I've read a thousand ill-informed and unfactual arguments presented on CF, all right. And the subject is so big that to start into it again is asking a lot, but I'll summarize.
The church of Christ is a movement, not a club. To think of it as a gated community that allows some in and considers others to be "outsiders" is not in accordance with Jesus' teachings. His church is his people, not any legal institution. If you are thinking of authenticity along linear lines, there are several churches that began before there was a church in Rome, before Peter or Paul got there. And if you were to say that the Roman Catholic Church is older than the Orthodox Eastern Churches, which those "traditionalists" do, history is totally unsympathetic to that notion. If you wanted to say that the RCC existed from Apostolic times, consider that no one knew of a Pope or even the concept of a Pope until several centuries after Christ. Even the famous Matt 16:18 that is interpreted incorrectly in order to support a claim of Papal Supremacy was not used by the Roman church or Bishops until the 4th century when it was decided that it could be employed to support the then-growing claims of the Roman bishop to a universal jurisdiction never known in the church before. The Roman Church is the one Christian denomination that has accounted for more schisms and more people involved in such than any other (speaking of the ideal of one church). It evolved, like most institutions with many of its most characteristic doctrines not being known until the Middle Ages (Purgatory, Transubstantiation, Seven Sacraments, etc.). This is not the church Christ founded, not just like that. It is part of it, of course, but only part, and it's a part that continued to add to the Apostolic faith over the centuries. Some changes are not especially troubling, but along with them came corrupt practices, putting human decisions alongside revelation as equal authorities, placing the clergy between God and Man, refusing the Bible to ordinary Christians, selling indulgences and fake relics, and much more that was neither proper nor Apostolic. In time, Catholics demanded reform and a return to the standards of the Early Church. They were driven out of the Western church structure, of course, because the institutional church declined to correct itself. Ironically, the RCC has recently adopted most of the reforms that the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century asked for and were persecuated for requesting!
And now for what makes for the true church....Is it better for everyone to be united under a church organization that does wrong OR is it better to take a stand against that wrong, even if the powers that be kick you out of their little ecclesiastical corner of the world? IMO holding to the true FAITH is what Christ intended, not being in one organization even though it has gone away from that faith.
