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The Roman Catholic Church

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Origins

'The North Gate's on your left as you go out; so turn right, then take the first on the left and go down to the "T" junction and look for an opening on your right between the shops.' Totally enclosed by tall faded walls and a few steps down, a large courtyard emerged from out of the gloom. It was early morning. Looming across in the corner one could see two huge doorways under a Gothic arch. The one on the left was open; the other, closed up in the twelfth century, had not been opened since. At 5.30 a.m. all was dark inside save for three or four 40-watt light bulbs which hung down like glowing tassels. The only sound came from a dim corner where a monk with a white cloth cap on his dark head was chanting from a book on a desk. Oblivious to a stranger standing behind him in the darkness, he continued to read an old Coptic script by the light of the sputtering tallow candle he held in his hand. All around was dusty and unkempt. Behind him nondescript hangings curtained off a small apse which had been waiting – probably for months – to be refurbished.

At 6.00 a.m. an organ started up somewhere in the shadows and drowned the monk's dirge. This music accompanied a Latin rite procession which wandered away in the distance, to a remote altar. It felt like having stepped back in time. Here was altogether another world! Accustomed now to the gloom, I stood for an age where, for generations, other people have stood and wondered. This was a hallowed place which somehow cast its own particular spell ... a spell that dissolved an hour or two later as I stepped out into the sunlight of the courtyard of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Past, Present and Future?

The past, rather like the future, is in the dark because it is not in the 'here and now'. The sun shining today is much more important than it shining yesterday. We can only see stars when it is dark – because they are so small they show up better. In fact, when looking at a star we are looking into the past – since the light we now see left that star a thousand years ago. To look into our past we need some light. But the light we need is often insufficient. Hindsight is described as 20/20 vision – 'the clearest way of seeing'. 'The further away from the game the more we can see of the play', when the overall picture becomes clearer. It is also said that 'distance lends enchantment to the view' – which is usually, but not always, true!

In moving great boulders for building purposes, Bronze Age people found that felled trees, when rolling side by side, proved a useful means of transport; however, one does not suppose for a moment that anyone then thought 'This is how they'll eventually discover the wheel!' It does seem, though, that the more we can see of the past, the greater the chance we have of understanding how and when things began. The less we know of the past, of course, the more difficult it is to answer certain queries – such as our present question: 'What were the Origins of Catholicism?' So we begin at the beginning, which is usually the best place to start ...

Roots in Judaism

The primitive herdsman's livelihood depends on his finding fresh grazing for his flock. He is dependent on knowing when and where it is going to rain next and, if he is down on his luck, he will look for someone to make it rain for him. Without understanding how the seasons work, our nomad will accept that, if he finds and make friends with the one who can make it rain, all will be well ... and if the 'rain-maker' happens to be a god, so be it – it will not be long before he is 'praying' or 'sacrificing something valuable' in order to get this god to do what he wants. All types of religious belief and practice begin like this, and, as far as we can see, the origins of Christianity are no different from the origins of any other cult.

Where there is a difference, it is that Christianity happens to be the development of a previous world religion which still exists: Judaism. One ought to say here that, to try to outline the origins of Christianity without already having looked at the origins of Judaism, would be like saying, because the sky is cloudy this morning, 'The sun is not shining!'

We cannot begin to understand Judaism without at the same time opening her Book. The Jewish Sacred Scriptures, known as the Holy Bible, proclaim the story of their 'Beginnings', honour their Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and give the gradual development of their history as a nation. Genesis (the first word in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) is the first book of the Bible and it is the only direct source we have for the history of the Patriarchs, whose period is generally reckoned to be c.2000–1700 BC – the late Bronze Age.

It would be well to remember here that the Bible is the story of the beginning of things as seen by the Hebrew people. While it is probably the best known work of its kind, it is not the only one. The Semitic peoples, of which the Hebrews are one group, knew other traditions, some of which are no longer available to us – ancient sources, the existence of which can be traced in these Scriptures. What makes the 'history' in the Bible different from other 'histories' is that these writers disregarded anything that did not in some way relate to, or reflect upon, the development of their perceived relationship with their God. Such documented sources are to be found in museums, and so, although there is not much mention of them outside the Bible, the Patriarchs cannot just be the mythical characters that earlier scholarship thought them to be.

