Have the claimed successors to the apostles adhered to the teachings and practices of Jesus Christ and his apostles?

A Catholic Dictionary states: “The Roman Church is Apostolic, because her doctrine is the faith once revealed to the Apostles, which faith she guards and explains, without adding to it or taking from it.” (London, 1957, W. E. Addis and T. Arnold, p. 176) Do the facts agree?

Identity of God

“The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), Vol. XV, p. 47.

“Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament . . . The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies.”—The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1976), Micropædia, Vol. X, p. 126.

“There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century.”—New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. XIV, p. 295.

Celibacy of the clergy

Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (Priestly Celibacy, 1967), endorsed celibacy as a requirement for the clergy, but he admitted that “the New Testament which preserves the teaching of Christ and the Apostles . . . does not openly demand celibacy of sacred ministers . . . Jesus Himself did not make it a prerequisite in His choice of the Twelve, nor did the Apostles for those who presided over the first Christian communities.”—The Papal Encyclicals 1958-1981 (Falls Church, Va.; 1981), p. 204.

1 Cor. 9:5, NAB: “Do we not have the right to marry a believing woman like the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” (“Cephas” is an Aramaic name given to Peter; see John 1:42. See also Mark 1:29-31, where reference is made to the mother-in-law of Simon, or Peter.)

1 Tim. 3:2, Dy: “It behoveth, therefore, a bishop to be . . . the husband of one wife [“married only once,” NAB].”

Before the Christian era, Buddhism required its priests and monks to be celibate. (History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, London, 1932, fourth ed., revised, Henry C. Lea, p. 6) Even earlier, the higher orders of the Babylonian priesthood were required to practice celibacy, according to The Two Babylons by A. Hislop.—(New York, 1943), p. 219.

1 Tim. 4:1-3, JB: “The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last times there will be some who will desert the faith and choose to listen to deceitful spirits and doctrines that come from the devils; . . . they will say marriage is forbidden.”

Separateness from the world

Pope Paul VI, when addressing the United Nations in 1965, said: “The peoples of the earth turn to the United Nations as the last hope of concord and peace; We presume to present here, together with Our own, their tribute of honor and of hope.”—The Pope’s Visit (New York, 1965), Time-Life Special Report, p. 26.

John 15:19, JB: “[Jesus Christ said:] If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because my choice withdrew you from the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Jas. 4:4, JB: “Don’t you realise that making the world your friend is making God your enemy?”

Resorting to weapons of war

Catholic historian E. I. Watkin writes: “Painful as the admission must be, we cannot in the interest of a false edification or dishonest loyalty deny or ignore the historical fact that Bishops have consistently supported all wars waged by the government of their country. I do not know in fact of a single instance in which a national hierarchy has condemned as unjust any war . . . Whatever the official theory, in practice ‘my country always right’ has been the maxim followed in wartime by Catholic Bishops.”—Morals and Missiles (London, 1959), edited by Charles S. Thompson, pp. 57, 58.

Matt. 26:52, JB: “Jesus then said, ‘Put your sword back, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.’”

1 John 3:10-12, JB: “In this way we distinguish the children of God from the children of the devil: anybody . . . not loving his brother is no child of God’s. . . . We are to love one another; not to be like Cain, who belonged to the Evil One and cut his brother’s throat.”

In the light of the foregoing, have those who claim to be successors to the apostles really taught and practiced what Christ and his apostles did?

Will humans be permitted by God to ruin the earth by what some call a “thermonuclear Armageddon”?

Ps. 96:10: “Jehovah himself has become king. The productive land [Hebrew, te·velʹ; the earth, as fertile and inhabited, the habitable globe] also becomes firmly established so that it cannot be made to totter.”