You may have heard the claim that Roman Emperor Constantine I “invented” the Catholic Church sometime in the early part of the 4th Century. But this is simply not true.

The church was called the “Catholic Church” within the first 75 years of its existence. We see this in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of St. John the Apostle. He calls the church “catholic” to distinguish it from the heretics of his day: “Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 8, written in A.D. 107).

Ignatius also describes the church in very “Catholic” ways, such as its belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist: “…the Eucharist is the self-same body of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in His goodness afterwards raised up again” (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 7). He also writes of the Episcopal leadership of bishops, priests and deacons: “…nobody’s conscience can be clean if he is acting without the authority of his bishop, clergy and deacons” (Epistle to the Trallians, 7).

Irenaeus of Lyon, writing around A.D. 190, notes that the Bishop of Rome has authority over the other bishops throughout the world: “…it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority” (Against Heresies, 3, 3, 2).

Another important point about the early church: It is a fact of history that Christians were under the pastoral care of the Church’s leaders and did not look to the Bible alone as their authority. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t, because the Bible was not yet formed. For the first 15 or 20 years of the church’s existence, none of the New Testament books had been written. And it was not until centuries later that the bishops of the church determined, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, which books belonged in the Bible. The Council of Hippo (A.D. 393) created the list of the Old and New Testament books, which is the same as the Roman Catholic list today. The Council of Carthage in A.D. 397 formulated the same list of canonical books, and it is this council that many Protestant Christians take as the authority for the New Testament canon of books. Interestingly, the Old Testament canon from that same council is identical to Roman Catholic canon today (46 Old Testament books; in the 16th Century, Protestants removed 7 Old Testament books).

So it is clear that well before the time of Constantine, the church was certainly Catholic – in name, in hierarchy and in practice. Constantine gave the Catholic Church status as an officially recognized religion within the Empire; he did not create it.

Someone emailed me several months ago asking why Catholics believe that Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth. His original questions are in bold below, with my answers beneath them:

Do you really think little miss Mary was a virgin?

Yes, I do – we are told in Scripture that she was a virgin when Jesus was conceived (Luke 1:27). Surely you believe that as well.

Christ had numerous brothers and sisters from his mother Mary

I’m sure you are referring to Matthew 13:55-56 where it is written, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?”

Like you, I once thought that this showed that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus was born. But I later learned that the early Protestants – including giants like Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Wesley – all believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Consider these quotes:

• Luther: “It is an article of the Faith that Mary is the Mother of the Lord and still a virgin…Christ, we believe, came forth from a womb left perfectly intact.”
• Zwingli: “I esteem immensely the Mother of God, the ever chaste, immaculate Virgin Mary.”
• Wesley: “I believe… he [Jesus Christ] was born of the blessed Virgin, who, as well after as she brought him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”

Seeing how these men – certainly not Catholics! – viewed Mary, I had to modify my opinion. It seemed that the idea that “brethren” and “sisters” meant Jesus’ half-siblings was a fairly modern innovation in Protestant circles.

What are we to make of the “brethren” then? In Biblical times, “brethren” or “brothers” can refer to any male kinsmen. For example, Abraham was Lot’s uncle (cf. Genesis 14:12), but in Genesis 14:14 and 14:16 Lot is called Abraham’s “brother.”

Returning to the “brethren” in Matthew 13:55, James and Joses are also mentioned in Matthew 27:56 as being the sons of another Mary; perhaps they are sons of Mary’s sister, also named Mary, who was the wife of Clopas mentioned in John 19:25.

The Biblical use of the term “brothers” or “brethren” to refer to extended relatives – plus the mention that James and Joses were sons of another Mary – makes the claim that Jesus had biological half-siblings very weak indeed.

You may also be familiar with Matthew 1:25, which says Joseph “knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son.” In our modern usage, the word “till” or “until” frequently implies a change of state after an event occurs. But in Biblical times, that was not the case. Other passages in Scripture help make this clear:

• Luke 1:80 – “And the child [John the Baptist] grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.” But John the Baptist remained in the desert even after his ministry began.
• 1 Timothy 4:13 – “Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” Does that mean that they were to ignore reading, exhortation and doctrine after Paul arrived?
• 1 Corinthians 15:25 – “For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” Does this mean that Christ will cease to reign after he has put all enemies under his feet? No, Christ’s reign will continue.
• Hebrews 1:13 – “Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?” Will Christ no longer sit at the Father’s right hand after his enemies are subdued?

