The Great Apostasy:
A Catholic Response
Note: This article is not meant to
single out Mormons (for whom I have great affection) for criticism.
However, the Great Apostasy is the foundational Mormon doctrine, and is
a direct attack at the claims made by the Catholic Church. Therefore, it is imperative that Catholics
understand how to respond when we are inevitably challenged.
If you have Mormon friends or family,
and if you’ve ever discussed religion with them, you have probably encountered
the theory of the “Great Apostasy.” It
is the foundational doctrine of Mormonism and the reason why they say we should
leave the Catholic Church. So what is
the Great Apostasy, and is it true?
The Great Apostasy is central to the
Mormon understanding of Church history.
One thing the Latter-Day Saints (LDS – Mormons) get right is that they
do see clearly that Jesus established a visible Church, with hierarchy and
authority. They will generally agree
that the Catholic Church can trace its roots back to that original Church that
Jesus established. If the Catholic
Church is the Church Jesus founded 2,000 years ago (a point on which Catholics
and Mormons generally agree), why shouldn’t one belong to it?
Because, the Mormon teaching goes,
that Church fell into complete and total apostasy very early and replaced the
true (Mormon) gospel with a false (Catholic) gospel. So the Holy Spirit left the Church, Jesus was
no longer the Head of that Body, and there was no true Church left on the
Earth. Jesus had to restore the gospel
through a new Church, which He established through the New York farm boy Joseph
Smith in the 1820s.
That is the Mormon claim. Missionaries will tell you that story with
confidence. They will say that
throughout the centuries there were reformers like Martin Luther and John
Calvin, who recovered parts of the original gospel message, but there was no
way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
There needed to be a new Church, with new authority, established in
these latter days. That is the LDS
Church.
This may sound completely unbelievable
to us, but there are 10 million people who take it seriously and they are
pulling Catholics out of the Church, so we had better know how to respond. There are some simple ways to show, not only
that the Great Apostasy didn’t happen, but that it couldn’t happen. The following is certainly not exhaustive,
but hopefully a good start.
Since we do share some common ground
over the nature of the Church, we should be able to establish that the question
of the Great Apostasy should have direct impact on a Mormon’s assessment of the
Catholic Church.
The first place I would go to show
that the Great Apostasy is a falsehood is the Scriptures. Since Mormons use the King James translation
of the Bible, that is what I will quote here.
First, we turn to Matthew 28:19,20, in
which Jesus commissions His disciples to make disciples of all nations. Since this is something that could only be
accomplished after the lifetimes of the eleven men hearing Him on that day,
clearly He is commissioning the entire Church.
Look at verse 20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (Scriptural emphases
added throughout) If the Great Apostasy happened, that
statement of Jesus is a lie.
Next, turn to John 14:16. “And I will pray the Father, and He shall
give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever.” How long does
Jesus say the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) will abide with the Church? Forever.
Turn to Matthew 16:18 – “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I
will build my church; and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.”
Jesus is building His Church on the rock. What does He say about the man who built his
house on rock in Matthew 7:25? “And
the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
Our Mormon friend may come back with some
Scripture of his own, such as 1Tim 4:1 – “Now the Spirit
speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the
faith…” Notice that the passage says some will depart from the faith. In every such passage we hear that some, or
even many, will fall away. In and of
itself that implies that not all
will fall away. No total apostasy.
Besides, look at Matthew
13:24-30. When the enemy sows weeds with
the wheat, what does the Master say?
“Let them grow together until the harvest; then they will be
separated.”
Finally, in Ephesians 3:21, St. Paul
says, “Unto him be glory in the church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end.” Not only was there no total apostasy, if we
take God’s Word seriously, there couldn’t be one.
Scripture is only one tool
to use to show that the Great Apostasy never happened. The next is history, particularly the
writings of the Fathers of the Church.
The myriad of writings from men who learned the Faith at the feet of the
Apostles – St. Clement of Rome (disciple of St. Peter); St. Polycarp and St. Ignatius
of Antioch (disciples of St. John); Sts. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr only
slightly later, are powerful evangelical tools.
And there are many, many more.
Not only do they demonstrate that the Great Apostasy never happened,
they show without a doubt, that the early Church was Catholic.
Look at just a few quotes:
St. Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 110):
Make certain,
therefore, that you all observe one common Eucharist; for there is but one Body
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and but one cup of union with his Blood, and one
single altar of sacrifice – Letter to the Philadelphians
[The heretics]
abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the
Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our
sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the
gift of God are perishing in their disputes – Letter to the Smyrnaens
St. Justin Martyr
(A.D. 151):
For not as common
bread nor common drink do we receive [the Eucharist]; but since Jesus Christ
our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood
for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made
into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change
of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of
that incarnated Jesus – First Apology
St. Irenaeus (A.D. 180 – Irenaeus was a
student of St. Polycarp, who received the Faith from St. John the Apostle):
For with this Church [in Rome],
because of its superior origin, all Churches must agree, that is, all the
faithful in the whole world; and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have
maintained the Apostolic tradition – Against Heresies
There are only three ways
to explain this:
1) These men received the Gospel from the
Apostles, but intentionally and universally corrupted it, in exactly the same
way, throughout the world. This would be
an incredible task since they lived throughout the Mediterranean world and
would have found it hard to communicate or even know of each other. It is further incredible because these men died
horrific deaths for their faith. No one
would die such terrible deaths for what they knew to be a lie, yet all these
men courageously faced martyrdom.
So, scenario 1 seems very implausible. How about scenario 2? Even more unrealistic.
2) The Fathers died as martyrs for the Catholic
Gospel because they received it from the Apostles, but it was the Apostles that
took the true (Mormon) gospel, intentionally corrupted it, and then passed on
that corruption to their disciples. This
may be more possible on a practical level since the Apostles all knew each
other and were all together, so they could have master-minded such a
scheme. But they also had personal
contact with Jesus, and had their lives transformed by Him. Why would they betray Him now? And like the fathers, they too died horrific
deaths as martyrs for their faith.
There’s no way it was a corruption.
3) The only explanation left is the true
one. The reason these men died for their
Catholic Faith is because it is exactly what was given to them by Jesus. He gave it to the Apostles, who witnessed to
it by their lives; they gave it to the fathers, who also witnessed to it by
their lives.
Of course, if you follow that line of reasoning where it
leads, there’s no denying it leads to Rome.
Whether a Mormon or Protestant or Jehovah’s Witness, even once they
discover the fathers, there will still be many questions and misconceptions to
clarify. We need to be patient and
loving and supportive of their journey.
And we also need to support fellow Catholics. Like St. Peter, we need to strengthen our
brothers, so they (and we) will not be pulled from the bosom of the Church, the
Body of Christ.
