I sorta scratched my head and said, "What?" at BillW's comment about 100 people who actually hate the CC. DrGuy knows 100 and so do I and it's got to be accurate to say--they aren't the same 100!
KFC POSTS:
I believe the historic Christian church is the Universal Church meaning from all walks and denomiations
If this is so, then what exactly is the "one faith, one baptism", of this historic Christian church?
It has nothing to do with the CC out of Rome. That came later.
Later, when? What became of the Christ-established Church that began to function on the first Pentecost day? Did it cease to exist? If so, Christ must have been wrong for He declared that the gates of Hell would never prevail against His Church. Such a declaration would be a grave offense, for Christ, being Truth Personified was, is and ever will be free from error. The historic continuity of the CC from the time the Holy Spirit came down upon the Apostles and disciples, including Christ's Blessed Mother Mary, in the Upper Room until today, proves Christ to have been right when His Chruch through an unbroken chain of existence has existed, does exist and will exist until the consummation of the world.
just like we saw in Acts. It has nothing to do with the CC out of Rome. That came later.
Every one of the 264 Popes was a bishop of Rome. Pope Benedict XVI is the present bishop or Rome like all his predecessors, is Pope, not becasue St.Peter was bishop of Rome, but becasue he inherits the authority delegated to St.Peter, who became bishop of Rome about 42AD.
St.Peter gives evidence of his being in Rome in his epistle, 5:13. "The Church that is in Babylon, elected together with you, salutes you." Babylon couldn't be the ancient city of Babylon on the Euphrates River near Baghdad becasue that was destroyed (275BC)over 300 years before St.Peter's time. This was a time of Roman persecution and St.Peter was writing in code. It was "Rome" to which he referred when he informed the "strangers" in Pontus, Galatia, and elsewhere, to whom he wrote, of the immoral, the Babylonish place in which he was making progress.
This is all well documented albeit not in Scripture, but certainly evidential in the writings of the 4th Pope, Pope Clement, (88-97 AD) and the Church Fathers. The list of 11 Popes from St.Peter to Anicetus that was drawn up by St.Hegessipus less than a century after the matyrdom of St.Peter traces them as bishops of Rome.
There is also evidence regarding the 52 Caesars who reigned from Nero to Constantine in contrast to the historic data regarding the 32 Bishops of Rome, from St.Peter to Mechaiades, the Popes of that same period.
There was no one, not pagan, Jewish, Catholic or heretic who claimed otherwise for 15 centuries. It was only through the prejudice of Wycliff, Luther, Calvin and other Protestants lights who tried to make this Catholic historic fact fade into fable.
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