The Diving Board, Episode 6

And this is very significant. Not one, not even one of those Eastern bishops disputed or questioned the Pope's authority.

I mean, the Eucharistic, let's just say this, the Eucharistic abuses are abuses to Jesus' DNA, his body and blood.

As I continued to study my early church father, older brothers and sisters, I started to realize that God had a plan for me that was bigger than any plan that I'd ever had for myself. And before you know it, it turned to the Catholic Church.

When I made that decision to become Catholic, everything began to fit. It was like a puzzle with the four sides that I put together with the papacy and the Blessed Mother and tradition in the Eucharist.

Let's say there's a person watching this program right now from where you were. Why should they make the same journey home that you made?

I would say investigate the history for yourself because the famous line from Cardinal Newman is to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. And that's pretty much what happened to me. So I would say take the Catholic Church's claims, investigate them.

And as my father always told me, go wherever Jesus leads you. And maybe it would end up in the Catholic Church.

Taylor Marshall and the Claim of Apostolic Communion on the Tongue

Hello to everyone. We're back with a new episode of The Diving Board where we dive deep into history. This is Timothy F. Kaufman, and I'm your host today. The Diving Board podcast is one of several great podcasts available at the Thorn Crown Network.

And this podcast focuses on the conversion testimonies of Protestants who convert to Roman Catholicism. In particular, we focus on the arguments of Protestants who fell for the famous dictum of erstwhile Protestant Cardinal Newman, who once wrote, to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

What we find in many Protestant conversion stories is that they believed they had become so deep in history that they couldn't be Protestant anymore. But as we have been showing and will continue to show, so many Protestants who convert to Rome thinking that they too are deep in history are actually only ankle deep and indeed so shallow in history that they do not even know that they are only ankle deep.

In fact, for Roman Catholics, ankle deep in the first four centuries is as far as they dare venture because to go deeper than that is to discover the soft white underbelly of Roman Catholicism, and that is that there is no evidence of its existence until the latter half of the fourth century.

Getting deep in history is therefore something a Roman Catholic cannot do because Roman Catholicism itself is a grotesque aberration of the Church of Christ, a novelty 300 years removed from the Church of the Apostles and their followers.

In our last episode, we focused on the conversion story of Dr. Taylor Marshall, former Presbyterian turned Anglican turned Roman Catholic, and as we showed, he ran into a historical brick wall when he tried to trace the origins of his religion to the Apostles.

Not only did the early Church know nothing of Roman Episcopal doctrinal, judicial, or ecclesiastical primacy, but Taylor Marshall's attempt to normalize kneeling to receive communion is a departure from the practice of the first thousand years of history after the Apostles, during which kneeling on Sundays was forbidden.

His dislike of communion in the hand is actually a dislike for the first three centuries of the early Church, during which communion in the hand was the only known mode of communicating. We covered a lot more in episode 5, and our listeners can refresh their memories there, and this week we are going to turn to the conversion of Marcus Grodi, a personality with whom our listeners are at least peripherally familiar, because we have heard his voice occasionally when he interviews Protestants as the host of the Journey Home show on the Coming Home Network, which highlights conversion stories of those who return to Rome.

In today's episode, we will begin to explore his testimony, which he titled, The Early Church Fathers I Never Saw, and demonstrate his failure to examine fully the early church fathers and the apostolic and sub-apostolic church in his quest for historical evidence in support of Roman Catholicism.

But before we do that, we want to revisit our assessment of Taylor Marshall's conversion in our previous episode. In that episode, we featured Taylor Marshall's recent podcast on communion in the hand, from early January.

Since then, Taylor Marshall has received some pushback from critics about his attempt to establish communion on the tongue as an apostolic imperative. We want our listeners to register the intellectual poverty under which Marshall must labor to maintain that position, so today we will first revisit Taylor Marshall's recent attempt to rebut his critics in his follow-up episode on communion in the hand, before moving forward with Marcus Grodi's conversion story.

