It is often asserted that the Catholic Church was founded by the Constantine, who was Emperor of the Roman Empire from AD 306-337. A couple of weeks ago, a lady named Monica made such an assertion and in earlier post I pointed out some of the problems with such a theory.
However, today I would like to do something a little different… In this post I would like to set forth the positive historical case for the existence of the Catholic Faith in the generations prior to Constantine. I will show how twenty-two different Catholic doctrines were taught long before Constantine rose to power:
The Church is Catholic
The Church has a three-fold structure of leadership
There is unity through episcopal authority and schism is evil
Sacred Tradition is authoritative
Worship is liturgical
There is Apostolic Succession
Peter has Primacy
The Eucharist is a Sacrifice
Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist
The Eucharist is taken to the sick
Infants are to be baptized
Baptism actually washes away sin
Priests forgive sins
Works are involved in salvation
Prayers are said for the dead
There is purgation after death
Relics are venerated and Saints are celebrated
Mary is the New Eve
Mary was a perpetual virgin
Mary is the Mother of God
Prayers are made to Saints
Songs are sung to Mary
I will demonstrate these early Christian belief by looking at primary sources alone and restricting myself to writings produced prior to AD 300.
At the moment on this blog, I am responding to a reader who commented on a post I wrote about Mary, Ark of the New Covenant. In my earlier posts, I dealt with her comments concerning Our Lady, but in her closing paragraph she made a number of assertions concerning the origins of the Catholic Church. In these last two posts I would like to respond to these final assertions:
I would suggest you do… more research about the origins of the roman catholic church which comes from pagan origins when it was founded in Rome by Constantine about 300AD. This is well known in history. Constantine was the first pope, and he mixed paganism with Christianity and that is how the Roman catholic church was born. You will find many parallels between the Roman catholic church and paganism.
In this particular post I think I’d like to spice things up with a little help from Barney Stinson. Since Monica has challenged me to investigate history…
Let’s take a look at each of the assertions in turn…
For the past few days (Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3) we’ve been looking at the case for infant baptism. Today I would like to conclude the series.
So far in our study, we’ve looked at the implicit inclusion of infants in household baptism. We’ve examined how baptism actually affects the soul of the one being baptized. Yesterday, we also briefly looked at how baptism parallels, and is the fulfillment of, the circumcision of the Old Covenant.
Up until this point, I have tried to address the question of infant Baptism as though I were a Protestant, restricting myself to the testimony of Scripture. However, as a Catholic, I do not hold to the Bible alone, but also to Sacred Tradition, the oral teaching of the Church passed down through the generations.
Even for a Protestant, who doesn’t hold to belief in Sacred Tradition, the witness of the Early Church in the centuries following the Apostles is a significant, albeit less important, consideration. So, today I would like to ask a simple question: Did the Early Church baptize babies?
Over the last six months, many of my non-Catholic Christian friends have given birth to their first child. This was brought about, presumably, through the combination of an extremely poor TV lineup last summer and an abundance of free time on their part.
With this wonderful addition to their family, several of these new parents are now facing a dilemma: should they baptize their newborn child?
You see, in many cases, one spouse comes from a denomination where infant baptism isn’t performed (Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, non-denominationals) and the other has come from a denomination where it is standard practice (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist). The parents typically make the choice to either baptize their child or to have some kind of dedication ceremony.
This is an important issue to me. I was once a member of Protestant congregation where they did infant baptisms, but they also carried out child dedications, depending upon the wishes of the parents. This inconsistency was an important catalyst in my study of the ancient Christian faith and my eventual reversion to the Catholic Church.
So, in the next few posts I would like to present the basic case in favour of infant baptism…
A friend recently expressed interest in getting to know the Early Church Fathers so I said that I would put together a brief (hah!) list of resources.
I was first introduced to the Early Church Fathers by Marcellino D’Ambrosio while I was on a retreat in England. He regaled us with some of the many colourful stories from the Early Church, such as the election of St. Ambrose to Bishop of Milan. Since St. Ambrose will be my roommate’s Patron Saint when he’s received into the Church next year I’ll make sure I write about that sometime soon…
Audio Resources
This initial introduction to the Fathers by Dr. D’Ambrosio was later supplemented by the excellent lecture series given by Dr. Lawrence Feingold to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. Dr. Feingold takes the listener through a tour of the Early Church, focussing upon the issues in that Church, such the call to martyrdom, as the relationship between faith and reason, and the Arian heresy.
If you would like to get a deeper grounding in Christian history (which is, itself, the story of the Fathers), I highly recommend the extensive series of lectures by Fr. Michael Witt. If you get through the Early Church period, don’t worry! You don’t have to stop there since he also covers Church history up until the present day…
So those are a number of audio resources, but what about books?
Websites
There are several websites which provide a handy concordance for the Fathers, such as ChurchFathers.org.
Books
Mike Aquilina has written a number of very accessible books on the subject and I would particularly recommend his book The Fathers of the Church as it gives a good, brief survey of the Patristic period. If you’re interested in the worship of the Early Church he also has a very readable book entitled The Mass of the Early Christians.
I know a lot of people were first introduced to Patristics through The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett, which focusses just four Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus. Likewise, if you would like to focusses more in depth on specific Fathers, Dr. Howell has a great couple of books which focus on Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp.
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A new excellent reference book came out recently from Jimmy Akin entitled The Fathers Know Best. It is a book which arranges the writings of the Church Fathers by topic. For example, have you ever wanted to know what the Fathers thought about contraception? Well, with Jimmy’s book you can just flip to that topic and read, in chronological order, extracts from the Fathers on that subject.
Ad Fontes!
Finally, I would invite anyone wishing to get to know the Fathers better to actually get down and read the works themselves. I have several works available on this website in my Patristics section, together with MP3 recordings of the text. If you want to see what the Fathers thought about the Gospel readings at Mass each week, I’d suggest consulting the Catena Aurea. For further reading, I would recommend the Ancient Christian Writers series. The translation is excellent and there are a good number of explanatory endnotes.
So there you go! Hopefully that wasn’t too overwhelming! Pick which way works best for you and get stuck in! Get to know your Christian family
As I was finishing off St. Augustine’s Confessions, I read the section in Book Eleven where he devotes a substantial amount of ink to the subject of time:
Who is there who can say to me that there are not three times… the past, present, and future, but only present, because these two are not? Or are they also; but when from future it becomes present, comes it forth from some secret place, and when from the present it becomes past, does it retire into anything secret?
For where have they, who have foretold future things, seen these things, if as yet they are not? For that which is not cannot be seen. And they who relate things past could not relate them as true, did they not perceive them in their mind. Which things, if they were not, they could in no way be discerned. There are therefore things both future and past. – The Confessions, Book XI, Chapter 17, St. Augustine
As I was reading this, I couldn’t help but think of this scene from the Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs:
I really hope I’m not the first person to have read The Confessions and thought of this…
As I was finishing off St. Augustine’s Confessions, I read the section in Book Eleven where he devotes a substantial amount of ink to the subject of time: