When did the Church Go off the Rails

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jmcrae said:
That’s a lot of rails, I must admit.

I have some questions for those people, too.

Why was the first Pope named “Pope Boniface III” (the third). Did his Mom name him that? Maybe she thought “the third” just sounded really cool, or something. 😛

How did the Emperor Constantine get to be the supreme leader of the Catholic Church, if he wasn’t even baptized, yet? (He was baptized on his death bed, as I understand it.)

If there was an underground Baptist church that dates back to the Apostolic era, where were its leaders? Where are its records and writings? Why did they hide their lamp under a bushel basket, instead of evangelizing the whole world, as Christ commanded? How come we keep finding lost tribes of Catholics in remote corners of the world (India, Japan) who are still ordaining priests and Bishops, and still saying Mass pretty much the same way the Apostles did, but we never find any lost tribes of Baptists doing Billy Graham-style altar calls out there in the jungle or high up in remote mountains, other than in the southern United States?

If you don’t believe in the Sacrifice of the Mass, why do you call it an “altar?” Just what, exactly, do you sacrifice on it?
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Lost tribes of Catholics in the remote parts of the world celebrating mass like the apostoles did? Woah! Could you elaberate a bit more on this? I’ve never heard of these catholic tribes.
 
The_Catholic said:
Lost tribes of Catholics in the remote parts of the world celebrating mass like the apostoles did? Woah! Could you elaberate a bit more on this? I’ve never heard of these catholic tribes.
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Yes, I know - the secular media doesn’t really report about stuff like this.

But our current Associate Pastor came from a little group in India that dates back to the Apostle Thomas - they even had a record of the Succession back to him. They were rediscovered during the mid-1800s, and reunited with Rome shortly after that. Of course at that point, Rome started sending them Bishops, as well, so the line back to St. Thomas has gotten kind of blurry in the mean time - but they definitely date back to the Apostles, now both to Thomas and Peter.

I have another friend who came from a tribe of Zulus in Africa who was “discovered” by Catholic missionaries when he was a little boy - they were already Catholic at the time that they were discovered - he figures that his group can probably trace back somehow to the Ethiopian eunuch (they didn’t have a detailed history, unfortunately) but anyway, they were reunited with the Church straight away, without much fuss.

I was also reading in the Western Catholic Reporter a few years ago about an isolated group in Japan - they had lost their priesthood (all of the priests got murdered) but were still doing things like the Rosary and the Divine Office, and they were baptizing their kids. They figured that this particular group had originally been founded by Jesuits in the 1500s.
 
jmcrae said:
I was also reading in the Western Catholic Reporter a few years ago about an isolated group in Japan - they had lost their priesthood (all of the priests got murdered) but were still doing things like the Rosary and the Divine Office, and they were baptizing their kids. They figured that this particular group had originally been founded by Jesuits in the 1500s.
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Around 10,000 Catholics were killed by the atomic bomb that hit Nagasaki in WW2.
www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/m2-1e.html
 
So back to TS’s question. For those who do believe this…When did the Catholic Church Go off the Rails?
 
Gottle,

The problem with your linking the Catholic Church to ancient Israel is that God promised Israel a new Covenant with a new Shepherd. Jesus promised a) to build His Church and b) to always be with us.

Then when you combine Christ’s teaching on marriage and St. Paul’s analogy between Christ and the Church, and husbands and wives, then it’s safe to assume that Christ will not abandon His Church, nor will He let His Church abandon His Teachings.
 
jmcrae said:
Yes, I know - the secular media doesn’t really report about stuff like this.

But our current Associate Pastor came from a little group in India that dates back to the Apostle Thomas - they even had a record of the Succession back to him. They were rediscovered during the mid-1800s, and reunited with Rome shortly after that. Of course at that point, Rome started sending them Bishops, as well, so the line back to St. Thomas has gotten kind of blurry in the mean time - but they definitely date back to the Apostles, now both to Thomas and Peter.

I have another friend who came from a tribe of Zulus in Africa who was “discovered” by Catholic missionaries when he was a little boy - they were already Catholic at the time that they were discovered - he figures that his group can probably trace back somehow to the Ethiopian eunuch (they didn’t have a detailed history, unfortunately) but anyway, they were reunited with the Church straight away, without much fuss.

