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What about the 34.000 branches of the catholic church, All teaching different doctrines..catholics don't tell us about that do they???.

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Originally posted by Faith_at_Large

The 40,000 plus denominations are so diverse because they broke apart rather than sort out their differences.

There are dissident priests and nuns and even bishops - the Bible warned us that this would happen. Not a surprise. Jesus promised that He would protect His Church and He has. No matter how many dissidents there may be, the Church still has unity in Doctrine. The Teachings have not changed, even if some members disagree with them.

Do you, G4, agree 100% with every member of your denomination all the time? (assuming that there is more than one person in it.)

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Originally posted by bwellmysoul


Ordination is an authority based in Christ's One Church, as practiced for the last 2,000 years.

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Originally posted by Faith_at_Large

Presbyters were also pastors. But Bishops ordained Presbyters.

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According to Irenaeus, during the time his fellow Syrian, Anicetus, was Bishop of Rome, in the 150s or 160, Polycarp visited Rome to discuss the differences that existed between Asia and Rome "with regard to certain things" and especially about the time of the Easter festivals.

Irenaeus said that on certain things the two bishops speedily came to an understanding, while as to the time of Easter, each adhered to his own custom, without breaking off communion with the other.

Anicetus— the Roman sources offering it as a mark of special honor— allowed Polycarp to celebrate the Eucharist in his own church.[9]

They might have found their customs for observing the Christian Passover differed, Polycarp following the eastern practice of celebrating Passover on the 14th of Nisan, the day of the Jewish Passover, regardless of what day of the week it fell.

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Polycarp (69 – 155) (Greek: ) was a 2nd century Christian bishop of Smyrna.[1]

According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp he died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to touch him.[2]

Polycarp is regarded as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.

It is recorded by Irenaeus, who heard him speak in his youth, and by Tertullian,[3] that he had been a disciple of John the Apostle.[4]

The early tradition that expanded upon the Martyrdom to link Polycarp in competition and contrast with John the Apostle who, though many people had tried to kill him, was not martyred but died of old age after being exiled to the island of Patmos, is embodied in the Coptic language fragmentary papyri (the "Harris fragments") dating to the 3rd to 6th centuries.[5]

Frederick Weidmann, their editor, interprets the "Harris fragments" as Smyrnan hagiography addressing Smyrna-Ephesus church rivalries, which "develops the association of Polycarp and John to a degree unwitnessed, so far as we know, either before or since."[6] The fragments echo the Martyrology, and diverge from it.

With Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp is regarded as one of three chief Apostolic Fathers.

The sole surviving work attributed to his authorship is his Letter to the Philippians; it is first recorded by Irenaeus of Lyons.

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Irenaeus wrote in Greek many works which have secured for him an exceptional place in Christian literature, because in controverted religious questions of capital importance they exhibit the testimony of a contemporary of the heroic age of the Church, of one who had heard St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, and who, in a manner, belonged to the Apostolic Age.

None of these writings has come down to us in the original text, though a great many fragments of them are extant as citations in later writers (Hippolytus, Eusebius, etc.).

Two of these works, however, have reached us in their entirety in a Latin version:

•A treatise in five books, commonly entitled Adversus haereses, and devoted, according to its true title, to the "Detection and Overthrow of the False Knowledge" (see GNOSTICISM, sub-title Refutation of Gnosticism).

Of this work we possess a very ancient Latin translation, the scrupulous fidelity of which is beyond doubt.

It is the chief work of Irenaeus and truly of the highest importance; it contains a profound exposition not only of Gnosticism under its different forms, but also of the principal heresies which had sprung up in the various Christian communities, and thus constitutes an invaluable source of information on the most ancient ecclesiastical literature from its beginnings to the end of the second century. In refuting the heterodox systems Irenaeus often opposes to them the true doctrine of the Church, and in this way furnishes positive and very early evidence of high importance.

Suffice it to mention the passages, so often and so fully commented upon by theologians and polemical writers, concerning the origin of the Gospel according to St. John (see GOSPEL OF SAINT JOHN), the Holy Eucharist, and the primacy of the Roman Church.

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It is certain that, while still very young, Irenaeus had seen and heard the holy Bishop Polycarp (d. 155) at Smyrna.

During the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, Irenaeus was a priest of the Church of Lyons.

The clergy of that city, many of whom were suffering imprisonment for the Faith, sent him (177 or 178) to Rome with a letter to Pope Eleutherius concerning Montanism, and on that occasion bore emphatic testimony to his merits.

Returning to Gaul, Irenaeus succeeded the martyr Saint Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons.

During the religious peace which followed the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, the new bishop divided his activities between the duties of a pastor and of a missionary (as to which we have but brief data, late and not very certain) and his writings, almost all of which were directed against Gnosticism, the heresy then spreading in Gaul and elsewhere.

In 190 or 191 he interceded with Pope Victor to lift the sentence of excommunication laid by that pontiff upon the Christian communities of Asia Minor which persevered in the practice of the Quartodecimans in regard to the celebration of Easter.

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Originally posted by bwellmysoul

Jesus ordained Paul to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. Paul had the authority to ordain Bishops. And those Bishops ordained priests.

Only Bishops have the authority to ordain.

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And how can there be a catholic sucssesion of pope's when the catholics weren't formed until at least 300--600 years later, And the pope even later??
Proving the catholic church isn't the Church that Jesus built.

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You are a broken record with your anti-Catholicism. And quite frankly - you are past ignorant of Christianity and the Early Church.

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