Have you heard the new Anti-Catholic propaganda? Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Anti-Catholic: “The Emperor Constantine founded The Catholic Church and killed sixty million Christians.”
Catholics respond: “What! That’s ridiculous! The first 33 Popes were killed by Roman authorities for being Catholic. So were countless thousands of Catholics and Catholic priests. It was against Roman Law to even be a Catholic until Constantine made it legal.”
Anti-Catholic: “I don’t know or care about any of that. What’s important is that Christianity survived Catholic attacks because tens of thousands of Bible-Believing Home Churches were in towns and cities throughout the Roman Empire. The Bible-believing Home Churches kept Christianity alive until Martin Luther!”
Catholic: “Where did they get their Bibles?”
Blank look.
Catholic: “First of all, there was no Bible until The Catholic Council of Nicea, in 325 AD. It took that long for The Church to weed out all the fraudulent scrolls produced to keep people from seeing the connection between the prophecies and Jesus. Then, The Church had to have The Bibles written by hand, on expensive sheepskins. Lots and lots of sheepskins!”
Anti-Catholic: “Well, the Bible-Believing Home Churches had Bibles. They had to have Bibles or they would not be Bible-Believing Home Churches.”
Catholic: “There was no such thing as Bible-Believing Home Churches. Hardly anyone knew how to read! A Bible, back then, cost at least a hundred thousand dollars! They were written by hand, on sheepskin. It took two dozen men an entire year to produce a Bible! Each Bible used three or four hundred sheepskins! Each sheepskin to be carefully, and expensively, prepared. Even many Catholic Churches could not afford a Bible.”
Anti-Catholic: “Well, I don’t care about any of that! The Home Churches believed in The Bible because they were Bible-Believing Home Churches!”
Honestly, that’s the intellectual and historical silliness that many anti-Catholics are taught. And, public education being what it is, ever fewer know enough to find the facts.
It is heartbreaking to see them use similarly twisted reasoning to justify avoiding the clear meaning of “Verily, verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
And, it is anguishing to see them shun Jesus’ clear command to receive Catholic Communion, repeated over a dozen times as He said so often, “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
They risk their immortal souls by ignoring Jesus’ clear choice of Church and His repeated instruction to receive Communion therein. But, when it comes to the utter absurdity of thinking there were countless thousands of Bible-Believing Home Churches before both Bibles and literacy came into being?
Anti-Catholic: “That’s something I can believe in!”