Off the Shelf 236 – Joe Heschmeyer
This week Joe Heschmeyer joins me to discuss one of my favorite topics, the early church. Listen in as we peel back the layers of time and take a look at the significance of what the Early Church had to say about the faith. Grab a copy of Joe’s book The Early Church was the Catholic Church here.
From the publisher Catholic Answers
When it comes to the history of Christianity, the Catholic Church makes a pretty bold claim: that the earliest Christians were Catholics―and that their beliefs and practices have continued unbroken all the way to the present-day Church. But the Last Supper was a long time ago, and for hundreds of years Protestants have been attacking Catholic claims about Christianity’s historic origins, traditions, and practices. They prefer to believe that the earliest, “purest” Church had much more in common with their own congregations and doctrines. So, how can you be sure the Catholic Church has it right? You’ll get your answer from Joe Heschmeyer (Pope Peter, A Man Called Joseph), who deftly joins the Catholic past and present in The Early Church Was the Catholic Church. Focusing on the first two centuries (before any Roman “apostasy” is said to have taken place) and on bedrock principles of Christian belief, authority, and worship, Heschmeyer digs deep into the words and actions of those who lived right after the apostles to refute anti-Catholic claims of how the Faith was practiced “back then.” Early Christianity is not some mist-enshrouded island of the distant past that was waiting for the Protestant Reformers to rediscover it. No, it’s recognizable and familiar: the beginning of a Spirit-guided line of faith leading directly to today’s Catholic Church. If you want to learn to defend that Church at its roots―or if you’re just curious about what our eldest Christian brothers and sisters believed―you can expect in these pages to be richly rewarded.
Bio
Previously a litigator in Washington D.C. and then a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Joe Heschmeyer now works as a religious instructor at Holy Family School of Faith, whose mission is to lead people to Jesus through Mary by means of friendship, good conversation, and the rosary. He blogs at Shameless Popery and co-hosts The Catholic Podcast. He is also the author of Who Am I, Lord?: Finding Your Identity in Christ. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and daughter and son.
10 thoughts on “The Early Church was the Catholic Church: Off the Shelf 236 with Joe Heschmeyer”
If you get the protestant-translated Schaff 38 volumes of the works of the Fathers of the Church [availlable free digitally on line eg from site New Advent] and you try to go thru and highlight each instance in which the church is referred to as the “Catholic church,” on some pages there will be 3, 5, even 10 such instances. And several Fathers describe the heretics desire to refer to their heretical sects as the “catholic” church. Guy, Texas
ps: and it is almost laughable to go thru those volumes and find any page with voluminous footnotes – that is where you can often find true catholic doctrine – because that is where the protestant scholars attempt to argue away the “hard sayngs” of the church
Doesn’t the term “catholic” mean universal, not necessarily the Roman Catholic Church? My longtime friend, who is a Catholic priest, had to agree.
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Just wondering!
Jesus quoted from the Old Testament. The New Testament was written by men who actually had a direct relationship with Jesus.
Why should we put later writings, including the CCC, above eyewitness accounts from the apostles, or the Old Testament writings?
I don’t think many Popes would recognize the 12 apostles, married, illiterate Jews who took their wives with them when preaching and never considered Peter their leader.
I don’t think that I ever heard this reading at mass.
1 Corinthians 9:1-14
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Chapter 9[a]
Paul’s Rights as an Apostle. 1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? 2 Although I may not be an apostle for others, certainly I am for you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
3 My defense against those who would pass judgment on me[b] is this. 4 [c]Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a Christian wife, as do the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas? 6 Or is it only myself and Barnabas who do not have the right not to work? 7 Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating its produce? Or who shepherds a flock without using some of the milk from the flock? 8 Am I saying this on human authority, or does not the law also speak of these things? 9 It is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is God concerned about oxen, 10 or is he not really speaking for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope, and the thresher in hope of receiving a share. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed for you, is it a great thing that we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more?
Reason for Not Using His Rights. Yet we have not used this right.[d] On the contrary, we endure everything so as not to place an obstacle to the gospel of Christ. 13 [e]Do you not know that those who perform the temple services eat [what] belongs to the temple, and those who minister at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? 14 In the same way, the Lord ordered that those who preach the gospel should live by the gospel.
Read full chapter
Footnotes
9:1–27 This chapter is an emotionally charged expansion of Paul’s appeal to his own example in 1 Cor 8:13; its purpose is to reinforce the exhortation of 1 Cor 8:9. The two opening questions introduce the themes of Paul’s freedom and his apostleship (1 Cor 9:1), themes that the chapter will develop in reverse order, 1 Cor 9:1–18 treating the question of his apostleship and the rights that flow from it, and 1 Cor 9:19–27 exploring dialectically the nature of Paul’s freedom. The language is highly rhetorical, abounding in questions, wordplays, paradoxes, images, and appeals to authority and experience. The argument is unified by repetitions; its articulations are highlighted by inclusions and transitional verses.
9:3 My defense against those who would pass judgment on me: the reference to a defense (apologia) is surprising, and suggests that Paul is incorporating some material here that he has previously used in another context. The defense will touch on two points: the fact of Paul’s rights as an apostle (1 Cor 9:4–12a and 1 Cor 9:13–14) and his nonuse of those rights (1 Cor 9:12b and 1 Cor 9:15–18).
9:4–12a Apparently some believe that Paul is not equal to the other apostles and therefore does not enjoy equal privileges. His defense on this point (here and in 1 Cor 9:13–14) reinforces the assertion of his apostolic character in 1 Cor 9:2. It consists of a series of analogies from natural equity (7) and religious custom (1 Cor 9:13) designed to establish his equal right to support from the churches (1 Cor 9:4–6, 11–12a); these analogies are confirmed by the authority of the law (1 Cor 9:8–10) and of Jesus himself (1 Cor 9:14).
9:12 It appears, too, that suspicion or misunderstanding has been created by Paul’s practice of not living from his preaching. The first reason he asserts in defense of this practice is an entirely apostolic one; it anticipates the developments to follow in 1 Cor 9:19–22. He will give a second reason in 1 Cor 9:15–18.
9:13–14 The position of these verses produces an interlocking of the two points of Paul’s defense. These arguments by analogy (1 Cor 9:13) and from authority (1 Cor 9:14) belong with those of 1 Cor 9:7–10 and ground the first point. But Paul defers them until he has had a chance to mention “the gospel of Christ” (1 Cor 9:12b), after which it is more appropriate to mention Jesus’ injunction to his preachers and to argue by analogy from the sacred temple service to his own liturgical service, the preaching of the gospel (cf. Rom 1:9; 15:16).
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
I’ve never heard that passage read either. It’ s not in the Lectionary.
Our daughter, Joy, was a lector in our parish during her high school years. The same readings were presented in a three-year cycle.
No need to buy Joe’s book. Read the Bible instead.
I don’t believe that there is any question as to the historic continuity of the Catholic Church to its beginnings in the New Testament in spite of the splits and schisms along the way. The Protestants are connected historically even though there may not be the apostolic succession of bishops as viewed by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Many Protestants do try to emulate the New Testament Church because of their emphasis on Scripture. There was lots of Holy Spirit power in the Church at that time. It would be good to revisit the Church in the New Testament to see if there is anything that we can improve on in order to bring the present Church into that place of power.