Ugwu, a Reverend Father fires back at Pastor Damian contending the place of Catholicism as the oldest Assembly of Christ Apostles and faithful.
I don’t understand the intention of the new trend circulating the social media stating that the Catholic Church is not the oldest or first church. What is the gain of the argument? Is it to laugh at the Catholic Church, or if you establish that the Catholic Church is not the first church, will you start going to that first church?
Some things are basic facts in history and it only gives the impression that you are ignorant or malicious when you start spreading the message that the Catholic Church is not the first or oldest church.
Please learn this and use it to unlearn the distorted story people just want to spread. I share this not because I really love this so-called Church argument but because I love history, and I feel uncomfortable when someone is trying to manipulate facts that are just before our eyes.
How do I begin to break down this history so that even a layman on the street can understand it?
Okay, let me start like this. . .
After the resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost in AD 33, the early disciples began to meet to worship (read as ‘breaking of bread’.)
The first place they started gathering was, of course, in JERUSALEM.
During the persecution of the early disciples, as noted in Acts chapter 8, the disciples scattered, and wherever they found themselves, they founded a worshipping community.
ANTIOCH became one of those communities. Antioch is in present-day South-Central of Turkey.
CONSTANTINOPLE is also one of the communities. Constantinople is in present-day Istanbul in Turkey.
Also ALEXANDRIA in the north of Egypt.
And of course, ROME in Italy.
What this means is that there were five churches, or if you like, headquarters of the same Christian faith: Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome.
Now, this is important. These “headquarters” were founded by the apostles, none was regarded as being superior to the other. They all had equal status (or at least, it appeared so). This is why, instead of calling them branches or headquarters, the proper word will be patriarchates.
If you check your map, you will discover that four of these five patriarchates are located in the East (Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria). It is only Rome that exists in the West.
Let me add this: almost every Christian, as far back as that time, recognized that Rome was particularly important (being the dominion of Peter the Apostle); Rome was famous too and large… but none of them felt that Rome should be supreme above all else due to this.
This is where you get the whole idea of the Western church and the Eastern church.
Anytime you hear the WESTERN Church, they are referring to Rome and all the churches that later began under Rome. Anytime you hear EASTERN church, they are referring to the other four churches aside from Rome.
More also, anytime you hear LATIN church, they are referring to Rome because the language then was Latin. Anytime you hear GREEK church, they are referring to the church in the east, because predominantly, they spoke Greek there.
So, the Western church is not a different church from the Eastern church. They were all the same church founded by Christ through his apostles. For sure, they all have their differences and uniqueness which is obviously due to culture, language and the likes. . .
All these churches (East or West) were referred to as CATHOLIC. The name was used around 100AD to mean UNIVERSAL. It was used in that sense to mean the global communion of all the churches.
Again, all these churches (East or West) were referred to as ORTHODOX. The name was used around 500 AD. Orthodox means “RIGHT TEACHING”. The name developed as a response to some who started spreading controversial teachings on the person of Christ. By orthodoxy, the church was simply saying that she is the one that preserved the truth of the apostolic faith.
Also, all these churches (East or West) were referred to as APOSTOLIC. This is because the church is founded on the Apostles, and it holds and teaches the faith, as taught to the twelve apostles by Christ himself.
The summary is that the church is both Catholic, Orthodox, and Apostolic. The Eastern Church, the one you people call the Orthodox, still uses the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. And in those creeds, they recite words like, “I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
So, it is totally wrong to say the Orthodox Church came before the Catholic or the Catholic Church came before the Orthodox. They never even had that distinction of Catholic versus Orthodox in the way we know it today until about 1054AD in what has come to be known today in history as the Great Schism.
The understanding of the great schism will help you see how both East and West differ and where they agree and why East and West still think of themselves as one catholic church and why the East has its own unique rite different from the West.
I noticed that some of you do not understand why it is called the ROMAN Catholic Church. Learn this today. The name ‘Roman Catholic Church’ is not the official name of the Church. This name was invented by Anglicans in England as a way of distinguishing between them in England and the rest of the Catholics. Go and read the history of Anglican, you will see that they also were referring to themselves as Catholic. They used “Roman” in a derogatory way or as an insult to express that they don’t listen to the head of the church who is in Rome. If you know when the Anglican church was founded, you will know that the name is just recent.
When next someone tries to argue that the Catholic Church is not the first church, ask the person if he has heard of the GREAT SCHISM. If he has nothing to say about the Great Schism and what led to it, then you are safe to conclude that the person does not know what he or she is arguing about. Treat the person as one who is ignorant.
- Fr Kelvin Ugwu MSP
