There is no clear consensus as to the authenticity of any of the "Ignatius Letters". Even if the one in question is for real the phrase used by Ignatius "he katholike ekklesia" is an adjective not a proper noun. The big "C" Catholic ia a later editorial change intended to change the entire meaning of the letter. There was no entity known as the "Catholic Church" for hundreds of years.
You can't defeat a false argument with a false argument of your own.
And you can't re-enter the fray once you've disqualified yourself. It's downright un-Christian!
I would tend to agree with you and obviously they have never been accepted as Canonical. That being said, why did Diego1618 reference them as "proof" that the Blessed Virgin Mary had other children (post #551)?
I very much appreciate you saying that and it has not gone unnoticed by me that many Protestants with whom I've often engaged in "heated" debate have opted to "sit out" this thread based on ignorant vile.
There was no entity known as the "Catholic Church" for hundreds of years.
This is like citing a letter by George Washington referring to the "American army," saying it used "American" as an adjective, not "American army" as a noun, and then concluding that there was no entity known as the "American army" for hundreds of years.
The argument is specious and silly.
What event happened "hundreds of years" later which caused the Catholic Church suddenly to pop into being (which event went completely unnoticed by contemporaries, BTW) ... ??
Whatever it was, it had happened by the time Augustine came around, because he wrote:
"And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" St. Augustine (Against the Letter of Mani Called "The Foundation" 4:5 [A.D. 397]).
And it certainly had happened by the time St. Cyril of Jerusalem had happened on the scene, because he wrote:
And if ever thou art sojourning in cities, inquire not simply where the Lord's House is (for the other sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord), nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God ... (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, lecture XVIII)
St. Cyril died in 386.
And it must have happened by the time Tertullian was around, because he wrote:
"Where was [the heretic] Marcion, that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus, the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago—in the reign of Antonius for the most part—and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherius, until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled" (Demurrer Against the Heretics 30 [A.D. 200]).
And with that, we're well before Constantine, so I rest my case.
We've done this one a gazillion times too. Ignatius didn't NEED to have a proper name for it. It still leaves open whether one could say: There was an entity which later took as a "proper name" an attribute of itself.
My child didn't have a name until she was born. That doesn't mean she didn't exist until she was born. That's how I'd approach the issue.
And the whole "proper name" thing is weird when it comes to us Calflicks. I'm actually a member of "The Church of Richmond, Virginia". Yes, I have a hard time with that too .... :-)