Great Apostasy Questions

A while back, I produced a post in which I listed some Canon Questions, some specific questions I ask when talking to non-Catholics about the Table of Contents found in their Bible. Following my post concerning my recent encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness, I’ve decided to do another post similar to my Canon Questions, but this time concerning the “Great Apostasy”, the belief that that the Church effectively disappeared from the earth some time after Christ’s death.

Apostasy

Groups like the Mormons hold to the Great Apostasy and use this as an explanation for the significant differences between their doctrine and the doctrine of historic Christianity. Muslims hold to this narrative too, to justify the teachings of Muhammad which stand in stark contradiction to the New Testament. Additionally, most Protestant groups, while typically not holding such a radical version of this doctrine, usually hold to some variation of it, saying that somewhere along the line the Church went off-track in a rather major way.

Read more

Total Apostasy

When speaking to non-Catholic Christians, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons and Muslims, the discussion will often turn to “The Great Apostasy”. All these groups believe, to varying degrees, that there was a massive departure from “real” Christianity in  the Early Church and the Faith was lost.

Fortunately, a little knowledge of Scripture and Early Church history can rebut this assertion and this should be in the arsenal of every Catholic. With this in mind, I’d invite you to go and read the fantastic post by Brantly Millegan over at “Young, Evangelical and Catholic”:

Great Apostasy