Okay, do people really think that? Do churches and schools no longer recommend encyclopedias? Do protestants faiths teach that protestant reform did not start until the 15th century and, for my sister, what kind of church would teach that christianity does not include catholics?
So, herein, is the historical data from the encyclopedia:
History and origins
Which came first? Main article: History of ChristianityThe Roman Catholic Church was not started by any one person; it was founded by Jesus Christ, acting in the fullness of His divinity. It is the original form of Christianity; as promised, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the understanding of the Church, and Her doctrine has developed over the course of 2000 years. Since Christianity is really the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, its core belief preceded the Incarnation of Christ. Christ's message allows us to see the faith of the Old Testament from a new perspective. The idea is that the Old Testament believers believed in the promised Messiah (Christ) before he came and New Testament believers ("Christians") believe in the promised Christ who came.
At first the Christians were not organized into any official structure, though it was immediately obvious that there was an accepted line of authority. Since these men all preached against following the customs of men, it is clear that the idea of an authoritarian Church had to have been a dierct teaching of Christ. This is borne out in Gospel passages. Whenever Christ was conferring authority, He did so only to the Apostles, never to the crowds or to the general public. The recognized leaders were the Apostles, and the congregations of each locality had local leaders, called "elders", "presbyters", or "pastor/teachers". These leaders were not self-appointed, nor were they selected by the local members of their areas. The Apostles, as shown in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, had to approve of and lay hands on these local presbyters---that is, they had to pass on the authority Christ granted them. This is today called Apostolic Succession.
Early Church and Christological Councils
Christianity began as a Jewish sect in the eastern Mediterranean in the mid-first century.[10][11][3] Its earliest development took place under the leadership of the Twelve Apostles, particularly Saint Peter and Paul the Apostle, followed by the early bishops, whom Christians considered the successors of the Apostles.
From the beginning, Christians were subject to persecution. This involved punishments, including death, for Christians such as Stephen[115] and James, son of Zebedee.[116] Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the authorities of the Roman Empire, first in the year 64, when Emperor Nero blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome. According to Church tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that early Church leaders Peter and Paul of Tarsus were each martyred in Rome. Further widespread persecutions of the Church occurred under nine subsequent Roman emperors, most intensely under Decius and Diocletian. From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and study of them is called Patristics. Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
Christianity was legalized in the 4th century, when Constantine I issued an edict of toleration in 313. On 27 February 380, Emperor Theodosius I enacted a law establishing Catholic Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.[117] From at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization.[13]
Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches.[27] Nicaea was the first of a series of Ecumenical (worldwide) Councils which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church, notably concerning Christology.[118] The Assyrian Church of the East did not accept the third and following Ecumenical Councils, and are still separate today.
Christians were persecuted by civil authorities because they would not recognize Caesar as divine. They met, often secretly, and corresponded with each other. The pastoral letters all speak loudly of the authority of the Apostles and Paul. The instructions of these letters are not suggestions; they are binding, to the point that excommunication is recommended as the final correction for anyone who refuses to obey.
For one special question, the Apostles and the rest of the church met together in Jerusalem (Acts 15, 1-35). In this meeting, the authority of the Church is again apparent. The council settled, authoritatively, a key point of the faith: that the message of God extended also to the Gentiles. In other words, the faith is catholic, universal. The results of the decision were sent out via Judas Barsabbas and Silas. This practice continues today in the issuance of encyclicals, bulls, and statements sent out to the Church by the Holy See.
Roman Catholics have known and demonstrated, since immediately after the Ascension of Christ, that the Apostle Peter was the first leader of the Church. Most Protestant Christians reject this fact and assert that Peter was an equal among many Apostles. However, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows, repeatedly, Peter clearly acting as the leader. There is no record that his position as leader was ever challenged by any of the other apostles, even though there was some discord as the fullness of the faith was wrestled with. For example, Peter was once corrected by the Apostle Paul.
As predicted by the Apostles, a variety of different ideas about Christ and about God were advanced by people claiming to be Christians. These doctrines had to be tested against the teachings of the Apostles; remember, there was not yet a written body of Christian texts. The Apostolic Tradition, those things taught orally by the Apostles, was to be the guide for Truth. This was in accordance with the directive Christ gave when he said, "Whoever hears you, hears Me." It was to the apostles (that is, the authoratative Church) that this statement was made. It was NOT made to the body of believers at large.
Teachings at variance with apostolic tradition were rejected as "heresies", that is, as false teachings. Only the truth as Christ passed it on to the Apostles is true. Eventually, in the 4th century, these apostolic traditions became the basis for the establishment of the Canon, that is, the collection of sacred writings Christians worldwide today call the Bible. The Church reviewed thousands of texts, measuring each against apostolic Tradition, and included only those which did not differ from those Traditions. The Christian Bible, whether used by Catholics or Protestants, is a Catholic text. It is interesting to note that, although the Catholic Church organized and established the canon of Scripture, there are many today who try to find within Scripture proof that the Church lacks authority or authenticity. Should that argument ever be found to be true, the Bible itself loses authority; if the Church that chose the canonical texts had no real authority to do so, then the canon itself must be seen as suspect. This is clearly not the case, for the Truth of Scripture has been borne out over the course of nearly 2000 years of human experience.
