Amy 1966,
*You wrote: ** * The historical account of the church demonstrates this through its history as it has evolved overtime and the numerous additions to teachings that were never taught by the Apostles or by the Lord or by the prophets as I see it, not as you see it…I understand we see things from different perspectives. Apostolic succession is a perfect example; you will never find that in Scripture unless you impose on certain text and ignore others; particularly the pastoral texts.
Amy, I’ll leave this to someone else. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a d—” (not really quite that, but not enough) about this matter of “apostolic succession”, given its proper place in the hierarchy of orthodoxy to argue it with a sectary. With a real Protestant (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed), who respects the witness of the Church Fathers, perhaps, but not with a sectary (Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostalist, Cambellite, and suchlike). Protestants and Anglicans, unlike sectaries, understand the importance of ** unbroken ministerial succession**, whether of the presbyterate and/or of the episcopate. You like to grandstand on C.A., as I can tell from what you already have contributed, not to engage in real dialogue, as a Protestant might do; I do not have time or the vigour, myself, at my advancing age (although other more energetic Catholics, fortunately, do have such energy) for those kinds of exchanges with frivolous and stubborn sectaries. Other matters of the faith, by comparison, dwarf this issue of succession in Church governance, of which the episcopate is a subsidiary consideration.
This question of church polity is a matter like others, where the testimony of church history makes it clear that rule by bishops is normative in Church history, right from the beginning. Sectaries do not have much of a leg to stand on, except their specious interpretation of Holy Scripture, according to their own views, in defiance of the clear record of Church history.
Amy, I just cannot believe that in this matter, as in others which one can prove from a Catholic standpoint, that any kind of apostasy was setting into Christ’s holy Church during the early centuries, the first three or four (when the testimony of history is so clear), at a time when Christians were suffering martyrdom on a wide and horrifying scale for their faith. Can one accuse these early Christians of delusion regarding a faith, the Apostolic one for which they were dying, if that was something already corrupted?
Forget it, my dear, I am with the Fathers and the martyrs of the Church, not with sectaries and their successors in error who did not arise until at least halfway through the second millenium of Church history! The “timëlines” that sectaries like to draw of the supposed onset of Catholic “errors” has the mistaken notion that Church decrees affirming doctrine or condemning errors are an indication that Catholic positions arose at those times. This is not so; such pronouncements were codifying authoritatively what had been believed and practised for many years prior, indeed, from the beginning!
You can take up your contentions with someone else, Amy; I am not interested, especially knowing how sinfully stubborn is the persistence of sectaries in their beliefs. What you need is to engage with a Catholic apologist (e.g. a priest with experience in dealing with sectaries and cultists) about the entire Catholic faith, not merely to continue to “cherry pick” particular points of contention; the Catholic faith, unlike the patchwork of sectarianism, has a consistency and integrity which you are not experiencing and with you are not dealing.
Pax, Jerry Parker
