Continuous existence in the same tangible, continuously identifiable form.
People have been able to point to a building and say “there’s the Catholic Church” since the 1st century. People have been able to point to a guy and say “there’s an ordained Catholic bishop” since the 1st century.
Non-Christian miracles:
Yes these are ancient religions, but there is no one institutional structure within them that matches the institutional integrity (or continuity if that makes more sense) of the Catholic Church.
Who taught you this nonsense?
THIS:
Integrity: the state of being whole and undivided
NOT THIS:
Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness
??? Who taught you otherwise?
So, what hard evidence convinced you to become a Catholic? So far you’ve named attributes that many sects share, and “institutional integrity”…but you have yet to provide any evidence that supports your sect and your sect alone.
Ahhh, so the Catholic Church, like the mafia, has integrity. Got it.
Institutional integrity? Catholics? What are you smoking?
Like moving child molesting priests from parish to parish, and never involving the police in reported cases criminal sexual assault of children?
Or every single piece of the hierarchy STILL solely bent on covering it up or praying it away.
What the Catholics did to the First Nations people of my country is shocking and criminal by any measure. What they want is an apology. Nope. Never. Not ever gonna happen.
I don’t think you understand what the word integrity means.
Hinduism
Zorastrianism
Judaism
Jainism
Confucionism
Buddhism
Taoism
Shintoism
All of these have been around a lot longer than your sect.
Please point out the ones that have crumbled.
I’m not sure what you mean by “hard evidence”, but my desire is to follow Jesus. Since I believe that Jesus is God, and since God is good, he deserves my worship and obedience.
Jesus told his disciples in John 6 that his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. Whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood will live forever.
Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16 that he would be the “rock” on which the Church would be built, and that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church.
Jesus instituted the mass at his last supper with his disciples in which he gives us his flesh and blood to eat under the appearance of bread and wine.
Given these events from the Gospels, where else would I go but the Catholic Church?
Again I repeat:
THIS:
Integrity: the state of being whole and undivided
NOT THIS:
Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness
These are religions, not institutions. I am not referring to the Christian religion, I am referring to the Catholic Church as an organized, cohesive, tangible institution.
I really don’t see how this is so hard to understand.
Why would the former draw you to worship that particular sect, and not the latter??
Faith through institutionalism?
Please explain moving child molesting priests parish to parish for years, as it relates to moral uprightness.
That behaviour, standard procedure in the Catholic Church for decades, is the OPPOSITE of moral uprightness.
How is that NOT self evident?
And you believe that the oral tradition that passed down those stories for up to hundreds of years before anyone bothered to write them down are 100% accurate to their origin? Are you familiar with the children’s game “telephone”? Why does no one ever remember the point of that game?
Here’s a fun story: Elvis was fond of banana and peanut butter sandwiches. His mother insists she always made them with bacon. Elvis’ former personal chef, and Kevin Kern, public relations director for Elvis Presley Enterprises, both insist that while the man loved his bacon, there was never any bacon on this particular sandwich. We are talking about a man who lived concurrently with a lot of other people who are still alive, we have reports from people who actually knew the man and prepared the sandwich for him, and they can’t even agree on a simple 3-4 ingredient sandwich.
Think about that.
It doesn’t. There are bad people in the Church, but there are also saints.
No, it was an anecdote.