The keeping of the Traditions, which formed the early Church and led to the structure of the Bible, was, and remains, a central obligation of the Church. Even in today's secular world, when many people reject the fullness of the faith because it is inconvenient, or because individualism makes an authoritative Church seem outdated, the Church maintains that it is not within its power to change the Traditions as handed down by the Apostles.
Gradually, even though it was still illegal to be Christian, a certain amount of organizational structure began to develop. Because it happened in the Roman Empire, the pattern and names from Roman government were adopted by the church. When it finally became legal to be Christian, the catholic Church flourished as never before. As there was, at that time, only one Church, in keeping with Christ's priestly prayer for unity,
Early Middle Ages
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals.[119] The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the former barbarian tribes. Catholicism spread among the Germanic peoples (initially in competition with Arianism[119]), the Celtic and Slavic peoples, the Hungarians and the Scandinavian and Baltic peoples.
Around 500, St. Benedict set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries.[119] Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe,[119] and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.
From the 7th century onwards, Islam conquered the Christian lands of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain,[120] resulting in oppression of Christianity and numerous military struggles, including the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and wars against the Turks.
The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration.[121] In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favour of icons.[122] In the early 10th century, western monasticism was further rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny.[123]
High and Late Middle Ages
In the west, from the 11th century onward, older cathedral schools developed into universities (see University of Paris, University of Oxford, and University of Bologna.) Originally teaching only theology, these steadily added subjects including medicine, philosophy and law, becoming the direct ancestors of modern western institutions of learning.[124]
Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Western Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans[125] and the Dominicans[126] founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order were the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period church building and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in the orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the great European cathedrals.[127]
From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched.[128] These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.[129]
Over a period stretching from the 7th to the 13th century, the Christian Church underwent gradual alienation, resulting in a schism dividing it into a Western, largely Latin branch, the Roman Catholic Church, and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch, the Orthodox Church. These two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and doctrinal issues, most notably papal primacy of jurisdiction.[130][131] The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.
Beginning around 1184, following the crusade against the Cathar heresy,[132] various institutions, broadly referred to as the Inquisition, were established with the aim of suppressing heresy and securing religious and doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion and prosecution.[133]
Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The 15th-century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in ancient and classical learning. Another major schism, the Reformation, resulted in the splintering of the Western Christendom into several Christian denominations.[134] Martin Luther in 1517 protested against the sale of indulgences and soon moved on to deny several key points of Roman Catholic doctrine. Others like Zwingli and Calvin further criticized Roman Catholic teaching and worship. These challenges developed into the movement called Protestantism, which repudiated the primacy of the pope, the role of tradition, the seven sacraments, and other doctrines and practices.[135] Reformation in England began in 1534, when King Henry VIII had himself declared head of the Church of England. Beginning in 1536, the monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland were dissolved.[136]
Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform.[137] The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Roman Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.[138]
Meanwhile, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 brought about a new wave of missionary activity. Partly from missionary zeal, but under the impetus of colonial expansion by the European powers, Christianity spread to the Americas, Oceania, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Throughout Europe, the divides caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state religions in Western Europe: Lutheranism in parts of Germany and in Scandinavia and Anglicanism in England in 1534. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.Protestantism
In the 16th century, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin inaugurated what has come to be called Protestantism. Luther's primary theological heirs are known as Lutherans. Zwingli and Calvin's heirs are far broader denominationally, and are broadly referred to as the Reformed Tradition.[174] Most Protestant traditions branch out from the Reformed tradition in some way. In addition to the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation, there is Anglicanism after the English Reformation. The Anabaptist tradition was largely ostracized by the other Protestant parties at the time, but has achieved a measure of affirmation in more recent history.
