A fascinating question!

I would suggest that, in one important sense, God was in fact recognized from the very beginning. There's a sort of "religious instinct" in the human heart that has led all human societies from the very beginning of Homo sapiens (as far as we can tell) to have some sort of religion. We're simply drawn towards the infinite, to something greater than ourselves that transcends us.

But God couldn't be called by his name until he chose to reveal it. The whole story of the Old Testament is of "progressive revelation": God little by little tells us more about himself and about what he loves. We can figure out the barest details of his existence by the human reason he has given us, but to really get to know him, he needs to tell us.

So if that's the case, it's easy to see why the first human societies got part of the story right and much of it wrong, and ended up in religious dead ends like paganism. The Catechism's explanation (#37) of how easy it is for us to err in this regard really hits the nail on the head. Perhaps the best explanation is the YouCat's, on page 7 of this PDF.

Essentially God's decision was to reveal himself little by little, preparing us (we were pretty rough around the edges 4 millennia ago) for the fullness of truth in Christ. For more on how those "stages of revelation" worked, check out the Catechism from #53 on. It's pretty neat, but at the same time it should make us really give thanks to God...

God bless you!

- Father Shane

It's a very sad situation, definitely. Actually, it's dropped even faster in European countries which tended more towards Protestantism, which is the case of much of Switzerland and Germany; Scandinavia, Holland and England are practically post-Christian at this point.

The number of factors involved is really staggering. Part of it comes from long-term effects of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment: The Church there was so identified with power structures that anyone who sparked a rebellion against any regime was also going to target the Church and faith in general, so that's why movements as disparate as France's Revolution, Italy's Risorgimento and the Communist tendencies of the 20th century were anti-Catholic to a violent extent that's almost unthinkable for us nowadays in the US. In Ireland, most of the recent drastic erosion has happened thanks to fallout from abuse scandals, since priests had been placed on such a high pedestal there. 

But there are literally hundreds more factors, including the moral relativism that began to take hold after WW2, the oddly different way in which the 1968 revolution happened there, the much closer relationship between Church and State (like Germany's church tax), etc.

If it's a subject that you want to get a deeper grasp of, you might really appreciate George Wiegel's The Cube and the Cathedral. This is also an interesting article, and then of course there are fascinating books by Pope Benedict like this one and this one.

So folks from the Near East evangelized Southern Europe, Southern Europe evangelized Northern Europe, Ireland helped re-evangelize parts of both afterwards, then Spain and Portugal evangelized the Americas, sporadic efforts were made by various powers to evangelize parts of Asia and Africa, and now you see more and more often that Africans and Americans are returning to Europe to re-evangelize it. Funny how that works. Cycles of birth, death, rebirth.

God bless you, and let's pray for Europe!

- Father Shane

Here's an excellent discussion on that, which goes into the extraordinarily tangled history of the thing.

Put very baldly and with a total lack of nuance (so don't expect much!), my summary would be that the historical Catholic understanding is that you can't claim catholicity if you're not united to the universal Church; that that unity would be expressed by communion with the Holy See; and therefore that Henry VIII's act of schism (making himself head of the Church of England instead of the Pope) and the subsequent deviations from historic Christian doctrine (in general due to Calvinism but not exclusively) wounded that so gravely that it is still not even close to repair.

I told you not to expect much. :-)

But then for the record I'm not familiar with the exact terms with which the Anglican Communion understands catholicity, so if anyone can contribute anything, you would do us all a favor!

God bless you!

- Father Shane

Well, none of them convince me, as you can probably tell.

I think it's just easiest to state our case: It's abundantly clear from the New Testament that Christ desired that the Apostles have (delegated) authority in the Church, and that Peter was their head. Now since Peter died in Rome after being head of the Church there, and we know the list of his successors as head of the Church in Rome and that they were venerated by other bishops specifically as such, and that Pope Benedict is the current successor, it seems to me that that's the only credible way to argue for being the first Christian church from which the others separated somehow.

There are further reflections here and here, for what it's worth. And one specifically regarding Orthodox Christianity.

God bless you!

- Father Shane

As always, I’m sorry to have taken so long to get back to you!

This sounds like one of those arguments in which everybody is saying something that’s partially very true. He’s right that both Churches can trace their roots and their faith back to the Apostles. We also share the same faith of the great Creeds, and we recognize the validity both of Orthodox priesthood and the rest of the sacraments.

It’s also true that the Great Schism of 1054 AD was a really really unfortunate event. As we look back at it today, it seems almost incomprehensible, but that’s the way things worked at the time: There was a massive political dispute going on between the powers of the East (the Byzantine Empire) and the powers of the West, and because politics and theology were so incredibly interwoven, a theological pretext was sought to justify a split, which was formalized in terms of mutual excommunications and mutual condemnations for heresy. (The pretext was the West’s addition of the words “and the Son,” in Latin the single word filioque, to the Creed. In the 20th century it was agreed that the underlying theological truth meant to be communicated was shared perfectly well by both sides, and that differing theological language had been the barrier in the 11th century.) It was political/theological code language at the time, but since the split never healed despite innumerable attempts, we’re still stuck with a situation of division. (If you’re into history, Wikipedia’s summary of the events is excellent.)

So if someone from the Third Reformed True-Faith Thrice-Holy Christian Church of the South Bronx (est. 2009) comes along saying that his is the one true Church that all should belong to, you can quietly chuckle to yourself as you start your explanation about apostolic succession, but that’s not at all the case with the Orthodox churches.

But… your friend’s explanation is missing something very important, the real bone of contention that is keeping our churches separated for the moment: The authority of the See of Peter. Is the Pope the visible head of the Church, or not? Does he have jurisdiction over all bishops and all the churches? Because if we’re going to take Matthew 16:16-19 seriously, I’d rather be Roman Catholic and in communion with Rome than anything else. 

All the challenges that still separate us — through no fault of those of our century, though division, suspicion and jealousy can remain — are constantly being discussed at an ecumenical level. The rest of us just have to do as the YouCat invites us:

God bless you!

- Father Shane

Wow, that's quite an article. Someone is really bending over backwards to deny the obvious, and their Greek isn't even all that good!

In the first place, the existence of the Bible itself is the best possible answer to that. The entire New Testament tells the history of the Christians of the first century AD! "Christ" just means "Messiah," which is what the Jews were waiting for and was the reason why so many of them converted, so claiming that the NT writers somehow forgot to use the word "Christ" everywhere in the NT is somewhat comical.

I like how they entirely leave out Pliny's letter about the Christians (a pagan writing sometime between 111 and 113 AD), etc.

The reason that we have so little stuff is that the Christians were being viciously persecuted. Rather hard to hold on to lots of documents when those documents will denounce you as a Christian, right?

Our entire faith is based on those historical origins (Jesus really rose from the dead one day in 29 or 30 AD, and he was really seen by men and women who really went and told everyone else), so it's not hard to imagine why some folks would be interested in denying those origins, but this attempt is rather ludicrous.

God bless you!

- Father Shane