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Hi Havoc, good to see you!

1. Christianity in his time was a large amalgum of sects - not a single large sect surrounded by smaller sects.

I agree.

Constantine was trying to unify the sects into a common harmoneous whole.

Yep.

The problem is there was no unified church.

Right again.

In short, Catholicism came into being over 300 years after Christ.

19 June 325 C.E.

I think you've got it. I would add that all (small "o") "orthodox" Christians who accept the conciliar creedal formulations can trace their establishment as "orthodoxy" to Constantine. Before then, there was no "orthodoxy", but rather competing ideas/denominations/religions. It is only in retrospect that orthodoxy is assigned to earlier writers. How? By taking those whose writings mostly agree with Constantinian orthodoxy, and naming them "church fathers". And where their writings don't agree with "orthodoxy", well, they were just "fallible" and not speaking authoritatively for "the Church".

Additionally, the fabrication and/or creative editing of earlier writings, and the destruction of works whose theology did not square with "orthodoxy", and the repression of all "heretical" sects.

19 June 325 C.E.

I think you've got it. I would add that all (small "o") "orthodox" Christians who accept the conciliar creedal formulations can trace their establishment as "orthodoxy" to Constantine. Before then, there was no "orthodoxy", but rather competing ideas/denominations/religions.

I hope your holidays went well.

I am somewhat surprised at your attitude here. The truths you do speak are about to be lapped up by some who do not realize what is being said.

As you say, different ideas were in competition. But to say there was no "orthodoxy" is not quite right. Orthodoxy existed for sure, but was not accepted as such. And there was no mechanism for "punishing" heterodoxy.

The bottom line, which I think you would agree with, is that if one wants to say that there was no "orthodoxy" before 325, and use this to disprove the existence of a Catholic church, that one needs to similarly point to 325 as the year that Jesus became God.

Before this same council, there was competition in ideas about who Jesus was. There was no consensus among the individual churches.

So let us be careful what we draw from this event. Do deny that any "orthodoxy" existed is, for many here, to cut off their own support.

Christianity in his time was a large amalgum of sects - not a single large sect surrounded by smaller sects. Did you guys dig up a 312 edition of the World Almanac? If we may believe Mani, you are wrong, because he deliberately copied his church after the Christian Church, and his church was highly centralized. As to exact numbers, if the Catholic Church at that time had no larger proportion of the Christian population that it has in the United States today, then it would have a huge advantage. Furthermore, it had an energy that the present CCUSA lacks, being more like Spellman's Church which scared the bejeebers out the Protestant Establishment. (But then I suppose you have never read P aul Blanshard)