Weellll…
The Origins of Christianity
In the Bible there’s this guy called Simon Peter – he started his life as Simon and he was Jesus’s disciple. When Jesus was captured before he was crucified, Simon was the man to deny that he knew Jesus 3 times (and then the cockerel crowed and Simon was really angry with himself). He did it because he was terrified. But Jesus had predicted it (along with the whole event), which made Simon feel even more guilty.
Then when Jesus rose on Sunday (which is why we celebrate our rest day on the Sunday in most Christian denominations – though some still follow Jewish tradition and celebrate it on Saturday), he then spent a while with his disciples teaching them everything they needed to know to go and spread his message to the world.
He spoke to Simon and made him basically say how much he loves Jesus 3 times (many scholars believe it was once per time that he denied knowing Jesus before). After this, Jesus says the following line to Simon:
This line will go on to divide many Christian circles, but I’ll explain it from a Catholic point of view later on. I want to let you know that I am biased about these things because of my denomination, but I will tell you every time there is something we disagree on.
Then he sent his disciples out to spread the message of Jesus to the world. Jesus had renamed Simon, calling him Peter instead (that’s why he’s known as Simon Peter). These disciples are known as the 12 apostles and they went to different countries to help out.
Well, Peter went to Rome because the Roman Empire was the biggest power in the known world. He wanted to teach everyone in Rome the message of Jesus. Later on, there would be another apostle called Paul, who was a Jew who used to persecute Christians until he had a message sent to him from (I believe) God. He is not one of the 12 apostles, but he does call himself an apostle because he did write part of the New Testament and he was there when the original Christians set out the rules of the new Church. He got messages directly from God and was given a mission.
The Catholic-Orthodox Split
Well, this remained the same way for just over 1000 years. In that time, Christianity had become the religion of the Roman Empire and the head of the Church was always in Rome. However, the Roman Empire had collapsed!
But before that, the new centre of the Roman Empire had become Constantinople, which is now Istanbul (I think). This meant that there were two supposed centres to Christianity, too! The East and the West. The West in Rome and the East in Constantinople. So when the Roman Empire started to fall (it was a very slow thing and the “Roman Empire” lasted for a very long time after that, but it wasn’t even Roman at that point) there was no reason for the East and West to stick together. So there was lots of tension.
Then in 1054, there was the East-West Schism. It happened slowly, too, but it caused the formation of two churches that didn’t accept each other: The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Most of the West and Centre of Europe remained Catholic, while Eastern Europe and parts of Asia were Orthodox – and Greece, which is pretty Eastern.
There are differences! Catholics have a pope. Orthodox peole have Patriarchs (each Orthodox church has their own patriarch, who is similar to a pope, but is not a pope at the same time). We have most of our official ceremonies in Latin, but we’ve mainly switched to vernacular (using the language of the country). They translated most of the Bible into Russian or Greek etc. The Catholic Church accepts 73 books as part of the Bible. It varies across the Orthodox world.
However, we both have saints and believe that the Blood and the Wine during Church services becomes the body and blood of Jesus (which is important for later), but we call it different things. In the Catholic Church, we call it transubstantiation.
Most of these changes happened over time because we’ve been separate for so long. Our denominations evolved separately!
Protestantism’s Split from Catholicism
That’s all I can really say about Orthodoxy. There are so many separate churches that it’s hard to speak about them all in one brush, so I summed up the important things. Let’s go onto the main one.
There’s a guy called Martin Luther (yeah, Martin Luther King Jr’s is named for his father, who was named in honour of this dude). He was a priest in the Catholic Church in the early 16th Century (1500s). But he went to study in Rome and realised that the Catholic priests in Rome weren’t taking the religion seriously anymore. They were doing some pretty awful things. Selling people indulgences – like time off purgatory. Not honouring their own sacred vows etc. The Catholic Church was a mess at the time.
So he becomes quite disillusioned with the Church. in 1517, he writes something known as the ninety-five theses: basically 95 reasons why he thought the Catholic Church was a mess. This was huge.
He started off pretty mild, but ended up forming his own church. He took some books of the Catholic Bible out (actually, he just moved them to the back of the Bible and said they were less important, but still useful to read. It was later Protestants who removed those books completely and made it so that Catholics have to look for their special, longer Bible.
