All 1600 hundred years of it? God allowed this? Why?
Oh, not in the beginning. But eventually Rome lost the gospel and replaced it with a false one.
841 The Churches relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; those profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day,"Why does God allow the enemy to sow tares into the church--well, one reason is that He intends to burn them.The teaching of the Catholic Church, as repeated in Pope Pius XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, is that any non-Catholic can be saved if (1) he remains non-Catholic through no personal fault or vincible ignorance; (2) he follows the dictates of the religion to which he adheres: and (3) he at all times conforms to the dictates of the Natural Law.