Archaeology Can Be Helpful

Archaeological discoveries in the Near East have shown that the biblical descriptions of the Patriarchs and their era are remarkably accurate – far too accurate, in fact, to be thought of as inventions, or to be dismissed as having no historical foundation. Hindsight tells us that it would not have been possible for such episodes to have been composed in that part of the world, the Near East, without some valid historical memory serving as a link with the past. We might begin to realize that these patriarchal traditions are not just or merely historical facts. They happen to belong to a type of literary genre that we would call 'family tradition'. This means that they will have received a certain amount of 'orientation' in the course of their transmission from one generation to the next, uniting, as they obviously would, various and indeed disparate elements in the process. This last consideration, however, does not prevent us from placing the Patriarchs in their correct historical perspective in the light of literary and archaeological data available today.

The Patriarchs are the first of a line of people, including kings, military leaders, priests, prophets, rebels, seers (each generation producing its own) who, over roughly the next seventeen hundred years, look forward to an age of peace and prosperity. It will take another thousand years for these people, beginning again with the Patriarchs, to find out, after all, that there is only one God – and, surprise, surprise, this God would be the God of the Hebrews ... and it would be this God who would somehow bring about this peace!

From about 1720 BC, however, the Hebrews had a few generations of a somewhat contrary experience, ending up as slaves, in Egypt. There they became familiar with the Egyptian religion with all its gods: Osiris, Isis with son Horus – the reigning Pharaoh sharing his divinity – with temples at Memphis and Karnak, etc. Aristotle, much later (300 BC) in Greece, was ninety before he came to realize that there could only be one God. A pagan, he had somehow managed to reason this out on his own without the benefit of such material as the Hebrew Scriptures.

History

The Catholic Church is Christian and Christianity, like Judaism, of which it considers itself the fulfilment, is an historical religion. It is possible to trace its roots back into the past, just as it is possible to trace any evolving phenomena. Latin and Greek commentators of that time have traced Jewish and Christian movements in the early years, and their writings often support records that we find in the Bible.

An 'historical religion' is described as one in which the God worshipped is a God who has revealed Himself to men in human history: a God who has done certain things that are facts of history; a God who has made known – 'revealed' – who He is, as well as what He wants in the matter of human moral conduct. Christianity, as a revealed religion, will tend to see 'morality' – or the 'rectitude of human behaviour' – as universal and unchanging. Herein lies our first difficulty since, no matter what we think it to be, 'Revelation' (the word we use to describe 'God-speaking-to-his-people') can only be perceived through human experience.

Every human experience brings with it elements of interpretation depending on the person who has the experience. One only has to compare evidence from all those bystanders who have witnessed the same event. Such evidence may then be coloured as the result of further experiences by the same witnesses. When finally committed to writing, the expression of that event could well appear to be very different from the initial experience of the event.

This why it takes so long for 'Revelation' to be understood as such. However, once it has been recognized for what it is, or, to put it another way, once there appears to be no other explanation for it, then there will come a time, one imagines, (seeing it to be 'God's Word') that it will become the foundation on which 'human morality' will be based. It will then gradually become a universal guide, and unchanging, no matter how often human mores may change. This is what differentiates Christianity, an 'historical' religion from paganism, which has always been its bed-fellow.

Paganism

Pagan religions acknowledge the existence of many gods, which are found in natural forces that have been personalized and mythologized – hence 'myths' (this page). Like mother nature, pagan gods seem to intervene in history, but they neither create nor encourage any form of unified morality. Those pagans possessed of a high moral sense usually possess the mind and leisure to discover some permanent values in the world about them without having recourse to their gods.

It was into such a pagan culture that the ancient Israelites settled, having returned from Egypt in the thirteenth century BC. With their God of Promise and Command, they came into a land which was already the home of such gods as Baal and Ashera, Anath and Kadesh, deities in the service of which every conceivable vice was practiced and sanctified: magic, superstition, ritual debauchery and prostitution, human sacrifice, living children burnt as offerings to a god called 'The King'; while the aged and the handicapped were killed and buried beneath their houses to ward off demons.

Life in Canaan

Such was the culture of Canaan, to which the Israelites were returning. As they had done in Egypt, they now had to re-familiarise themselves with the customs of another settled people. The Israelites were nomads. They occupied the central hill country of Canaan, where they would settle to farming and to proprietorship. Knowing little about arts and crafts, they now had models and teachers ready to hand. They were easily seduced by the vices of the sophisticated Canaanites in which they were now free to indulge.

