Rather, while Rome most manifestly largely did apostatize, in progressive deformation , the church of Matthew 16:18 is the body of Christ which alone consists 100% of believers, and is visible wherever it worships and works gather, and which has always continued as a relative remnant. While Rome grew in pretense and pomp, and much becoming as the gates of Hell for multitudes, yet enough of the truth was preserved so that the body of Christ continued, though often the remnant were more like those in the OT, who
were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:37-38)
until a Catholic priest rebelled against the Catholic Church, ending up a notorious anti-Semite that re-formed the religion.
You keep trying the anti-Semite card only to be shown how much popes were like Rome in this attitude, to which they added actions. Do you want to see it again?
And then you have the church leading up to the Reformation.
.Part of the tragedy of the Reformation is that the Church before 1517 was unable to reform itself or to set in motion events or changes that would have led to a reform in the Church that would have satisfied its members and really affected change....
To...Boniface IX, goes the unenviable distinction of probably having begun the papal sale of offices...
..Sixtus IV was completely a worldling. He is best known perhaps for the chapel that he built which was later decorated by Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel. His successor Innocent VIII had an illegitimate family. Alexander VI, who was Spanish, was perhaps the worst of them all. He had many illegitimate children, but he was a good political candidate. But his reign as pope did more to weaken the moral prestige of the papacy than almost anything imaginable...
And if we go to the clergy, to what we can call the lower clergy or the ordinary priests, we can say that one vice that many of them had was immorality. Many of them had women that they kept in their rectories by whom they had children, so they had families to support. — Maurice W. Sheehan, O.F.M. Cap., Lecture 2: Prelude-Causes, Attempts at Reform to 1537; International Catholic University http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c01802.htm
Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed,
"For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. "It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/) More
Exactly what do you mean "You keep trying the anti-Semite card ?" Do you have something to say ? Martin Luther, who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, which had a seven point plan to destroy the Jews which the Nazi Party incorporated ? Is that the "anti-Semite card" you wish to argue ? Do you wish to defend Luther ? Go for it. Do you wish to defend Sola Fide that a man can viciously hate the Jewish people and plot against them until his dying day and go straight to heaven ? Go for it. DR. MARX: Apart from your weekly journal, and particularly after the Party came into power, were there any other publications in Germany which treated the Jewish question in an anti-Semitic way?
STREICHER: Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them...
...
DR. MARX: Now I come to the picture books which appeared in Der Stuermer publishing house. You know that two picture books were published, one with the title, Trust No Fox in the Field, and the other one with the title, The Poisonous Toadstool. Do you assume responsibility for these picture books?
STREICHER: Yes. May I say, by way of summary, that I assume responsibility for everything which was written by my assistants or which came into my publishing house.
DR. MARX: Who was the author of these picture books?
STREICHER: The book Trust No Fox in the Field and No Jew Under His Oath was done and illustrated by a young woman artist, and she also wrote the text. The title which appears on the picture book is from Dr. Martin Luther.
Half a century???I have 2 cars and a bedroom set older that that....and I myself exceed that by another quarter of a century....meaningless.