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The Argument for the Great Apostasy If the early Church was the Catholic Church, why can’t we say that Christians just lost their way early on? That’s the argument many Mormon and Protestant theologians make. In Mormon theology, this idea is expressed in terms of a Great Apostasy that followed the death of the apostles: Following the death of Jesus Christ, wicked people persecuted and killed many Church members. Other Church members drifted from the principles taught by Jesus Christ …

The Claims of Early Christian Beliefs You can find countless variations of the claim that early Christians believed Protestant things: Mormons who claim that the early Christians believed Mormon things Muslims who claim they believed Muslim things Non-religious people claiming that they didn’t originally consider Jesus divine And various other religious groups making similar claims about how their teachings were what the earliest Christians really believed. Almost all …

Roots of Mary’s Assumption Some are surprised that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption was not defined until 1950, using little biblical support. The pope decreed that all Catholics must hold and believe as divinely revealed “that the immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Munificentissimus Deus44). Yet this doctrine was no twentieth-century innovation, as Tim Perry explai …

St. Justin Martyr’s First Apology dates to around 160. In the text we find Justin offering an explanation and a defense to the pagan emperor. That includes a description of what the Christians of his day thought about baptism:I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertak …

Leading your Protestant friends into the Catholic Church can seem like a hopeless task. Your friend may seem too far away, too biased against Catholicism, or even too apathetic. I would have loved to have had Jimmy Akin as my wingman in discussions with Protestants about Catholicism more times than I can count, but he is usually busy and, last I checked, hadn’t mastered the art of bilocation. I was sitting at lunch one day with friends: one Catholic, two Protestants, and we were having a …