The oldest Protestant groups separated from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century Protestant Reformation, followed in many cases by further divisions.[174] For example, the Methodist Church grew out of Anglican minister John Wesley's evangelical and revival movement in the Anglican Church.[175][176] Several Pentecostal and non-denominational Churches, which emphasize the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, in turn grew out of the Methodist Church.[177][176] Because Methodists, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals stress "accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior",[178] which comes from John Wesley's emphasis of the New Birth,[179] they often refer to themselves as being born-again.[180][181]
Estimates of the total number of Protestants are very uncertain, partly because of the difficulty in determining which denominations should be placed in these categories, but it seems clear that Protestantism is the second largest major group of Christians after Roman Catholicism in number of followers (although the Eastern Orthodox Church is larger than any single Protestant denomination).[168]
A special grouping are the Anglican churches descended from the Church of England and organised in the Anglican Communion.. Some Anglican churches consider themselves both Protestant and Catholic.[182] Some Anglicans consider their church a branch of the "One Holy Catholic Church" alongside of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, a concept rejected by the Roman Catholic Church and some Eastern Orthodox.[183][184]
Some Christians who come out of the Protestant tradition identify themselves simply as "Christian", or "born-again Christian"; they typically distance themselves from the confessionalism and/or creedalism of other Christian communities[185] by calling themselves "non-denominational"—often founded by individual pastors, they have little affiliation with historic denominations.The Roman Catholic Church was not started by any one person; it was founded by Jesus Christ, acting in the fullness of His divinity. It is the original form of Christianity; as promised, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the understanding of the Church, and Her doctrine has developed over the course of 2000 years. Since Christianity is really the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, its core belief preceded the Incarnation of Christ. Christ's message allows us to see the faith of the Old Testament from a new perspective. The idea is that the Old Testament believers believed in the promised Messiah (Christ) before he came and New Testament believers ("Christians") believe in the promised Christ who came.
At first the Christians were not organized into any official structure, though it was immediately obvious that there was an accepted line of authority. Since these men all preached against following the customs of men, it is clear that the idea of an authoritarian Church had to have been a dierct teaching of Christ. This is borne out in Gospel passages. Whenever Christ was conferring authority, He did so only to the Apostles, never to the crowds or to the general public. The recognized leaders were the Apostles, and the congregations of each locality had local leaders, called "elders", "presbyters", or "pastor/teachers". These leaders were not self-appointed, nor were they selected by the local members of their areas. The Apostles, as shown in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, had to approve of and lay hands on these local presbyters---that is, they had to pass on the authority Christ granted them. This is today called Apostolic Succession.
Christians were persecuted by civil authorities because they would not recognize Caesar as divine. They met, often secretly, and corresponded with each other. The pastoral letters all speak loudly of the authority of the Apostles and Paul. The instructions of these letters are not suggestions; they are binding, to the point that excommunication is recommended as the final correction for anyone who refuses to obey.
For one special question, the Apostles and the rest of the church met together in Jerusalem (Acts 15, 1-35). In this meeting, the authority of the Church is again apparent. The council settled, authoritatively, a key point of the faith: that the message of God extended also to the Gentiles. In other words, the faith is catholic, universal. The results of the decision were sent out via Judas Barsabbas and Silas. This practice continues today in the issuance of encyclicals, bulls, and statements sent out to the Church by the Holy See.
Roman Catholics have known and demonstrated, since immediately after the Ascension of Christ, that the Apostle Peter was the first leader of the Church. Most Protestant Christians reject this fact and assert that Peter was an equal among many Apostles. However, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows, repeatedly, Peter clearly acting as the leader. There is no record that his position as leader was ever challenged by any of the other apostles, even though there was some discord as the fullness of the faith was wrestled with. For example, Peter was once corrected by the Apostle Paul.
As predicted by the Apostles, a variety of different ideas about Christ and about God were advanced by people claiming to be Christians. These doctrines had to be tested against the teachings of the Apostles; remember, there was not yet a written body of Christian texts. The Apostolic Tradition, those things taught orally by the Apostles, was to be the guide for Truth. This was in accordance with the directive Christ gave when he said, "Whoever hears you, hears Me." It was to the apostles (that is, the authoratative Church) that this statement was made. It was NOT made to the body of believers at large.
Teachings at variance with apostolic tradition were rejected as "heresies", that is, as false teachings. Only the truth as Christ passed it on to the Apostles is true. Eventually, in the 4th century, these apostolic traditions became the basis for the establishment of the Canon, that is, the collection of sacred writings Christians worldwide today call the Bible. The Church reviewed thousands of texts, measuring each against apostolic Tradition, and included only those which did not differ from those Traditions. The Christian Bible, whether used by Catholics or Protestants, is a Catholic text. It is interesting to note that, although the Catholic Church organized and established the canon of Scripture, there are many today who try to find within Scripture proof that the Church lacks authority or authenticity. Should that argument ever be found to be true, the Bible itself loses authority; if the Church that chose the canonical texts had no real authority to do so, then the canon itself must be seen as suspect. This is clearly not the case, for the Truth of Scripture has been borne out over the course of nearly 2000 years of human experience.
The keeping of the Traditions, which formed the early Church and led to the structure of the Bible, was, and remains, a central obligation of the Church. Even in today's secular world, when many people reject the fullness of the faith because it is inconvenient, or because individualism makes an authoritative Church seem outdated, the Church maintains that it is not within its power to change the Traditions as handed down by the Apostles.
Gradually, even though it was still illegal to be Christian, a certain amount of organizational structure began to develop. Because it happened in the Roman Empire, the pattern and names from Roman government were adopted by the church. When it finally became legal to be Christian, the catholic Church flourished as never before. As there was, at that time, only one Church, in keeping with Christ's priestly prayer for unity,
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