I appreciate that. Some of your fellow Catholics on FR believe that all Protestants buy into the "Trail of Blood" stuff. I'm glad to hear you don't make the same sweeping generalities that they do.
Even Lutherans, Calvinists, even somewhat Catholic-minded Anglicans assert on some level that Rome corrupted the pure Gospel of the early centuries.
Now this I would modify, at least to say when and how rapidly Rome "modified" the gospel, and perhaps more importantly, to spell out if anyone could be saved/sanctified anyway (under the modified gospel). I'm not one who believes that no one could be justified/sanctified before the Reformation, but then again there are Catholics on FR who would accuse all Protestants of believing just this. So while I do believe that there was a "corruption" of doctrine in history prior to the Reformation, I do not believe that God's grace had been lifted from the Catholic Church, or that the Catholic Church wasn't part of the "true" Church in some way, prior to the Reformation (or beyond).
If there's a Protestant group that doesn't hold to that, I'd be happy to be corrected on that score, but I don't know of any.
Well, you can put me down as one. And I'd be willing to bet there are others out there, just like me.
*fru raises his hand
Thanks for your contribution Alex...very well articulated. As you said, Catholics should get it in our heads that not all Reformed Christians hold to the “Trail of Blood” stuff. Nothing ruins an argument like that kind of bull-in-a-china-shop imprecision. Aquinas would be very disappointed. >:-(
Anyway, if I hear you right, even though you hold that Grace may well have been operative within the Catholic Church all along, there was some sort of doctrinal “corruption” that happened along the way. And you rightly recognize that there’s a difference of opinion on when/how/why/and by what agent that corruption happened.
It’s that very difference of opinion that is interesting to me. There are people who place the corruption right after Pentecost (!!!), others think that it was more toward the Middle Ages. The most general consensus hovers around Constantine. But I have yet to see—beyond vague claims—someone actually *establish* historically and convincingly when the Catholic Church changed from one to the other by citing the primary source documents and the Church Fathers.
If this corruption happened there should be historical evidence of it. And yes, it may well have been gradual...but even so, one should still find traces of it in the historical record. Because I find it hard to believe that it was SO gradual that no one noticed even it until Luther!! :)