrated into a theological mess with every Church teaching something differ, morality disintegrating and every man his own interpreter of scripture.

That said no such thing can happen actually because the gates of hell will not prevail against his’Church, the Catholic Church.

Mary,
 
We’ll take the vatican and install an orthodox pope of rome.
 
bgfischer said:
I think you are right. Without the Catholic Church there wouldn’t have be a stable Christian Church. Especially most Protestant Churches. I think we are seeing more fragmentation due to most of these churches catering to what feels good or is politically correct. I don’t think of a lot of these churches as Protestant in the original sense.
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I am a bit surprised to see a Protestant say this, though perhaps I shouldn’t be. My son really brought this to my attention when, in college, he wrote a paper in which that was the central thesis. He had all sorts of examples where various Protestant churches took borrowings, some quite recently, from Catholic teachings, especially the less well-organized churches which, he said, were awash in Catholic teachings without realizing that’s where they were getting most of what they believed.

I particularly loved a summarizing phrase he coined. It went something like this:

“The Catholic Church is, to those in the west who are not Catholic, like a pole star at sea. The sailor might not be steering toward it, but he nevertheless navigates by it.”

His professor was also a Baptist minister, so he was taking something of a chance in writing all of that. But his professor gave him an “A+” and wrote the comment on the paper “This gives me a lot to think about.”

Not bad for a college kid.
 
JustaServant said:
Asked this question four years ago during NCRs “wild west” days. 😃
I’d like the get the newbies answers now.

Would it be powerful or insignificant?
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Let’s take a historical view: Paradoxically, if not for the Church launching the Crusades (despite their excesses) , Middle Eastern Christianity might not exist today - look how fragile it is! And, equally paradoxically, if the Catholic Church did not exist in the 15th and 16th centuries as the primary unifying and motivating element, European Christianity might be long gone. At the time, there was no secular government, no other religious movement which could possibly have mustered sufficient forces to expel the Moors from their conquest of Spain (which threatened France). As it was, it took 700+ years to free Spain after the Muslim invasion (711-1492). Nor was there any secular or religious authority which could have defeated the Muslim Turks in their expansionist push at Lepanto (1571). If the Hand of God was not in that victory, then it remains unexplainable. Look also at the Muslim invasion/slaughter at Otranto in 1482. Islam was on the move and clearly had Europe in its sights.

Frankly, the nascent “reformation” was already splitting and dividing so rapidly that it was only a local/regional power, and could never have mustered the forces necessary to defeat an occupying or invading Muslim army.

Which raises that age-old question of whether or not there should be a separation of Church and state. What state? At the time, Islam was much more unified, while Europe was a patchwork of divided and often warring kingdoms. The only unifying opposition to the perpetual Muslim expansionist invasions was the Church.

Everything happens for a reason.
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
We’ll take the vatican and install an orthodox pope of rome.
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But wouldn’t a race for it between the Patriarch of Constantinope and the Patriarch of Moscow be an embarrassingly unbecoming sight? One needs to think these things through. 🙂
 
Ridgerunner said:
I am a bit surprised to see a Protestant say this, though perhaps I shouldn’t be. My son really brought this to my attention when, in college, he wrote a paper in which that was the central thesis. He had all sorts of examples where various Protestant churches took borrowings, some quite recently, from Catholic teachings, especially the less well-organized churches which, he said, were awash in Catholic teachings without realizing that’s where they were getting most of what they believed.

I particularly loved a summarizing phrase he coined. It went something like this:

“The Catholic Church is, to those in the west who are not Catholic, like a pole star at sea. The sailor might not be steering toward it, but he nevertheless navigates by it.”

His professor was also a Baptist minister, so he was taking something of a chance in writing all of that. But his professor gave him an “A+” and wrote the comment on the paper “This gives me a lot to think about.”

Not bad for a college kid.
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You shouldn’t be suprised. Though I am not able to understand everything in the Catholic failth I do aknowledge where my denomination came from.
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
We’ll take the vatican and install an orthodox pope of rome.
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Oh wait a minute, I thought you were Catholic too. So your just waiting for a chance to hop on the Vatican and take over. Me thinks that tells me something of where your heart is. God Bless, Memaw
 
po18guy said:
Let’s take a historical view: Paradoxically, if not for the Church launching the Crusades (despite their excesses) , Middle Eastern Christianity might not exist today - look how fragile it is! And, equally paradoxically, if the Catholic Church did not exist in the 15th and 16th centuries as the primary unifying and motivating element, European Christianity might be long gone. At the time, there was no secular government, no other religious movement which could possibly have mustered sufficient forces to expel the Moors from their conquest of Spain (which threatened France). As it was, it took 700+ years to free Spain after the Muslim invasion (711-1492). Nor was there any secular or religious authority which could have defeated the Muslim Turks in their expansionist push at Lepanto (1571). If the Hand of God was not in that victory, then it remains unexplainable. Look also at the Muslim invasion/slaughter at Otranto in 1482. Islam was on the move and clearly had Europe in its sights.

