[metmom]

Seems that the Catholic church goes through upheaval, serious upheaval, every 500 years or so.

It really didn’t get established until about 400 AD.

It was about 1054 when the Great Schism happened and the EO were established.

It was during the 1500’s when the Protestant Reformation happened.

We’re at the next 500 year mark and Roman Catholicism is looking to be on the brink of another crisis.

And each time, that part headquartered at the Vatican takes the name of Roman Catholicism and anathema’s those who don’t follow it, just like the did with the EO and those who wouldn’t buckle under in the 1500’s.

FWIW, the EO consider themselves to be the original Catholic church with Rome being in schism.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Historian Christopher Dawson sees the church as being roughly on its seventh 300-year cycle, if I remember correctly.

Repentance --->inspiration --> revival --> growth --> success --- unfaithfulness --> corruption --> ruin --> Repeat. Repentance -- (etc)

If you know your Bible History, such is the saga of the People of God.

"Through many toils and snares." Always survives. Always raises up saints. Always buries its undertakers.

But I am not exaggerating at all when I say this Bergoglio guy is unique and different, and I don't mean in a good way.

Previous bad popes --- and there were, by my amateur accounting, 8 or 9 really bad ones in the last 2,000 years ---were into wine, women, buggery, battles, castles in France; but they didn't mess with doctrine. Doctrine bored them. Doctrine was not their thing. They had their personal and political vices, and they carried them with them to the grave.

In contrast, this guy we've got now is avid, simply avid for the controlled demolition of doctrine.

And prophecy does say that there will be a great apostasy toward the end. And Our Lady of Fatima says the central issue will be Marriage.

So we may be nearing the End.

But on the other hand, we've been in the Last Days since Pentecost.

[Mrs. Don-o]

BTW, the Church "really didn’t get established until about 400 AD."?

Apostolic Fathers St. Clement of Rome, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St.Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr and the authors of the Didache would be astonished to hear that.

It didn't become legal until the Fourth Century.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The Emperor Constantine invited 1800 bishops from throughout the Roman Empire to attend the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. (Only about 300 were able to attend, though some -— like the Church @ Romr, sent official legates.)

Tell me, was that before there was really an organized Catholic Church?