But alongside the sometimes esoteric motivations were some fundamentally, concretely intellectual reasons to join the ranks of the ancient Catholic Church. Chief among the intellectual appeals stand the towering figures of the Early Church Fathers. Christians who lived, and wrote, some of them contemporary with the writings of the New Testament.
Chief among the intellectual appeal to remain a Protestant are the unassailable figures who actually wrote the New Testament, and the unimpeachable record of the New Testament itself.
The Catholic approach appears to be one where the New Testament is viewed with suspicion, as if it were written in code or by idiot savants, requiring the early church fathers to decipher an otherwise unintelligible text.