I am always amazed in these arguments that no one recognizes Mark’s work in Africa and the antiquity of both the Coptic and the Ethiopian churches. In fact both the Eithopean and the Coptic churches may predate Rome.
And then there was Thomas in India ...
We argue from a unique Western perspective.
So you would expect, then, for the Thomistic and Marcan churches to more closely resemble the churches of the Apostoles than would the Roman church? Indeed, the Marcan church has had Quatrodecennial and Sabbatarian controversies, as these matters were not settled at the time of their isolation. Wouldn't a Protestant, then, expect Thomists or Marcans to have simple, stripped-down, iconoclastic worship? To follow sola scriptura? To be embarrassed by all the fuss over the Blessed Virgin Mary? To shun the veneration of saints? To have a congregationalist polity? Think again! If anything, Western Catholicism seems quite watered down compared to the Thomists and Marcans, as if it maintained merely the bare essentials, in the face of Protestantism. And, indeed, that's the case. Go, read the Liturgy of Saint Mark, and wonder to yourself if it is at all a Protestant-seeming ritual. Or learn about the Thomistic churches, both those that united with Rome, and those which remained separate, so you can see how marginal the changes were that allowed full union with Rome.
