HarleyD:
No actually, it is you that are more like them. They claim the Church went off the rails at the end of the 1st century, many Fundie Protestants use to claim it happened when Constantine made the Roman Catholic Church the state church [except he did no such thing], some now claim it was Emperor Theodosius, who did make it that, some claim it was Pope Damasus, some claim when Leo the Great was Pope, etc.
The Catholic Church claims 100%, Christ the Word made Flesh came into the world at a point of history and history has forever been changed and that he indeed found a Church to be a visible sign of his presence in the world for the rest of time and the Holy Spirit was sent to guide that Church down thru the centuries. The notion that Christ would become Incarnate, found a Church let if go off the rails doctrinally till the arrival of Mormonism, or JW, or Adventist or modern Pentecostalism is inconceivable and of course all these guys have their dates when the Catholic Church went off the railroad tracks, yet none of them can give you the precise date and all of them come up with some doctrines that are say well “????????”
I was on a blog called Called to Communion [as observer, not posting, although I have posted there before], run by Catholics who were once Reformed [some Anglican-Reformed, some Presbyterian, etc] and some of the Protestants that post there now claim it was Saint Augustine who caused the Catholic Church to go off the rails because of his faulty understanding of Hebrew, thus he did not get the nuances of it when he did his Theological writings in Latin [that is the readers digest version of it].
I don’t believe Christ came into the world, founded a Church, and then would not guide it to preserve and defend the authentic doctrine he left to the Apostles and for that Church which received it, in the form of a seed, would come to a fuller understanding of it as it faced challenges from unorthodox groups, etc.
Actually the Church started down the wrong road around 600AD when it accepted both John Cassian's (free will) and Augustine's (grace) views to be held jointly together. By 1000AD the Orthodox left when they excommunicated the Pope. By 1200AD so many were leaving the Roman Catholic Church that the Church had to issue new rulings that grace through the Eucharist could only be administered by a priest and that you had to attend the Church (check the 4th Lateran Council of 1215AD). The Catholics got so mad about criticism about their errors that they were willing to burn John Wycliffe at the stake for translating the Bible for all to read. By the 1500s, the time of the Reformation, there were so many errors that it was time for reform. One would have hope they would have looked inward. But that didn't stopped Catholics from issuing later doctrines like the infallibility of the Pope (something the Orthodox will never buy), the deity of Mary, etc.
It isn't surprising that Catholics have given up on Augustine (as well as some Protestants). Augustine is the heart of the Reformation. Whether Augustine had a faulty view of Hebrew I don't know and is immaterial. What Augustine did have was a superior understanding of theology-how scripture fits together-a rare gift. His later writings showed a progress in his thinking and understanding. Consequently, Augustine was one of the very first people to put together a systematic theology, at a time when few thought about that.
No one would argue that Christ isn't preserving the church. The argument centers on what precisely is the church. If you want to argue that the church is the Roman Catholic Church, then you would be right according to the RCC dogma but wrong according the Vatican II. Either only those people in the Catholic Church can be saved or other people outside the Catholic Church can be saved as well. Catholics cannot say what is right.
So what precisely is Christ preserving? What is "authentic doctrine"?