I was also reading in the Western Catholic Reporter a few years ago about an isolated group in Japan - they had lost their priesthood (all of the priests got murdered) but were still doing things like the Rosary and the Divine Office, and they were baptizing their kids. They figured that this particular group had originally been founded by Jesuits in the 1500s.
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Any links to such things? I’d love to read more about these things. (Although, perhaps a separate thread would be in order.)

Sam, the Neon Orange Knight
 
Truthstalker said:
I’m trying to understand the argument that the Church went off the rails. I’ve read it happened with Simon Magus, who started the Catholic Church (!), with Constantine, who started the Catholic Church with a bunch of pagans (!), after Augustine, according to Calvin, when things slowly went to pieces (!), with the filioque (!),and then I guess the theory that the church just sort of went into slumber until Martin Luther knocked on a door and woke it up(!). Also that it went off the rails when the Pope discovered Papal Infallibility (!) or the Immaculate Conception (!) or Vatican 2 (!).
Constantine, Innocent I, Leo the Great, Leo X and others have all been personally blamed for the dirty deed.

The common thread to all these arguments, in my humble opinion, is that the Church went off the rails the moment the observer could no longer agree with the stated view of the Church. This may be too Catholic a thought, but then I guess I went off the rails. If it went off the rails, why can’t people agree on WHEN?

I was going to post this on a certain antiCatholic forum, but I am tired of talking to those people. Sorry if it this has an irritating tone.
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First of all the Catholic Church is founded by Jesus Christ who build his Church upon Peter. What you have read are completely false and are lies and no the Church has never went off the rails. That is biggest lie Protestant have ever come up with.
 
What’s worth doing is looking for the earliest mention of every Catholic doctrine in the Church Fathers and then comparing it to the earliest list of the New Testament as it is. I think I found every doctrine besides the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary by about 250, and the vast majority by St Irenaeus (c180) the earliest complete NT listing being around then by Origen and not fixed til 380 in the West and about 200 years later in the East, the Assyrians to this day only officially having 22 books in the NT.
 
jmcrae said:
Not online, no - but I’ll see if I can dig something up if I get a few minutes. I got this information from reports that I read in the Western Catholic Reporter, as they were occurring, several years ago. I don’t know if the Western Catholic Reporter keeps an archive on line, though.
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That would be really neat if you could find it.
 
Some “thought” the church, the one and only church Christ instituted, went off the rails in the 16th century and so martin Luther tried to place what “seemed” to be off the rails, back on the rails.

What actually occurred, was that the Church and Her teachings were spot on, and some of the members of the clergy were abusing their power.

Martin Luther then started his own man made sect of religion, calling it Christianity, and things really went awry after that, beginning division after division and brand new doctrines brought about by the false doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide.

The results are very evident, in that now what was once one, as Christ called it to be, is split into almost 40,000 divisions, all thinking their individual way of interpreting scripture is somehow correct, except that it is contrary and different to everyone else’s theology.
So I would say that what appeared to be the church in 1521 under the guise of Luther and Calvin and Wesley and Zwingli, wnet off the rails at that time and has never ceased. The Church christ established still remains, with the teachings still intact.

I do not know of a Lutheran, Presbyterian or any other church that hld to the teachings of their founder since the reformation period.
 
Mannyfit75 said:
First of all the Catholic Church is founded by Jesus Christ who build his Church upon Peter. What you have read are completely false and are lies and no the Church has never went off the rails.

That is biggest lie Protestant have ever come up with.
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Whoa Manny!

Truthstalker is being sardonic here. He is setting up (past) misconceptions about the Church is a derisively sarcarstic manner.

Robert
 
St. Francis Xavier found a group of Catholics dating back to St. Thomas in the South of India; the so called Malabar Catholics. A biography of St. Francis should contain more info. The Japanese Catholics were a result of St. Francis’ missionary efforts in Japan. A look at the early history of the Orthodox Churches, Coptic Christians, and the early Church in Rome and possibly Spain go back to the efforts of St. Paul and the Apostles. The basic theology is fairly uniform even for those who have separated from Rome.
 
there is a reason why the bible is called the king james version. truth be told, many righteous individuals denounced the church when it became the religion of kings, earthly kings that is.
 
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