Frankly, the nascent “reformation” was already splitting and dividing so rapidly that it was only a local/regional power, and could never have mustered the forces necessary to defeat an occupying or invading Muslim army.

Which raises that age-old question of whether or not there should be a separation of Church and state. What state? At the time, Islam was much more unified, while Europe was a patchwork of divided and often warring kingdoms. The only unifying opposition to the perpetual Muslim expansionist invasions was the Church.

Everything happens for a reason.
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Don’t forget the battle of Lapanto in 1571.God Bless, Memaw
 
batman1973 said:
If the entire Roman Catholic church were to completely “vanish”, other than the number of Christians decreasing dramatically, there really wouldn’t be much of a change. The Gospel would still be preached, the lost would still be reached, God’s Work would not stop just cause a billion people disappeared. And that would be the case even if all of catholicism vanished (i.e. Orthodox, Anglicans, and Evangelical Catholics a.k.a. Lutherans). The downside would be of course no awesome liturgy.😦

Crud., I can’t make another post.
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There wouldn’t be any Gospel to preach. The Church gave us the Bible so I assume it would disappear with them.
 
JonNC said:
Well, the eastern Church has/had the Gospel, too.

Jon
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But it truly belongs to the Catholic Church where the Pope is and the Teaching authority of Christ’s Church resides. God Bless, Memaw
 
estesbob said:
There wouldn’t be any Gospel to preach. The Church gave us the Bible so I assume it would disappear with them.
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That would be a negative. The Bible is almost everywhere. If the Roman Catholic Church were to suddenly vanish, the Bible would still be around. The Gospel would still be preached. 😃
 
batman1973 said:
That would be a negative. The Bible is almost everywhere. If the Roman Catholic Church were to suddenly vanish, the Bible would still be around. The Gospel would still be preached. 😃
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I imagine it would soon disappear too as it is being torn to shreds anyway. You take what you want. I’ll believe what I want. you believe what you want, I’ll ignore what I want. My goodness it’s certainly not what Our Lord wanted for His Word. God Bless, Memaw
 
JustaServant said:
Asked this question four years ago during NCRs “wild west” days. 😃
I’d like the get the newbies answers now.

Would it be powerful or insignificant?
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The premise is a self contained impossibility because Jesus Christ is Lord.

But, to entertain your question…protestant churches wouldn’t exist because:

The Catholic church is the one, true church that Christ intended to exist after His ascension into heaven and of which He left Peter as it’s first Pope…264 popes later to Pope Francis. And the gates of hell have not and will not prevail against her.
 
perro_sarnoso said:
The premise is a self contained impossibility because Jesus Christ is Lord.

But, to entertain your question…protestant churches wouldn’t exist because:

The Catholic church is the one, true church that Christ intended to exist after His ascension into heaven and of which He left Peter as it’s first Pope…264 popes later to Pope Francis. And the gates of hell have not and will not prevail against her.
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No. Protestant communions wouldn’t exist because the Church would have been centered in Constantinople.

Jon
 
JonNC said:
Probably significantly more Orthodox.

Jon
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Maybe so. Orthodoxy would seem wonderously stable if the Catholic Church was gone, despite some dissention within it. But it really isn’t “western” in the way the Catholic Church is in the west, and possibly lots of Protestants would be drawn to it, but perhaps not as many as one might think. People in the west are a good deal more “Latin” that I think most realize, right down to such minutiae that the Romans were almost unique among ancient peoples in shaving, and we in the west do too, almost to a man. There are hundreds of ways in which we are Romanized without knowing that we are.

But I think perhaps the OP might have simply overlooked Orthodoxy in his premise. It seemed so to me, anyway.

Undoubtedly the bible would still be around. After all, there are lots of them, and lots of versions. And I expect there would be lots more generated. I would expect a significant number would be expanded by the doubtful texts now known or later “discovered”. Lots of translations would be changed to eliminate things that society finds unpopular. (like condemnations of homosexuality, things thought “sexist” and so on) So, since lots of Protestants seem to be abandoning the King James bible in this country, I think it could get tough to feel really confident any given text was reasonably definitive. Among all Protestants, I would expect the Lutheran bible to change the least because I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong) there really is a “definitive” Lutheran version.
 
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