Christ was quite fierce in His attitude about such groups 2000 years ago
Catholics were the only Christian group 2,000 years ago and Christ was very pleased with us......still is!!!!
UNMITIGATED NONSENSE on both counts.
Catholics were the only Christian group 2,000 years ago and Christ was very pleased with us......still is!!!!
You gotta be kidding... LOL... (I do hope you're not serious here...).
First of all -- 2,000 years ago, there was no such thing as the Catholic Church. We're talking about when Jesus, the Messiah of Israel was still a young boy at the time. He had not even gone on His ministry to Israel at that time.
BUT, perhaps you were talking about "roughly" 2,000 years ago. if so, then let's say you're talking about right after the time that Jesus ascended into Heaven in the direct sight of about 500 of His own Jewish brethren.
There was still no Catholic Church at that time. Jesus was a Jew, who has Jewish disciples, and His Apostles were all Jewish. When the first ones listened to Peter preach, they were all Jews from other areas, coming into Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days.
We can move ahead to a council held in Jerusalem to discuss the status of Gentiles in the Jewish church at that time (you can read about it in Acts). The door wasn't fully opened to even Gentiles until that time. There was no Catholic Church at that time either. It was a Jewish church, who has Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, discussing how to allow Gentiles to participate... :-)
We can move ahead about 60 years into the future from that time, to about the time that John wrote the book of Revelation. There was still no Catholic Church at that time.
And we can keep moving ahead to 4th and 5th Centuries before a structure called the Catholic Church can be considered to be in place, or beginning to be "in place".
With the influence of Constantine (A.D. 280-337), who made Christianity a “religion of power,” the bishops strengthened and increased their privileges. During this time there were five metropolises: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East gained greater prominence because of their locations (Mattox, 1961, p. 137). While the power of the episcopacy grew in these cities, so did the controversy over which of these two cities, and their representative churches and bishops, should have supremacy.
On October 10, 366, a man named Damasus was elected Bishop of Rome. He was an energetic man who fought for the pontificate against his opponent Ursinus, another bishop elected by a small number of followers (see “Damasus I,” 1997, 3:865-866). During his pontificate, Damasus fought to confirm his position in the Church of Rome. He also fought to compel the other cities to recognize the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over all other bishops. Damasus even went as far as to assert that the “Church of Rome was supreme over all others, not because of what the council [of Rome in 369 and of Antioch in 378—MP] decided, but rather because Jesus placed Peter above the rest, elevating him as the cornerstone of the church itself” (“Saint Damasus,” 2005).
In spite of Damasus’ efforts to establish the preeminence of Rome and his pontificate, he did not finish his work. After his death in December 384, Siricius was elected as the Pontiff of Rome. He was less educated than Damasus, but empowered himself with a higher level of authority than other bishops had demanded. Siricius claimed inherent authority without consideration of the Scriptures. He demanded, and threatened others, in order to gain more and more power. He was the first to refer to himself as Peter’s heir (see Merdinger, 1997, p. 26). Siricius died on November 26, 399. Without a doubt, he and Damasus were principal forces behind the development of a universal ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In 440, Leo I became the pontiff. He was an ardent defender of the supremacy of the Roman bishop over the bishops in the East. In a declaration to the Bishop of Constantinople, he stated:
Constantinople has its own glory and by the mercy of God has become the seat of the empire. But secular matters are based on one thing, and ecclesiastical matters on another. Nothing will stand which is not built on the Rock which the Lord laid in the foundation.... Your city is royal but you cannot make it Apostolic (quoted in Mattox, 1961, pp. 139-140).
The supremacy referred to by Leo I was based on the assumption that the Lord exalted Rome, including its church and pontiff, over other major cities because of traditions about Peter. By that time it was accepted as “fact” that Peter had been the first Bishop of Rome and that he had been martyred there. Those traditions, along with Rome’s legacy as an evangelistic influence in the first century, gave the city a “divine aura” that supposedly connected it to the apostolic age and distinguished it from other cities. These beliefs greatly influenced the development of a hierarchy in the church.
On September 13, 590, Gregory the Great was named Bishop of Rome. He was another advocate of Petrine tradition, and named himself “Pope” and the “Head of the Universal Church.” By the end of his pontificate, the theory of Peter’s primacy and that of the Bishop of Rome was firmly established. Finally, with the appearance of Boniface III on the papal throne on February 19, 607, Roman papacy became universally accepted. Boniface III lived only a few months after his election. Many other bishops followed his legacy of “runners for supremacy.”