Our audio on Marshall's response to his critics comes from his communion on the hand vs tongue podcast from February 8, 2019, the link to which will be provided in the episode notes. Taylor Marshall and his guest, Timothy Gordon, record their podcasts in conversational style and it goes longer than an hour, so obviously we cannot and do not provide the entire context of their comments, but we have done our best to encapsulate their thinking by providing a few select quotes in their own voices so you can hear the inflection and emphasis in their comments.

And what we want our listeners to hear is the cavernous void of evidence for the belief that communion on the tongue was an apostolic precept. We will walk through five examples Marshall provides to prove that the early church taught communion on the tongue, so our listeners can grasp the insurmountable problem the Roman Catholic apologist faces, even as he believes firmly that he is very, very deep in history.

Marshall provides evidence from Pope Sixtus I in the 2nd century, Basil and the Council of Saragossa in the 4th century, the writings of a 19th century visionary who heard directly from Mary that communion on the tongue was an apostolic precept, and then Pope Leo the Great in the 5th century.

But before we get into this specific evidence, here is Taylor Marshall introducing the topic of his podcast.

Communion in the hand, should you do it? What did the early church do? Why did it change or did it change? Has there always been communion in the hand? And what do the saints say? What do the councils say?

What does Thomas Aquinas say? And what happened in the modern church where now it's ubiquitous? We're talking about communion on the hand with co-host Tim Gordon. Tim, how are you?

I'm excellent.

Good, good. You and I all the time in these videos talk about how we are not fans of communion in the hand.

It was basically a historically corrected error in the history of the church where they're like, yeah, this isn't working out. So they change it whenever.

Well, I wouldn't even say they changed it. It could very well be that communion on the tongue is the apostolic original practice. We don't really know.

Because of the nature of the underground church.

Okay, now let's get into the details. Just listen to the evidence that Taylor Marshall thinks is a slam dunk for communion on the tongue, even as he acknowledges that he has no evidence for it and cannot prove it.

Here is Taylor Marshall introducing the evidence from Pope Sixtus I.

Fast facts. Our earliest reference that people use is Pope Sixtus I.

All right.

This is the beginning of the second century. I will admit that what I'm about to say is questioned.

Right.

But the tradition is that Pope Sixtus I decreed that sacred vessels should not be touched by lay people. Why can they not touch the sacred vessels? Because the sacred vessels touch the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ.

So it's actually an insulation towards the Holy Eucharist. You can't even touch the vessels that touch the Holy Eucharist.

Right.

So if that's going on in the beginning of the second century, obviously if you can't touch the chalice, you can't touch the host. Because the host is more holy than the chalice.

Certainly.

That's a slam dunk, right? Yeah. And we see that throughout the early church, that only the sacred ministers can touch the sacred vessels.

Okay. In that case, Marshall is quoting from the Liber Pontificalis, which originated no earlier than the time of Pope Anastasius II in the late 5th century. Here is what the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia says about that document, the Liber Pontificalis.

So there you go. Taylor Marshall's first piece of evidence comes from a document that even the Catholic Encyclopedia says is full of errors and historically untenable for the time period under discussion.

Okay, now let's move on to Taylor Marshall's next piece of evidence, which is from Basil. We discussed this in our previous episode, but Taylor Marshall returns to it, and so will we. Here is Taylor Marshall saying that Basil said communion in the hand is only appropriate during times of persecution.

All right, now the next one we get, so we have to move up. This is a big quote that people who use communion in the hand or promote communion in the hand, they refer to this quote by St. Basil the Great.

So he dies, I think, at 379, right before the Second Council. He says, Right. Only in times of persecution, end quote.

Right.

So he is admitting that there is communion in the hand, that it is licit, but what's he say, Tim?

That it's of a conditional nature.

Precisely.

Okay, let's go back to what Basil actually said. As we mentioned last week, Taylor Marshall is referring to the 93rd letter of Basil. It dates to the late 4th century. Notice that Basil's point was actually that during times of persecution, when there is no minister, it is acceptable to take communion in your own hand.