He was a very good speaker and owned a lot of Catholics in debates. He taught people that they need to read the Bible for themselves (the Catholic Church at the time said that it was a priest’s job to read and interpret the Bible for you). He told them that their opinion on the Bible matters just as much as a priest’s and translated the Bible into German. The Catholic Church at the time only used the Latin Bible.
He did lots of other changes, too, but let’s focus on telling people their opinion matters: naturally, when you tell them that their opinion is also valid when it comes to religion, a bunch of different people formed their own opinions that didn’t match Luther’s and formed their own Churches. Pretty much all of them took wives, which is still against the rules for a priest in the Catholic church.
So the Calvinists came. And the Anabaptists. And the Anglicans. And pretty much all other types of Protestantism that aren’t really new.
In England, Henry VIII wanted to marry a new wife, so he broke away from Rome and named himself the head of the Church of England instead of the Pope. The Pope excommunicated him and he took all the land and money from monks in England. A lot of Protestants in England used this to form Protestantism in their Churches. However, I need to stress: Henry still had very Catholic ideas and reinstated a lot of Catholic ideas when he was close to death. Then his son made the Church properly Protestant. His daughter Mary changed it back to Catholic. Then Elizabeth I made it Protestant again.
New Churches
in the 20th Century, a bunch of new churches formed. They’re called New Protestant Churches, as they largely come from Protestantism and not Orthodoxy or Catholicism. Some others came earlier, like Mormonism, but that’s complicated. Most of them came from America, too, and have a very America-centric view to Christianity. I mean, some believe Jesus went to America 2000 years ago!
The Dilemma
The main dilemma between Catholicism and Protestantism is the line that I quoted to you from the Bible. You see, Peter means “rock”. So Catholics (including me) believe that Jesus said “Your name is rock, and on this rock I shall build my Church”. So for us that means that Peter is the head of the Church. I’ve read many explanations that Protestants have for that line, but I don’t feel I can represent them fairly, as they seem a little bit ridiculous to me, no offence ot the Protestants out there. And if Peter is the head of the Church for us, then the people who succeed him should also be the head of the Church. So we believe that Peter is the first pope.
Also, there are other issues, like that word I was talking about: transubstantiation. Catholics and most Orthodox people believe that the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Jesus, because he said “this is my blood… this is my body” during the Last Supper in the Bible. Luther believed that it was kinda infused with the spirit of Jesus. I believe it’s kinda like heating up a loaf of bread for him: the bread and wine stays bread and wine, but is heated with the spirit of Jesus.
Transubstantiation means that we believe that the essence of the bread and wine stays like bread and wine. You taste, see, feel and smell bread and wine, but in terms of the philosophical idea of substance (the thing that makes a thing what it is. The substance of a chair is the thing that makes it a chair and not just a plank of wood. It’s very philosophical!), it becomes Jesus.
And then there are things like the Sacraments. In the Catholic Church, we have 7 sacraments that, even though I know all of this from my Confirmation classes, I can never name in order, so I’ll just list them here:
- Baptism
- Confession
- Marriage
- Holy Orders (priests, bishops, popes, etc)
- Annointing of the Sick
- Eucharist (the body and blood)
- Confirmation
Most Protestant circles only really do the Baptism and Marriage parts of that. The Anglican Church in England can also have Confirmation and Confession depending on the individual church, but most of them don’t really accept all of these as sacraments (things that should be done for God kinda).
The Anabaptists believe you shouldn’t baptise a baby and that it should be a choice in adulthood. The Catholics and most Protestants believe that baptism gives you a clean slate from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve so that babies have no worries about going to Heaven if anything bad happens to them.
Of course, Catholics believe priests should stay unmarried. We also believe in the saints and Mary, who is kinda absent from Protestant practices (but not Orthodox practices).
We are also the ones who have things like pretty churches. Us and the Orthodox Christians. Because most Protestant churches believe that you shouldn’t adorn churches with things like stained glass windows.
And, of course, we’re the ones who have exorcists, too.
Wow! I hope that’s everything!