Sorry Claud, but I simply claimed that there is ZERO evidence that an Apostle ever taught or practiced at least half the things Rome claims were "tradition."
I don't have to prove there was a change. It is self evident that there is no evidence it ever existed. No one can produce any proof of an "unbroken chain of traditions that were passed on" as was described.
Most of these pagan practices have references in history HUNDREDS of years (or more) later.
Holy water, praying to saints, the elaborate pagan outfits with fish hats, papacy, alter, and on and on... all added later, since no Apostle had anything to do with them.
Now, I can quote one of your popes who has more standing with you than I ever will... who admits to things added later.
One of the most brilliant Christian theologians who has ever lived is Joseph Ratzinger, also known as Pope Benedict the 16th
His honestly can be refreshing, and which actually testifies to how one can admit evidence that is against being an RC, yet still hold to it. Some of the things he says are those which RCs would react with reproof if said by one of us, for the picture they paint is a different one.
Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution.
"It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/)
Ratzinger writes (emp. mine), Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative...
Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared. - J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59. .
“If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [of the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus… As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution, was, to a large extent, corrected…” (Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381,82;
“The concept of [apostolic] succession was clearly formulated, as von Campenhausen has impressively demonstrated, in the anti-Gnostic polemics of the second century; [and not, as some Roman Catholic writers assert, in the first century] its purpose was to contrast the true apostolic tradition of the Church with the pseudo-apostolic tradition of Gnosis” (“God’s Word: Scripture-Tradition-Office” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press ©2008; Libreria Editrice Vaticana edition ©2005) pgs 22-23). We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholics as the thirteenth or nineteenth century world would have understood the term , they were, nonetheless, ‘Catholic,’ and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself.” [yet even here many did not hold the apocryphal books as being Scripture proper.] (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, Theolgische Prinzipienlehre ]San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], p. 141.)
This section borrowed from a post by daniel1212
There is plenty of evidence for the chain. Let's take the papacy. Christ gave Peter special prerogatives and charges among the Apostles ("upon this rock I shall build my Church", and "I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven" and "whatever you bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven") St. Peter later appoints 3 bishops in Rome, one of whom is St. Clement (who may very well be the Clement mentioned by Paul)...in the 90s the church of Corinth writes Clement and asks him to settle a local dispute, which he does with authority. Ignatius of Antioch in the 110s is brought to Rome, firing off epistles including one to Rome that strikes a deferential tone; he calls the Roman Church "presiding over the brotherhood of love" and "purified from every strange taint". In the 170s, Irenaeus is saying flat out that every Church must agree with the Church of Rome, because in it the tradition of the Apostles has always been preserved.
Now I know well you're going to pick apart every single one of those and tell me they don't mean what they seem to mean.
But any reasonably unbiased person can see they sure sound like a proto-papacy, and you can't find a single quote from these authors that even sounds remotely like what you believe--which is that the Roman Church went off the rails and started teaching bad, pagan doctrine. Irenaeus said flat out in the 170s that the Roman Church preserved the Apostolic doctrine perfectly since the beginning. You expect me to take your word over his?
I can produce a chain of primary historical sources in defense of my position, starting from people who knew the Apostles personally. Where is your counterevidence? Don't give me this "self-evident" nonsense as if you can just declare the matter resolved by fiat.
Joe; listen to the Catholics on FR and you'll find that it STILL doesn't!!
Joe...
...REALLY?
DEFINED??
I thought THOUSANDS of eyes saw this happen???