No denomination other than Catholic can trace their roots in an unbroken succession all the way back to Peter and the apostles. A succession that has been manifested by the laying on of hands. Every other Christian denomination can ultimately trace their roots back to some individual and time when they separated from the Church built on Peter and the faith which that Church teaches.

In His great commission, Jesus told the eleven Apostles (Judas had hung himself and Matthias had not yet been chosen to replace him):

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV, emphasis added)

These eleven Apostles were the first Bishops of the Church with Peter as their leader (see the chapter titled "THE PAPACY"). Notice that Jesus promised to be with this Church and its leaders "always, to the very end of the age" and that "the gates of Hades will not overcome it." This means that the Church will be divinely protected in its teaching until the end of time. Unless the Bible is wrong or Jesus lied, that Church is the Catholic Church. This also precludes the possibility of the Church going into error at some time in history. Some of the things the Church teaches may not be what we want to hear, but the command is to teach everything, not just the nice, easy-to-obey things.

Recommended reading:
Peter and the Papacy, A Catholic Answers Tract, P.O. Box 17490, San Diego, CA 92177

Q. Since there is antiquity in the Greek and Slavic churches, how can the Roman church claim to be the real church of Christ?

Granted, there is antiquity in the Greek and other Orthodox churches. I will refer to all these churches as Eastern Orthodox Churches. They too can trace their origins back to Christ and the Apostles. The Catholic church can (and does) claim to be the Church which was founded by Jesus because it is founded on Peter, the first Pope; as noted in the answer to the preceding question. The Eastern Orthodox Churches do not claim that the Catholic Church left them; they admit that they split away from the Catholic Church (and the Pope) in what is now generally referred to as A.D. 1054. In fact, there was no one date which can be pointed to as being the exact moment of division. Points of contention between the Orthodox and Catholic groups focused upon the Catholic unilateral inclusion of the word filoque (procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son) in the Creed, the issue of clerical celibacy, and the Catholic contention that the Pope is the ultimate determiner of doctrine and discipline in the Church.

Recommended reading:
Meagher, Paul K. OP, O'Brien, Thomas C. & Aherne, Sister Consuelo M. SSJ, Encyclopedic Dictionary Of Religion, Corpus Publications, Washington, D.C., 1979, pages 1143-1144

Q. How can the Catholic Church be the "true" church when some priests do evil things?

You are confusing the infallibility of the Church with impeccability of its leaders and members. The Catholic Church is not a home for Saints, it is a hospital for sinners. Every individual is a sinner, even the Pope goes to confession once a week. The doctrines the Church teaches are the true teachings of Jesus. How the leaders, the priests and bishops, conduct themselves is an entirely different matter. Anyone who causes scandal brings shame upon himself and the organization he represents.

Before Jesus established His Church, He recognized that teaching authority resided in the leaders of the Jewish community, and that they were causing scandal:

"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." (Matthew 23:2-3, NIV).

Jesus also anticipated that even this problem would exist in His Church: of the original 12 apostles whom He chose, He chose one that He knew was going to betray Him. This is where we get the expression "Judas priest." As we look at the leadership of the Church over its almost 2,000 year history, at no time has the number of Judas priests come anywhere near as high as that original 8.3 percent.

When one hears of a priest causing scandal, the immediate thought is of pedophile priests because of the recent publicity which has been given to this problem. In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that the incidence of pedophilia in the married Protestant clergy is greater than the level among Catholic priests (2-3 % vs. 0.2-1.7 %). This does not excuse any priest who betrays his trust, but hopefully it will help to put the problem into a more balanced perspective.

Q. The inquisition.

I'm not sure which inquisition you are referring to as there were at least three: The Papal Inquisition, The Spanish Inquisition, and The Roman Inquisition.

The Papal Inquisition was an outgrowth of the Council of Toulouse held in 1229 (not an ecumenical council) where a special ecclesiastical tribunal was established to counter the heresy of Albigensianism. Until 1231 the duty of detecting and repressing heresy had fallen on the bishops but in 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed a number of Papal Inquisitors. Pope Gregory IX was opposed to torture, but Pope Innocent IV approved its use for the discovery of heresy, and Pope Urban IV confirmed this usage, which like the death penalty for heresy, had its origins in the Roman Law. Although intended for all Christendom, it was active primarily in southern France. This inquisition died out around 1300 with the demise of Albigensianism.