But at other times, when there is no persecution and there is a minister present, you receive communion in your own hand. In both cases, you receive communion in the hand. In one case, you take it. In the other case, you receive it.

Now citing from Basil, epistle 93. Again, that's Basil, letter 93. Remember, Marshall has repeatedly insisted that Basil's point is that communion in the hand is only allowed during times of persecution.

Yeah, and so that's what Basil says. He says the right to receive holy communion in the hand is permitted only in times of persecution, end quote.

But that was not the end of the quote at all, and that was hardly Basil's point. Basil started the letter by saying that it is good to communicate daily and that he himself communicates four times per week.

And in times of persecution, in the absence of a minister, it is sometimes necessary to administer the Lord's Supper to yourself, that is, with your own hand. But when a priest or minister is present, you don't have to administer it to yourself, but rather the priest or minister gives it to you and does so in the normal way, in the hand.

You can plainly see this reflected in the original Greek, too. In the absence of a priest, the communicant takes, the bread in his own hand. But when a minister is present, the communicant receives, the bread in his own hand.

In other words, the difference being highlighted by Basil was between times of persecution when there is no minister present and you have to take it in your own hand, and other times, apart from persecution, when the minister is present, in which case you receive it in your own hand.

It is not between taking it in your hand and not taking it in your hand. It is between actively taking it in your hand in the absence of a minister and passively receiving it in your hand in the presence of a minister.

Those who would like to check my Greek on that can go to Menier's Series on the Greek Fathers, Volume 32, Column 485. But if the Greek is inaccessible to you, the English is plain enough. Under normal circumstances, communicants receive it in their own hands and sometimes keep it for later, and in all cases, people put the bread in their mouths themselves.

Basil's letter 93 is only 10 sentences long and easy to read, and yet Marshall is still shopping it to his listeners as if Basil was rejecting communion in the hand as a normal practice, which is a grotesque decontextualization of Basil's actual words.

Okay, let's go on to Marshall's next piece of evidence, which is the Council of Zaragoza in 380 AD.

Now the next one comes from the Council of Zaragoza. So this is Spain. And so we're now going way west, Iberian Peninsula. 380, so this is one year after Basil dies. This is the quote, Excommunicated anyone who dared to continue receiving Holy Communion by the hand.

And this decree was later confirmed by the Senate of Toledo. So in Spain, 380, it's excommunicating anyone who insists, I want to receive on the hand. So 380 is the same century as Constantine. It seems to be cleaning up this practice that's in the church.

Okay, we've got to call Taylor Marshall out on this one too. It's just a gross misrepresentation of the Council of Zaragoza to say that they anathematized people who took communion in the hand or people who demanded to take communion in the hand.

Just read the history of the councils and you find a completely different story. I'm about to cite from a Roman Catholic French theologian who summarizes the canons of the First Council of Zaragoza that Taylor Marshall is quoting.

Now citing from Louis-Élise Dupin, from page 274 of A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers in 1693. The third canon of Zaragoza anathematizes those who, having received the Eucharist, did not eat it in the church.

Again, that's from A New History of Ecclesiastical Writers by Louis-Élise Dupin, a French Roman Catholic theologian from 1693. Now let's turn to Carl Joseph von Heffele, another Roman Catholic from his History of the Councils of the Church from the original documents published in 1872.

Here is what he says the third canon of Zaragoza instructs. Canon 3 reads,. Whoever does not consume the Holy Eucharist given him in church, let him be anathema. That's from page 293. Did you hear that?

The canon did not anathematize those who receive communion in the hand. It anathematized those who receive it in church but do not eat it. The only way this could possibly be an issue is if people were receiving communion in the hand and then some of them were not consuming it at church.

In other words, it appears that the Council of Zaragoza was prohibiting the practice of reservation. But it was not prohibiting the practice of receiving communion in the hand. In fact, it appears from the language of the Council that communion in the hand was normal, everybody did it, but some people left without eating it, and those were the ones who were in trouble.

