The True Christians

POPE BENEDICT XVI lately reaffirmed his teaching in 2000, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the document Dominus Iesus (Lord Jesus) that outside the apostolic lineage, there can be no true "sacramental priesthood."

Non-Catholic denominations may howl on this pronouncement as "offensive." But the truth has to be spoken regardless if that hurts. Is not that the reason why a physician had to tell his cancer patient that she only have a few months to live? That truth will shock. That truth will hurt. Still the truth must be spoken in order to wake people who had been sleeping in a lie.

To extend this truth into a more painful area many non-Catholics often shelve into the backside of their minds, can someone call himself a Christian if he learned his faith not from the authorized preachers of the Twelve Apostles? Can someone be even called a Christian if she even accept the notion that the Church that Jesus founded on Peter disappeared from the face of this earth?

Here is what we know for sure:

The authenticity of a Christian teaching rests upon the authority given to that preacher by the Apostles. After the controversy that erupted in Antioch during the apostolic era, the first Council of Jerusalem was called in order to settle the issue on demanding from non-Jewish converts what the law of Moses prescribed. In the letter signed by the apostles and elders of the ancient Christian Church, the apostles sent message to the affected churches at Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: We hear that some of our members have disturbed you with their demands and have unsettled your minds. They acted without authority from us, and so we have decided unanimously to elect delegates and to send them to you with Barnabas and Paul, men we highly respect who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:24-26 TJB1966).

It is clear that the apostles recognize only those preachers they have authorized to preach. If they are not authorized by the apostles, then they are false prophets. It follows then that any preachers of today not connected in any valid way to the lineage of Christian apostles since the time of the Twelve, they are false prophets. They acted without authority from us...

The Apostles laid their hands on those they elected to represent them. It is not for gesture's sake; but that involved the conferment of the Holy Spirit to those elected--something that only the Apostles, and those they delegated the power to do so, can do. In the institution of the seven deacons, Saint Mark recalled in the book of Acts: The whole assembly approved of this proposal and elected Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them (Acts 6: 5-6 TJB1966).

Without this election and laying of apostolic hands, there can be no authority to represent the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ to anyone.

It is here where the Protestant problem lies that, for many years had been neglected to think about by the Protestants themselves. Without that Holy Order coming from the Apostles, there can be no legitimate and authentic Christianity coming out from any unauthorized preachers of "Christian teachings."

That is also the very root of the Protestant tradition that pushed them to seek rationalization of their legitimacy to the written Scriptures. They have to claim that only the Scriptures are acceptable, and not the Apostolic authority to teach because they knew they have lost that ascendancy from the apostles of Christ. Without the Scriptures to hold on to, what else can they hold on to?

The Bible-only solution is what fuels a lot of heresies against the authentic Christian teachings later on (which is beyond the intention of this article to discuss). Suffice it to say then that this solution has always been a desperate solution to an otherwise unachored faith. Because without the Apostles of Christ to guarantee the authenticity of the Christian teachings, there can only be erroneous teachings to come through from any preacher's mouth.

One irrevocable mark of a true Christian then is apostolicity. He must be sacramentally baptized through the authorized representatives of the Twelve Apostles all through the centuries.