[NYer]

Girding up for the holiday season :-)

[HarleyD]

How timely. ;O)

[x5452]

Moslty great post (I'd debate what primacy meant then and now...)

I especially like the calling out of the History Channel.

After they decided a good Christmas special was one about whether the Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier I am shocked that the church hasn't called for boycotting the channel. (Attacking the virgin birth is a direct attack on Christianity).

[TotusTuus]

To paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, there was no such thing as a religion called "primitive Christianity." There is and always has been the Church, founded by Christ around the year 30 A.D.

Excellent article!

This, in a nutshell, is the reason I am compelled to be, and remain, a Catholic. What else is there? Where else can we go?

"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."

[HarleyD]

"The culture is now flooded with bogus scholarship whose main purpose is to put...orthodox Catholicism — on the defensive. But most Catholics have no idea how to respond, and more than a few take these books and documentaries at face value. After all, they have the imprimatur of the History Channel or a large publishing house like Doubleday.

Why should believe the History Channel or Doubleday when we have the Catholic Church to give us the OBJECTIVE view of Church history? ;O)

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"And yet most Catholics know very little about their own history.:

Thanks to Land O'Lakes and other goofy kooky wreckovators of Catholic higher education.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The media have a sharp appetite for this recycling of 19th-century, anti-clerical scholarship, and so books by scholars like Gary Wills and Elaine Pagels get maximum exposure. And then there is The Da Vinci Code, which has sold a staggering nine million copies. Both the New York Times and National Public Radio seem to think that it is based on historical fact. Even its author appears to think so. But a book that claims that Christians did not believe in the divinity of Christ until the fourth century, that a Roman emperor chose the four Gospels, that the Church executed five million witches, and that Opus Dei has monks is obviously little more than a farrago of nonsense.

Yeah. And that's putting it lightly.

More could be said about the retarded nature of modern liberal secular humanist culture.

[little jeremiah]

Later read.

[djrakowski]

"Long before there was a New Testament, there was a deposit of faith concerning the nature of God, His threefold personality, His purpose in making man, the Incarnation."

This is one of the primary reasons I'm becoming Catholic!

[Kolokotronis]

You know, the problem with articles like these is that they often devolve into a piece of ROMAN Catholic apologetics. It is disengenuous, no actually dishonest, to lead Roman Catholics themselves, let alone Protestants and others, to understand that the early Church was the self same thing as the Roman Church is today and has been since the Great Schism. This is not to say that the Roman Church is not a particular Church within The Church, it certainly is, but it is not itself alone The Church.

[notsofastmyfriend]

Thanks so much for the ping list. I converted five years ago, and these threads really help me "catch up" on all that I've missed the first 30 years of my life!

I find that I am very interested in the history of the Church - do you have any recommendations on a book to read this holiday season?

[MattinNJ]

Ping

[Convert from ECUSA]

Thanks for posting this! I've printed for later reading and I sent the link to a friend.

[Uri’el-2012]

How the Church Saved Civilization

That leaves little work for the creator of the universe.

[Uri’el-2012]

b'shem Y'shua

[cardinal4]

Good post. I have always taken issue with the "Constantine" foundng of Christianity..

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Interesting stuff bump.

[Ciexyz]

Faith-sharing bump.