What's particularly ironic about Taylor's use of this canon is that the Council accepted the practice that Taylor condemns. Recall from our previous episode the situation in which a woman at Taylor Marshall's church took communion in her hand and then returned to her seat and ate it there.

Taylor Marshall was beside himself. But the Council of Zaragoza would have had no problem with that. And what is so remarkable about this is that Taylor Marshall condemns the practice thinking that he is getting in touch with the early church.

In any case, Marshall ridiculously cited Zaragoza as if Canon 3 explicitly condemned people for receiving communion in the hand, but in reality, the Council simply condemned those who left without eating it, an implicit acknowledgement that it was even by then still normative to receive communion in the hand and put it in the mouth yourself.

For those who want to look at the original Latin of Canon 3 of Zaragoza, you can consult H .T. Brun's Canonis Apostolorum et Conciliorum Secularum from 1839. We'll put the canon in the link in the episode notes.

Okay, Marshall's next piece of evidence is pretty interesting and it comes to us from the 19th century. Here is Marshall again.

My take on this is, I believe, this is just Taylor Marshall's belief, I can't prove it, but this is how I think things went down. The apostles administered Holy Communion on the tongue. We see these kind of things in the Old Testament where a kohl is applied to Isaiah's lips.

We see prophets, they receive words from God that God places into their mouth. We see this in the Old Testament. So we have this idea that prophetic words are placed directly by God into the mouth. So I think the apostles were administering Holy Communion in the mouth.

I think Anne Catherine Emmerich says that in the early church in her visions people receive on the tongue.

Now this one is way out of chronological order and frankly it's just way out anyway, but I'm just providing the evidence in the order that Taylor Marshall provided it to his listeners. I will just say for information for our listeners that Anne Catherine Emmerich was a 19th century mystic and stigmatist who received visions from apparitions of Mary.

And that is Taylor Marshall's source for communion on the tongue in the apostolic church. What I mean by visionary is that she had mystical encounters with something claiming to be Mary. And when I say she was a stigmatist, she developed sores on her hands and feet that were allegedly similar to the sores that Jesus would have had by being nailed to the cross.

So that's Taylor Marshall's source for communion on the tongue in the apostolic church. That's it. A visionary from the 1800s had a vision of Mary and that vision told her that communion on the tongue was instituted by the apostles.

Hmm.

Leo the Great and the Weakness of the Latin Argument

Okay, let's move on. Taylor Marshall's next piece of evidence is from Leo the Great in the 5th century. Again, here is Marshall.

All right, now here's another quote that I found in St. Leo. This is Leo the Great. He died in 461. This is Sermon 9 on the Gospel of John. I have to read the Latin because the Latin is the important part.

It doesn't really work in English. So the Latin is,. So he literally says, Now, the word for mouth here, it's in the ablative, it's ore, O-R-E. And in the ablative, it's instrumental. So you could just say, he's not saying we receive it in the mouth, because everything you eat is in the mouth.

But he says ore, by means of the mouth.

Yeah.

And so I argue that this is communion on the mouth, communion on the tongue. You receive it by means of the mouth. Not by instrumentation of the hand, but by instrumentation of the mouth. That's the Latin.

So I think that's important. Again, it's subtle. I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand.

Well, even Taylor Marshall knows that is not compelling evidence.

Again, it's subtle. I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand.

Now, from that point on, the Communion on the Tongue podcast really becomes a discussion about later church canons and various medieval and modern councils and writers, and we won't get into them. But keep in mind that when Taylor Marshall tried to rebut his critics, he went back to the early church to prove that communion on the tongue was an apostolic rite.

The question is, did he succeed? Let's summarize his arguments. First, he cited evidence from the biography of Pope Sixtus that even the Catholic encyclopedia acknowledges is full of errors and historically untenable.

