directly by the Apostles themselves. Some of the greatest converts to
Catholicism throughout the centuries attributed their conversion to their
study of the Fathers – e.g., St. Edmund Campion, John Henry Cardinal
Newman. They saw that the Catholic Church was the Church of the first
three centuries and that its main teachings can be found either explicitly or
implicitly in the writings of this period.
Most anti-Catholic Protestants assert that the Catholic Church went “bad”
after the victory of Constantine in 312 AD. It was after this date that true
evangelical Christianity was overrun by the Church of Rome, or
“Romanism,” and that authentic Christianity was forced underground for
over a thousand years until the true light of the Reformation broke out with
the advent of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin and Co. “Romanism” as established
by Constantine is a strange hybrid form of Christianity mixed with
paganism imported from the ancient religions of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt,
Persia, Greece and Rome. This view denies implicitly that the Church is a
divine institution founded and protected by Christ (St. Matt. 16, 18-20), but
rather is merely a human institution subject to the normal processes of
birth, growth and decay.
What Protestants see in Catholicism that they cannot see in the New
Testament is immediately labeled as “paganism” imported after
Constantine. However, a study of the Fathers would reveal that such
beliefs and practices in fact pre-date 312 AD, are Apostolic in origin and
are developments of Gospel truths rather than departures or inventions.
Both Catholics and Protestants agree that this is the case with at least some
doctrines – e.g., the Most Blessed Trinity. The Catholic Church is not an
inventor of doctrine, but rather the divine depository of truth commissioned
to expound and convey it from generation to generation free from all error.
Christ himself anticipated the development of doctrine:
“I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not
speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he
will declare to you the things that are to come” (St. John 16, 12-13).
Protestantism has cut itself off from history, the Fathers and Sacred
Tradition through its insistence on Sola Scriptura
(the Bible alone) and
private interpretation. According to Newman, Protestantism was compelled
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