The indigenous, cultivated Canaanites had so much to offer, living in the ancient cities of the plain, in a 'Land flowing with milk and honey'. With the primitive mind-set of the time, the Israelites saw that this could only be because the Canaanite gods had made it so lush and prosperous. This was the argument of the day, and it was a powerful one. What may be shocking to us, though thoroughly understandable, is to learn that the Israelites used the names of Canaanite deities, such as El Shaddai, Adonai, El Ohim, even Baal, for their God of Promise! However, each successive Hebrew generation produced its own spiritual and moral leaders – Prophets who inveighed against the dangers of falling in with such pagan practices. It was the Israelite Prophets who later laid the subsequent misfortunes of their people at the feet of those who, forgetting their God-given Promises, had succumbed to this pagan influence.

A View of Uniqueness and Exclusivity

From its beginnings Christianity appears to have been 'exclusive'. In so far as it is a development of Judaism, which had its own initiation rites, this is true. But there is also the element of the 'unique' about Christianity that we might consider now.

To some extent, all historical religions are exclusive in their notions of the origins of the world and its peoples. Christianity, like Judaism, is just as exclusive and for the same reasons. Its members see themselves as belonging to a 'club' and, having been through all their particular initiation procedures, understandably consider themselves 'set apart' from those who have not. For the Jews this exclusiveness is received at birth, from a Jewish mother, ratified initially by circumcision (a Bronze Age custom) and later also by 'knowledge of the Mosaic Law'; and by a more recent custom to mark a boy's 'coming of age' at thirteen – the 'Bar Mitzvah'. (The Mosaic Law is found in the Book of Deuteronomy – one of the first five Books of the Old Testament of the Bible or, to give it its Jewish name, the Torah)

This Jewish exclusiveness can be recognized in its dealings with other tribal peoples. The Hebrews came to see themselves as a 'holy nation', sacred and dedicated to Yahweh (the Hebrew sacred name for God). Jews are still 'God's Chosen People'. The Christian development of this notion can be seen in that, more than just being members of a chosen people, Christians see themselves as members of a wider Family, with 'God' as its Father. It is with this notion that Christianity begins to develop away from Judaism – a development that is charted in the New Testament of the Bible.

Baptism: A Sign of Belonging

Christian exclusiveness is received in an initiation rite, which at the start was called by its Greek name, 'Baptism'. ('Christening', the English word for this ceremony, did not come into common English usage until the Middle Ages.)

When people with a common interest consider the future in terms of organizing themselves to increase their numbers or to plan an enterprise, the normal procedure is to arrange a 'membership' where each agrees to a set of rules or a constitution. A card is received that marks his or her commitment to the newly constituted group. Whether or not the practice of circumcision was imposed on the Hebrews by their God, or taken from a pagan observance with God's blessing, nonetheless, it was employed as a sign that distinguished the believer from those who were not circumcised ... a simple initiation rite the religious significance of which surfaced rather later in about the sixth century BC.

In our own time Christians employ baptism as a sign of belonging to the Christian community. During this ceremony certain vows are taken to demonstrate that this is not some idle performance but the marking of a person in such a way as to lead on to an adult commitment that will last through life.

'Afterlife' and 'Reward'

The assumption most people make is that Christianity, like every other tradition, including Judaism, is about what its members do for one another, or perhaps, more fundamentally, that it concerns what each must do 'to ensure good things in this life in order to get a good place in the hereafter!' Later, it will involve 'How I ought to behave to my Neighbour', but first and foremost it will be about 'No. 1' – 'Me'. Since no matter what particular view of life one holds to be 'politically correct', what cannot be denied, in all honesty, is that: 'In my world, I come first, and after me, my parents, my family, my friends, acquaintances, etc., including my neighbour'. 'I can't help but see that everything relates, in some way, to me.'

Irritating though this statement may be, it will have to be admitted sooner or later that no one is born an altruist! Altruism has to be learnt – hence the Hebrew Commandment: 'As you love yourself so must you love your neighbour' – a maxim that is to be found in many other codes of conduct. At all events, it will be clear that if there is some sort of existence 'after death' then 'it will be solely my fault if I fail to get the best available' – a view supported by the Greek philosophers when talking about responsibility.

Inclusive not Exclusive

Christianity, like its predecessor Judaism and its successor Islam, has been 'exclusive' since the beginning of its recorded history, even though this was not in the mind of its 'Founder'. For the Christian, anyone who does not believe in this one God is a pagan. (Islam tends to view non-Muslims as 'infidels', though this is not the teaching of the Qur'an.) Christianity, however, does recognize its debt to Judaism by claiming a special relationship with the Hebrew God; but it adds that the fulfilment of this relationship seems to have been overlooked by Judaism.

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Excerpted from The Roman Catholic Church by Edmund Hartley. Copyright © 2009 Bravo Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
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