Your statement makes zero sense. We've had Scripture a long time. The roman catholic church came into existence around the 4th century
The ekklesia, that is the body of believers in Christ, predates the roman catholic church.
Before, the books in the Bible were assembled in AD 382 by the Council of Rome they were laboriously examined, cross-checked against the sacred oral tradition, and determined to be the authentic WRITTEN Word of God. The sacred oral tradition, rituals, and liturgy, and veneration continued from the earliest of times.
Yet we see so little of this "sacred tradition, rituals and liturgy" you speak of in the actual NT.
And you really need to do some research on the formation of the OT and NT.
Indeed, carvings of Mary have seen been unearthed that date back to the third century.
All that proves is Mary was worshipped in the third century.
This is what typically occurs when fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Never mind the towering intellectual tradition of the Church, we have third rate Protestant self-taught “scholars” throwing around snippets of Scripture as if this the end and be all of it.
Ha! That's funny. The Msgr. can't even get the right translation of the text in question.
Perhaps if catholics learned the Greek instead of Latin there wouldn't be so many problems in catholicism.
Upon what do you base that claim?
You really are one great “internet theologian” that trumps everybody else (scholars, historians, Augustine, Aquinas, Benedict including noted Protestant scholars who converted to Catholicism) who all disagree with you.
There were thousands of written fragments that early followers were using but they all were part of the first Church. The compilation of the books in the Bible itself was in AD 382. This early Church was the Catholic Church dating from Christ and Peter to his successors beginning with Pope Linus.
All the ancient records of the Roman bishops which have been handed down to us by St. Irenaeus, Julius Africanus, St. Hippolytus, Eusebius, also the Liberian catalogue of 354, place the name of Linus directly after that of the Prince of the Apostles, St. Peter. These records are traced back to a list of the Roman bishops which existed in the time of Pope Eleutherus (about 174-189), when Irenaeus wrote his book “Adversus haereses”. This author claims that Pope Linus is the Linus mentioned by St. Paul in his 2 Timothy 4:21. The passage by Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.3.3) reads:
“After the Holy Apostles (Peter and Paul) had founded and set the Church in order (in Rome) they gave over the exercise of the episcopal office to Linus. The same Linus is mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy. His successor was Anacletus.” Linus reigned from about A.D. 64
So much for your ekklesia!
The Greek Orthodox apparently know some Greek, and they agree with us, and disagree with you, on a whole lot of things. For one thing, they revere the Lord's Mother, and you seem to denigrate and minimize her as much as possible.
The roman catholic church came into existence around the 4th century
Not even remotely historically true, but part of the mythology that low-church Protestants like to promote.
Exactly when and how "around the 4th century" did this remarkable event happen?