Which apostle started catholicism

In a word, no. The Catholic Church was not founded by any one person or any two people. Instead, its foundation was a process that lasted centuries and does not have any firm single date for its founding. Below, read about the role of Peter, Paul, Constantine and the overall process of the Catholic Church's foundation. Though Jesus, in the eyes of Catholics, delegates Peter as the leader of his apostles and the future church in Matthew , a large organization with a clear head in the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, that espoused the theology that is the core of today's Catholic Church was most certainly not founded by him.

However, he was one of the main leaders of the Christian movement after Jesus's death and tradition holds that he was the first Bishop of Rome. As he did.

Well, this deep research may keep scholars employed, but why should the rest of us care? There are several reasons, not least among them the fact that both Christians and Jews have long misunderstood Paul -- with disastrous consequences. Many Christians have used Paul as a warrant for anti-Judaism, while many Jews have bought that Christian view of Paul and have dismissed him as a traitor to their tradition.

The long arc of anti-Judaism in Christian history, as I explain in an essay on my "Faith Matters" blog , is a sad -- often vicious -- story. It helped create modern anti-Semitism, which is not theological in nature but, rather, racial, ethnic and even economic. And, of course, without modern anti-Semitism, the Holocaust is simply inconceivable. Anti-Judaism did not start with the first people to misunderstand Paul the book to read is Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg , but without the picture of Paul as one who rejected Judaism as a rigid religion of law in favor of Christianity as a religion of grace, it's unlikely that the centuries of Christian teaching against Jews would have been as long or as virulent.

It took Catholicism until and the adoption of the Second Vatican Council document Nostra Aetate for the church to abandon its teaching that Jews were somehow collectively guilty of killing Jesus. So even though we Christians are centuries late in grasping who Paul really was and that everything he ever did as a man of faith was done within the borders of Judaism, it's important that we get it right now so that Christian-Jewish relations can find a firmer footing.

Pauline scholars today, as can be seen from the book Nanos has co-edited, are not all on the same page on every issue. But there's no question among them that it's time to push the reset button on our understanding of the apostle. Through this, missionaries aim to evangelise individuals and convert them to the Catholic faith. The sharing of the Gospel and the life of Christ started with the commissioning and sending out of the 12 apostles.

At this command, Jesus is sending his first disciples out to continue his work and share the Word of God with the whole of humanity. This work and tradition is continued today by missionaries travelling the world, spreading the Gospel message and evangelising. The reputation of Rome as the center of the Christian church may have begun during this period, although practices were conducted in a hidden manner due to the Roman opposition. Paul dies about 68 CE, probably executed by beheading upon order of emperor Nero.

Apostle Peter is also crucified around this time. A system of governance of regional branches under absolute direction from Rome was established.

The basic tenants of Catholicism were formalized, involving the absolute rule of faith. The Council attempted to structure church leadership around a model similar to that of the Roman system, and also formalized key articles of faith.

This effectively was the start of the division of the church into the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches. This begins a time of enormous political and military power controlled by Catholic popes. This date is marked by some as the beginning of the Catholic Church as we know it today. In the following years, the rise of Islam and broad conquests of much of Europe leads to brutal persecution of Christians and removal of all Catholic church heads except for those in Rome and Constantinople.

A period of great conflict and long-lasting conflict between the Christian and Islamic faiths begins during these years. Various forms of the forceful inquisition would remain for several hundred years until the early s , eventually targeting Jewish and Muslim peoples for conversion as well as expelling heretics within the Catholic Church.

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