[terycarl]

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.

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.

[daniel1212]

Half a century???

Be assured more could be added, but the point here is that no matter how manifestly and extensively corrupt and fractured Rome has and can become, then RCs seem to imagine a unified church always looking to an infallible supreme head in Rome (unseen in Scripture), and a all-holy church in Mary from which Biblical separation (2Co. 6:14-18) could never be compelled, and mo matter how long it remains with no successor or uncertainty as to one, then this is still defined as unbroken succession.