Second, he cited a misquoted section from Basil's Letter 93, in which Basil actually acknowledges that taking communion in the hand is okay when it is a time of persecution when no minister is present, but receiving communion in the hand is the normal way of communion when the minister is present.

Third, he misquoted Canon 3 of Saragossa as if communion in the hand was forbidden and condemned, but the canon simply says that it is forbidden to receive communion and leave the church before eating it.

An implicit acknowledgment that communion in the hand was normative and practiced by everyone. Fourth, he cited a 19th century apparition of Mary. Not much more to say about that one. So, fifth, he cited a 5th century pope who said that we use the mouth to receive communion, something even a child knows to be true, and something even Taylor Marshall acknowledges is not very good proof that communion on the tongue was an apostolic rite.

Now that's the evidence that Taylor Marshall did cite. He did not cite Tertullian from the 3rd century, who describes a woman who had taken some bread from communion home with her after church in his work To His Wife, Book 2, Chapter 5.

He did not cite Cyprian of Carthage from the 3rd century, who described the reception of the elements in the hand as he exhorted the faithful to proceed on toward martyrdom in Epistle 55, Paragraph 9.

He did not cite John Chrysostom late in the 4th century in his 82nd homily on the Gospel of Matthew, Paragraph 4, in which the communicant is twice reminded that he touches the body of Christ with his hands when he receives communion.

But he did return to another mid -4th century writer who does testify of communion in the hand in the early church, and that is Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechetical Lecture 23. In the lecture, Cyril encouraged the recipient of the bread and the cup to take it in his hand, touch it to his eyes, ears, forehead, and nose before eating it and drinking it.

Marshall rejects Cyril of Jerusalem for suggesting something that is nothing less than sacrilege to Taylor Marshall's Roman Catholic ears. And that just undermines his whole attempt to prove that communion in the mouth is the apostolic norm.

You can't just dismiss evidence because it is inconsistent with your foregone conclusion. Marshall's whole position on communion on the tongue is due to his belief that the early church thought the bread is God and the second person of the Trinity and should not be touched by laity.

His position on kneeling while receiving communion is based on his belief that the early church believed in Christ's real presence in the Eucharist. And yet he can find no evidence of kneeling and communion on the tongue in the early church.

All he can find is evidence against it, so he has to rely on an erroneous history of Pope Sixtus, a comment from Basil that is ripped from its context, a grossly misrepresented Canon 3 of Saragossa, a 19th-century visionary mystic, and a 5th-century citation from Leo that even Taylor Marshall agrees doesn't prove his point.

Our listeners will recall from our previous episodes that Marshall appreciates the ornate, embroidered vestments used by priests because they show reverence to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

But as we showed in our citation from the Catholic Encyclopedia and from Jerome, the real difference in clothing between clergy and laity does not emerge until the 5th century. And that is Marshall's problem.

The early church does not share his belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They did not kneel to it. They did not take it in their mouth. They did not have ornate vestments. And that is Marshall's problem.

He wants to prove that the proper way to reverence the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is for priests to wear vestments and for Christians to receive communion on the tongue while kneeling. But he simply cannot find evidence that the early church was as reverent toward the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as he is.

In other words, the early church was not reverent toward the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist because the early church did not believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Taylor Marshall cannot find evidence of his religion in the early church.

And thus he is left to apparitions of Mary and fictionalized accounts of history and his own personal conviction that it's just got to be true in spite of the evidence, not because of it. To conclude our brief return to Taylor Marshall, here is his co-host, Timothy Gordon, decrying some people's attempts to use Syril of Jerusalem to prove communion in the hand as normative in the early church when there is so much evidence to the contrary, in his opinion.

It shows a lot that they're really pumped that they found one.

One quote.

One quote from one kind of early father, not Augustine or Ambrose or Thomas on any of these, but one minor father. Yeah, we got one.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, but I have a thousand saying do it the real way.