The Spanish Inquisition was a state rather than church inquisition. Established in 1481 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the king appointed the Grand Inquisitor and the other officials, and also signed the decrees; the penalties were inflicted in his name. The purpose of this inquisition was to remove any potential traitors (secret Muslims or Jews) who might aid in any Muslim attack or any internal uprising. At that point in history, Spain was the only country which had allowed Muslims and Jews to remain within their boundaries. The inquisition was triggered by a Turkish storming of the Italian city of Otranto in 1480. The Turks put some 12,000 people (half the population of the city) to death, including every priest in the city, and sawed the Archbishop in two. They offered to spare many of their captives lives if they would embrace the Muslim faith. Pope Sixtus IV approved the Spanish Inquisition because he was under the impression that an ecclesiastical inquisition was to be established but when the true state of the case was brought to his knowledge the following year, it was too late. All that he and his successors could do was to protest against its excesses, which they did. The Spanish Inquisition was abolished in 1834. There were no council (ecumenical or otherwise) actions involved in this inquisition and the papal approval, brief that it was, was not and did not claim to be an infallible action. The Spanish Inquisition is addressed fairly accurately in almost any encyclopedia although many secular discussions are distorted to widely varying degrees, particularly in the area of the number of "casualties." This is the inquisition most anti-Catholics zero in on when they attempt to discredit the Church. Complete records of the Spanish Inquisition do not exist but it is recorded that between 1540 and 1700 a total of 100,000 cases were tried with 10,000 individuals being submitted to torture and 828 individuals being put to death. It should also not be forgotten that John Calvin, the founder of the "Reformed" churches, burned Michael Servetus at the stake for heresy and established his own inquisition in Geneva for the punishment of unmanageable Christians.

The Roman Inquisition began in 1542 and was the least active and most benign of the three inquisitions. This is the inquisition which tried Galileo. The Galileo affair was a matter of science, not religion. It did indirectly concern the Church and spiritual interests because of the circumstances of the time, and Galileo's own diversion into theological speculations. Galileo would not have clashed with religion had he not interjected his own interpretations of Sacred Scripture regarding what he thought to be a contradiction between the Bible and the scientific discoveries. The Church as Church did not digress from spiritual matters in the Galileo case. Some at the time ridiculed Scripture regarding the sun, etc. Because of the spiritual implications, the Church was seriously concerned. There were unfortunate decisions made in connection with the Galileo case but it was not a decision involving the infallibility of the Church. Church infallibility involves only matters of faith and morals, not natural science, geography, trigonometry, etc.

Of these inquisitions, only the first and the last had any lasting support of the Church. The important thing to remember about the Spanish inquisition is that, although the methods which were used are repugnant to today's society, they employed means which were in common use at the time and their operation must be understood within the framework of the period in which they operated. In the middle ages, a man convicted of even a small theft was frequently punished by death and the penalty for murder by poison was death by unspeakable torture. In the sixteenth century a man convicted of high treason was tortured for hours and then disemboweled alive. At the time of the American Revolution, a mutineer was either flogged to death or hanged from the yardarm. It was only in the last hundred years that police in the United States were forced to give up the "third degree" when interrogating suspects.

Recommended reading:
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994, paragraph 2298
The Inquisition, A Catholic Answers Tract, P.O. Box 17490, San Diego, CA 92177
Mirus, Jeffrey A., Carroll, Warren H., Marshner, William H., & Burns, Kristin M. P., Reasons For Hope, Christendom College Press, Front Royal, VA 22630, pages 197-205, 213-218

Q. If Catholic doctrine has never changed, why were some doctrines supported by Councils or Papal Decrees in later centuries? (If the Church teaches that a doctrine is true because a certain council in a certain year says so, does this mean the doctrine was "new" in the year of the council?)

Doctrine means "what is taught." Dogma, in Catholic theology, is a truth that the Church requires the faithful to accept as a doctrine revealed by God. When a council or Papal decree pronounces a matter of doctrine, this does not mean that the doctrine was "new" at the time of pronouncement. In fact, doctrine develops over time as understanding of the subject grows and becomes clearer. Most Councils were convened to answer a question (or heresy). The pronouncement of the Council states the teaching of the Church on the matter [The First Council of Nicea (325) answered Arianism, The Council of Ephesus (431) answered Nestorianism, and The Council of Trent (1545-1563) answered the Protestant Reformation, for example].