This is the one question that Protestants and other religions cannot answer. I’ve asked so many non-Catholics and anti-Catholics this one question, and they can’t answer it. They always obfuscate and do mental gymnastics around the point so as not to answer the question. Many avoid it completely and just attack Catholicism instead.
It always begins with me making the claim that Jesus started the Catholic Church. It’s the only church that can trace it’s history back 2000 years. Anti-Catholics get upset about this and retort that the Catholic Church is an evil, pagan institution, that is not from God. They claim that the real Christian church was there from the beginning alongside the Catholic Church that not only came later but arose from error, corruption, and compromise.
I respond with just two words: “Prove it!” And here is my question: “Name one other church other than the Catholic Church that goes back 2000 years, and name five of its leaders from the second and third centuries.”
This is the question they cannot answer. Ray Comfort, John MacArthur, Needgodnet, and many others talk about a fake Christian church that supposedly existed back to the time of Jesus, and yet, they cannot answer this simple question. Rather, they just attack Catholics and Catholicism instead.
Some people respond by asking, “Why not leaders from the first century?”
My reply is that if your church didn’t exist in the 10th century, the 5th century, or even the 2nd century, then it clearly didn’t exist in the first century, or, it already fell apart and apostatized. It doesn’t exist anymore. So if you can’t find your church in the second or third centuries, you’re not gonna find it in the first century either.
No Protestant, Jehovah’s Witness, or anti-Catholic can answer this question. They might give one name, usually a Catholic, or they just change the subject. Non-Catholics often don’t know history which is why we try to help them to study it and look into it.