Well, thousands might be a little bit of an exaggeration. After all, when it comes to the early church, even Marshall acknowledges that he actually has not proven his case at all. He has no evidence of what he claims to be an apostolic practice.

It could very well be that communion on the tongue is the apostolic original practice. We don't really know.

Are you saying then that this documented, these documented examples surrogate for the lack of any documented examples of the more explicit question about reception,.

Basically?

Right. Yeah.

Since there aren't, since they're just...

We don't have them. Yeah, we don't have them. Yeah, we don't have them.

Got it. That's what I figured.

I will admit that what I'm about to say is questioned. Again, it's subtle. You know, I realize it's not the best one. He doesn't say, and not by the hand.

And yet despite that, Taylor Marshall has the audacity to conclude his episode by imploring his listeners to get back to the early church.

Look, you got to get with the early church communion on the tongue.

The Presumption of Apostolic Continuity

Now, Taylor Marshall's galactic failure to find actual evidence for communion on the tongue is significant to us in today's episode, and it relates to Marcus Grodi, because Marcus Grodi obviously faces the same problem.

Any Roman Catholic apologist who tries to find evidence of his religion in the early church runs into a brick wall toward the end of the 4th century and can't get back any further than that. So he has to exhaust himself trying to bridge a 300-year gap that simply cannot be crossed.

The religion of Roman Catholicism emerged three centuries after the religion of Christ, and the Roman Catholic apologist can't close that gap without doing some serious intellectual acrobatics to get there.

And in the end, he simply has to ask you to grant him those 300 years, because he just can't get there. That approach is what I call the presumption of apostolic continuity, and we want our listeners to be very familiar with the term.

The presumption of apostolic continuity is the assumption that the end of the 4th century is so much closer to the 1st century than we are that we ought to assume that whatever the state of religion was in the late 4th century, it must be what the apostles taught and indeed what they intended.

I want to give you a few examples of this because it will come up repeatedly. Let's start with an 1851 book by Roman Catholic priest John Brand Morris, who acknowledged that devotion to Mary in the early centuries was invisible, but we can assume that the practice as it manifested in the late 4th century must be what was intended all along.

Now citing from John Brand Morris, Jesus the Son of Mary, from 1851. Apply this to the Catholic religion. If there are early traces of identity of belief, they may be invisible, except to the eye of a Catholic, but perfectly clear to him.

For an immense number of minute expressions, observations, and practices prove to him that the genius of his faith is what it always was. What is intended is not to assert that the present devotion to Mary existed in the early ages, that may or may not be so, but that the principle on which it is based naturally led to it, and may be assumed to have been intended by God to lead to it.

Again, that's Jesus the Son of Mary by John Brand Morris, Roman Catholic priest, 1851. That is the presumption of apostolic continuity. Unable to find evidence for his religion in the first three centuries of Christianity, the Roman Catholic simply assumes that whatever those guys believed and practiced for the first 300 years must have been intended by God to lead to whatever those guys were practicing at the end of the 4th century, and therefore what was believed and practiced at the end of the 4th century must have its origins in the first.

See? Apostolic continuity. Here's another example, this time from Fr. William Saunders on the use of incense. He was answering the question, why is incense used during the Mass? Here is his answer. We do not know exactly when the use of incense was introduced into our Mass or other liturgical rites.

At the time of the early church, the Jews continued to use incense in their own temple rituals. So it would be safe to conclude that the Christians would have adapted its usage for their own rituals. Now, keep in mind that the Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that there is no evidence for the use of incense until the 5th century.

And yet here, when Fr. William Saunders has to answer the question about when it began, he says, we kind of have to assume that it must have been used that early because the early Christians would have known about it.

See? Apostolic continuity. We have no evidence from history on the use of incense in the early church, so we just need to make a grand assumption that will cover the gap. Here's another one, this time from Cardinal Newman, the one who coined the phrase, to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

Now citing from his famous essay, On the Development of Christian Doctrine, chapter 4. The acts of the 4th century speak as strongly as its words. The simple question is whether the clear light of the 4th and 5th centuries may be fairly taken to interpret to us the dim, though definite, outlines traced in the preceding.

