I've observed that if you call a Roman Catholic to task (at least the variety that I deal with, you know the chat room 'scholars') then they will never meet their burden of proof. It's very easy to assert things over and over and over (ad nauseum) but not quite so easy to support them. I was just told a few things and when I called this young man to account for them he supported none. The claims were as follows:
1. There is an unbroken line of Popes dating back to Peter.
2. All of the early fathers fully support Catholic doctrine.
3. The Greek New Testament contains the term 'Catholic Church'.
Well, for #1 to be true we'd need to see this proven from the New Testament itself, but since there are no passages that support the assertion it cannot stand. But even if we rely solely on Patristic writings, Irenaeus refutes the above claim in listing Peter and Paul as Apostles (not bishops) who set up the Church at Rome thus asserting their equality, not Peter's preeminence. (See Irenaeus' Against Heresies 3.3.2)
#2 is a misnomer in that supporting 'Catholic' doctrine does not equate to supporting modern Roman Catholic doctrines. The word meant something entirely different in its original use than it does now. And this means nothing in and of itself in the years before orthodoxy was firmly established. Arius believed himself to be fully supporting Catholic doctrine in asserting that the Father alone was unoriginate. But even the most casual reading of Patristic sources show that there was never a time when there was a 'unanimous consent of the fathers' on all points of doctrine.
The claim made for #3 was that the term 'Catholic Church' appears in Scripture in the Greek text. He quoted this as 'kathos ekklesia' -- The problem being that kathōs does not mean 'Catholic' (i.e. universal) it means 'as, just as, even as, how, according to' depending on its context. What's more is that the term kathōs ekklēsia doesn't appear anywhere in the Greek New Testament.
So the moral of the story is don't settle for claims asserted with authority--ask for the authorities which support these claims.