Seeing in these passages how “till” or “until” does not necessitate a change of state after an event occurs, Matthew 1:25 is seen in its proper light. The sacred author was emphasizing Mary’s virginity, not making a statement that it ended at some point in the future.

I just posted a comment to Charisma magazine’s online article, “Is Today’s Bible Correct?” The article cites the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls as supporting the “authenticity of the 1611 translation” of the King James Bible’s Old Testament. I wanted to point out that the 1611 KJV contained books that modern Protestant Bibles omit (but Catholic Bibles contain):

When discussing the “authenticity of the 1611 translation,” remember that the 1611 edition of the King James Bible contained 80 books, not 66. The first 66-book KJV was published in 1885. That original 80-book KJV had the full canon, which also matches the Catholic bible. Modern groupings of those same 80 books typically are printed as 73 books. Christians should be encouraged to read the complete Bible, not the stripped-down 66-book versions.

For more info, check out the 1611 entry on this timeline: “English Bible History: Timeline of how we got the English Bible”:

1611 AD: The King James Bible Printed; Originally with All 80 Books. The Apocrypha was Officially Removed in 1885 Leaving Only 66 Books.

Although some non-Catholics believe that a Christian is “once saved, always saved,” the Bible has many verses explaining that a believer can in fact lose or reject their salvation. In his book Not by Faith Alone, Robert Sungenis notes:

In reality, next to the person of Christ, Scripture attends to no topic more than the warning to Christians not to fall away from the faith and lose their salvation. In fact, every book in the New Testament, with the possible exception of Philemon, in some way or other suspends the outcome of our eternal destiny based on the duration and degree of our faith and obedience. Scripture offers absolutely overwhelming evidence that a believer can fall from the salvation he once possessed. (Quote taken from page 275)

Sungenis goes on to list “a representative sample [of verses] from each book of the New Testament” to prove this point. Below are the citations which begin on page 275 and run for several pages. I’m only listing the citations below, not the full text of each passage. However, a mouse-over ought to show the verse in a popup window:

Matthew 7:21-23; 10:22, 28, 33; 24:12-13; Mark 9:43; 10:21-23; 13:22; Luke 8:13; 12:43-46; John 12:47-48; 15:6; Acts 13:43, 46; 20:29-30; Romans 2:6; 8:12-13; 11:20-22; 1 Corinthians 3:17; 4:5; 6:8-9; 9:27-10:6; 10:11-12; 15:1-2; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; 11:3; 12:21-13:5; Galatians 5:19-21; 6:7-9; Ephesians 5:5-6; Philippians 3:10-16; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15; 3:6, 14; 1 Timothy 4:1; 5:15; 6:10-19; 6:20-21; 2 Timothy 1:15; 2:12; 2:17; 4:10; 4:16; Titus 1:16; 3:10; Hebrews 2:1; 3:1-6; 3:12-14; 4:1; 4:11-13; 4:14; 6:4-6; 6:11-12; 10:26-27; 10:35-38; 12:1, 3; 12:14-17; 12:25, 29; James 1:14-16; 1:21-22; 2:13-14; 4:4; 5:9; 1 Peter 4:17-18; 5:8; 2 Peter 1:9; 2:20-22; 3:14-17; 1 John 2:24-26; 2:28; 2 John 8; 3 John 9-11; Jude 5; Revelation 2:5; 2:10; 2:16; 2:23; 2:26; 3:3; 3:11; 3:16; 3:21; 16:15; 22:12; 22:19

In their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Protestant authors Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie quip that Catholicism “has no widely circulated equivalent to ‘The Four Spiritual Laws’ or other simple plan of salvation” (page 234).

The comment seems to imply that in order for something to be true, it must be simple. Complex ideas that can’t be explained in four easy steps must therefore be false. But the claims that truth is always simple and complexity means falsehood is rubbish. Is trigonometry false because it is complex?

To the charge that Catholics lack a “simple plan of salvation”, I point to these resources that do a fine job succinctly explaining salvation from a Catholic perspective:

• The Catholic Information League provides evangelistic comic tracts on various topics. One entitled “Salvation Sound Bites (from the Catholic Catechism)” is especially clear and concise. Dave Armstrong has written a few and he lists endorsements of these tracts from Karl Keating, Fr. Peter Stravinskas and others (look under the “Catholic Organizational Affiliations” subheading in his literary resume).
• Catholic Answers has an excellent outreach brochure named “God’s Love for You” that is widely circulated in print and available on their web site. See also their resource “How to Become a Catholic”.

