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The Case.
Big questions, straight answers, and the evidence: Scripture, the early Christians in their own words, the councils, and the Catechism. Confident, and always gracious.
New · InteractiveThe early Church time machineAD 30 to 451: what the first Christians believed, in their own words, beside how the Bible was received.The evidence
Six historical questions, answered from the sources.
Who decided which books are in the Bible?
The Church recognised the list gradually, over centuries. The earliest known list of the 27 New Testament books comes from Athanasius in 367, and the Council of Trent solemnly defined the canon in 1546.
Read it The BibleWho wrote the New Testament?
Members of the Church: apostles and men associated with them, writing inside a Church that was already preaching, baptising and breaking bread.
Read it AuthorityWho carries the apostles’ authority today?
The bishops, as successors of the apostles, united with the Bishop of Rome as Peter’s successor. Christians were writing this down before the year 200.
Read it The EucharistDid the first Christians believe the Eucharist is really Christ?
Yes. Two of the earliest Christian writers after the apostles, Ignatius and Justin, call it the flesh of Jesus, and his flesh and blood, in plain words.
Read it HistoryHow far back does the Catholic Church go?
To the apostles. By about 180, Christians could name the bishops of Rome in order back to the apostles, and that line continues today.
Read it CivilizationWhere did hospitals and universities come from?
Not from the Church alone, but the Church built Christian hospitals for the sick and poor from the fourth century, and Europe’s first universities grew out of its cathedral and monastic schools.
Read itHonest objections
The strongest objections to belief in God, written as objections, with the best Catholic answers and their limits.
If God is good, why is there so much suffering?
The Church says that no quick answer will suffice. It holds several truths together: a world still on its way to perfection, freedom that creatures misuse, a God who can bring good even out of evil, and a Son who carried evil himself on the cross. It also admits that why God permits evil remains a mystery we shall fully understand only in eternal life.
Read it An honest objectionIf God exists, why doesn’t he make it obvious?
Scripture itself calls God hidden. The Church teaches that God can be known from creation but respects our freedom: Christ invited people to faith and never coerced them. It also knows long silence from the inside: some of its saints lived for years without any sense of God’s presence.
Read it An honest objectionWhy a Church at all? Why not just a God who made the world?
The Church agrees reason can know a Creator. It holds that God has also spoken and acted in history, above all in Christ, and points to evidence for the Resurrection: the witnesses, the empty tomb, and the change in the disciples.
Read it An honest objectionWhat if I search honestly and find nothing?
Scripture promises that those who seek will find, and the Church teaches that God seeks us first and tirelessly. It does not set a deadline, and it does not treat a long silence as failure. Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel but seek God with a sincere heart may achieve eternal salvation.
Read itYour verse first
For Protestant Christians: your verse first, then the Catholic reading, then where we think the disagreement really lies.
Isn’t Scripture alone enough?
Catholics agree all Scripture is inspired. They hold that the apostles handed on the Gospel both in writing and by word, so the Church does not draw its certainty about all revealed truths from Scripture alone.
Read it Your verse firstWasn’t the papacy invented centuries later?
Catholics read Peter’s role in the Gospels as an office, and see the Church of Rome acting with authority long before Leo the Great. That authority had real limits in the early centuries, and how it was exercised developed over time.
Read it Your verse firstIf there is one mediator, why ask saints to pray?
Catholics agree Christ is the one mediator. Asking the saints to pray for us is a sharing in his one mediation, not a rival to it; it is not adoration, and it is not the consulting of the dead that Scripture forbids.
Read it Your verse firstWhere is purgatory in the Bible?
Catholics believe that those who die in God’s friendship but are not yet fully purified are assured of salvation and undergo a final purification. The Church points to texts of Scripture and to the ancient practice of praying for the dead, which 2 Maccabees records.
Read it Your verse firstWhy does the Catholic Bible have extra books?
Catholics agree that the Jews were entrusted with the words of God. The Church holds that it discerned the full list of sacred books by apostolic Tradition, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees. That list was affirmed at Carthage, taught at Florence and defined at Trent, though some, including St Jerome, had doubted these books.
Read it Your verse firstAren’t statues and icons forbidden images?
Catholics agree that God forbids idols, and that the Old Law forbade every representation of God by human hands. The Church holds that God himself ordered some images, and that since the Son became man, images of Christ and the saints are honoured with respectful veneration, never adored.
Read it Your verse firstIf Christ died once for all, why is the Mass a sacrifice?
Catholics agree that Christ offered one sacrifice for sins, once for all. The Church teaches that the Mass does not repeat or add to it: it re-presents, or makes present, that sacrifice, so that the cross and the Mass are “one single sacrifice.”
Read it Your verse firstWhy baptize babies who cannot yet believe?
Catholics agree that faith and baptism belong together. The Church baptizes infants because baptism is a free gift of grace, received in the faith of the Church, and the practice is an immemorial tradition. It also admits that the New Testament records no explicit case of an infant being baptized, only whole households.
Read it Your verse firstCan a Catholic know they are saved?
Catholics share a firm hope grounded in God’s faithfulness: nothing can separate us from his love. The Church teaches that we cannot rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are saved, and that despair and presumption are both sins against hope. We hope, with God’s grace, to persevere to the end.
Read it