Again, that's Cardinal Newman. And in his essay, Cardinal Newman concludes that we may use the clear light of the 4th and 5th centuries to interpret the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. See? Apostolic continuity. Here's another one on the perpetual virginity of Mary.

That is the belief that Mary retained her physical virginity prior to, during, and after delivering Christ. This is just from the comment section on a Catholic website, but it so powerfully showcases the presumption of apostolic continuity that I just wanted to share it.

Here's the quote. Ever virgin. I believe this qualifies as a universal truth held by all Christians in all places, in all ages, in all times. See? Apostolic continuity. The person writing that is referring to the first reference to Mary as ever virgin that is found in the late 4th century in the writings of Athanasius.

See? 4th century at the latest, so it must be a universally accepted apostolic truth from the very beginning. Here's another one, and it's one of my personal favorites. This is from the book called Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy by Christian Caccini.

And this is not just some guy commenting on a blog. This guy is quoted by the Vatican in support of the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy. Now citing from the introduction to the book. We will therefore choose the late 4th century as our chronological basis for inquiry on the birth and development of the law on clerical celibacy rather than the year 325, the date of the first ecumenical council.

Now isn't that interesting? Even the canons of Nicaea early in the 4th century actually refer to a married clergy. And therefore, someone researching the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy has to begin his search late in the 4th century in order to figure out what the apostles taught in the first.

Wow. Just think about that for a minute. So whether it is Mary as the Ark of the Covenant, or Mary's sinlessness, the sacrifice of the Mass, Mary's perpetual virginity, the use of incense, the list goes on and on and on.

From the first century until 350 AD or thereabouts, there is nothing at all to suggest what emerged as the Roman Catholicism of the late 4th century. And when it does finally emerge, it practically comes out of nowhere, but emerges as if it enjoyed the full faith and credit of the apostolic church, even though it was plainly a novelty.

Just keep that in mind whenever you listen to the arguments from the Roman Catholic on the apostolicity of his religion. We'll take one more example from Scott Hahn, former Presbyterian minister turned Roman Catholic, and in fact one of the people who was influential in the conversion of Marcus Grodi.

This is from his book, Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God in the Word of God. The Immaculate Conception was a commonplace of the early church. St. Ephraim of Syria testified to it in the 4th century, as did St. Augustine in the 5th.

Again, that's Scott Hahn, Hail Holy Queen, the Mother of God in the Word of God. Page 96. And by the way, Ephraim of Syria, referred to by Scott Hahn, is a reference to a late 4th century writing from 360 A .D.

See? Late 4th century. Therefore, apostolic continuity. Roman Catholics can only trace their religion back that far, and no further. Now, as we prepare to dive into Marcus Grodi's conversion testimony and what he discovered in the early church fathers, keep in mind that this is the same struggle that Marcus Grodi faces.

We're running out of time in this episode, but there is a lot to discuss with Marcus, so we will not run out of material, and we'll certainly have to do another episode on it. But the presumption of apostolic continuity is relevant here, so I want to begin with something Marcus says at the end of his show, when he started taking questions from his listeners.

This one is very enlightening. Keep in mind that Marcus Grodi's whole point is that he discovered the truth and antiquity of the Roman Catholic religion by studying the early church fathers. But listen to his defensive tone as soon as someone raises the question about current practices that were denied and rejected by the early church.

This is Marcus Grodi from his Journey Home show on the Coming Home Network.

Let's go to this email. This comes from Brent in Atlanta, Georgia. Good evening. Like you, I came back to the Catholic Church after a brief time in various Protestant and Pentecostal churches after reading the church fathers.

My question is, why do some church fathers speak of outward rituals, such as incense and feast, as unnecessary for Christianity? Well, this is a good point. This brings me to the point why we don't go to the early fathers as if they carry the same authority as the church.