More similar resources exist, but these are a few that came to mind. Feel free to post others in the comments if you have some to recommend.

Today is the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth. And to mark the occassion, you may want to study a few Catholic works refuting Calvinism. For a brief treatment, try Jimmy Akin’s article titled A Tiptoe Through TULIP from the September 1993 issue of This Rock magazine. Another great resource is St. Francis de Sales’ The Catholic Controversy, a book that collects many leaflets or tracts he wrote in the late 16th Century while evangelizing a Calvinist region (see my post Sold on de Sales for a bit more info). Happy reading!

Many non-Catholics object to our use of the title “queen of heaven” in reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. They do so because in the Old Testament, a false goddess – apparently Ishtar, the Assyro-Babylonian fertility goddess – was called the “queen of heaven” (see Jeremiah 7:18, 44:17-19, and 44:25). Using the title when speaking of Mary, they reason, means that Catholics worship Mary as a pagan goddess. Obviously, this would be a wrong thing to do.

But take heart! The good news is that Catholics neither (a) consider Mary to be a goddess nor (b) worship her.

Catholics think that it is appropriate to call Mary the “queen of heaven” for two reasons:

• Her son is the King, making her the queen mother. More than just an honorary role, the queen mother was an office in the Davidic kingdom. As one Protestant encyclopedia explains, “The gebhirah, or queen mother, occupied a position of high social and political importance; she took rank almost with the king.”
• The Bible depicts her as “wearing a crown of twelve stars” in heaven (Revelation 12:1), which is appropriate given her role as the queen mother of Christ the King.

But does the title’s pagan usage make it inappropriate to apply in a Christian context? By all means no! Just because the title was applied to a false queen of heaven in the Old Testament does not mean that the title cannot be used for the true queen of heaven.

There is strong Biblical precedent for this in the title “king of kings”. In the Old Testament, two rulers who were no friend of God’s people were called “king of kings”:

• Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon – Daniel 2:37 and Ezekiel 26:7.
• Artaxerxes, king of Persia – Ezra 7:12

In spite of the pagan use of “king of kings”, we appropriately apply the title to Jesus Christ, our ultimate and true King of Kings, in 1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14 and Revelation 19:16.

So we see from Scripture that it is certainly appropriate to call the Blessed Virgin Mary “Queen of Heaven.”

I just saw on Twitter that a free e-book is now available from Ascension Press to combat lies and inaccuracies in Angels & Demons:

Angels & Demons is a thinly-veiled, but brutal attack on the Catholic Faith that will again shake the faith of potentially millions of people who know little about Catholic teaching and Catholic and Western history. It is full of half-truths, historical inaccuracies, and outright lies.

Answering Angels & Demons, by Mark Shea is an electronic book provided for free to help you answer the errors contained in the book and movie. Please feel free to download this resources and share it with your friends, family and neighbors.

Just go to http://answeringangelsanddemons.com/ to get it (PDF, 23 pages).

As an addendum to an earlier posting – Where the Bible Came From – I offer the following insight from the late Jaroslav Pelikan, who was Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University:

As part of the Septuagint “canon,” the Apocrypha became and still are part of the Christian Bible in both the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Roman Catholic churches. They continued to hold this position, though without definitive and formal church legislation according it to them, until the Reformation churches assigned them (at best) second-class status, on the grounds that they were books which “the church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners, but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” For most of Christendom during most of Christian history, however, they were and still are simply part of the Bible.

This quote is taken from Pelikan’s 2005 book Whose Bible Is It?: A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages, page 72 (emphasis added).

So you can see that in the 16th Century, it was Protestants who removed these books from the Old Testament, not Catholics who added them.

A few months back, I started doing most of my Bible and Catechism reading on my computer. I find that it’s especially helpful while traveling, but even at home, I get great benefit from the search capabilities and other features.

I’ve been using Accordance, a Macintosh program. (It supposedly also works on Windows with an emulator program, but I haven’t tried that.) I like how this company offers a Catholic Collection of products, with the Catechism, the Order of Mass, the Documents of Vatican Councils I and II, etc. Accordance is also endorsed by a well regarded Catholic writer Jeff Cavins.

They even have a try-before-you-buy program, so check it out.