Jeffrey Johnson Supporter

Please check out these two sites, as there are different teachings regarding the answer to the question: 

Catholic Church - Wikipedia

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Catholic_Church
What is the origin of the Roman Catholic Church?

GotQuestions.org
https://www.gotquestions.org › origin-Catholic-church

In the New Testament, there is no mention of the papacy, worship/adoration of Mary (or the immaculate conception of Mary, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the assumption of Mary, or Mary as co-redemptrix and mediatrix), petitioning saints in heaven for their prayers, apostolic succession, the ordinances of the church functioning as sacraments, infant baptism, confession of sin to a priest, purgatory, indulgences, or the equal authority of church tradition and Scripture. So, if the origin of the Catholic Church is not in the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, what is the true origin of the Catholic Church?

For the first 280 years of Christian history, Christianity was banned by the Roman Empire, and Christians were terribly persecuted. 

This changed after the "conversion" of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine provided religious toleration with the Edict of Milan in AD 313, effectively lifting the ban on Christianity. Later, in AD 325, Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea to unify Christianity. Constantine envisioned Christianity as a religion that could unite the Roman Empire, which was then beginning to fragment and divide. While this may have seemed like a positive development for the Christian church, the results were anything but. Just as Constantine refused to embrace the Christian faith fully but continued many of his pagan beliefs and practices, so the Christian church that Constantine and his successors promoted gradually became a mixture of true Christianity and Roman paganism.

Most Roman Catholic beliefs and practices regarding Mary are absent from the Bible. Where did those beliefs come from? The Roman Catholic view of Mary has far more in common with the Isis mother-goddess religion of Egypt than it does with anything taught in the New Testament. Interestingly, the first hints of Catholic Mariology appear in the writings of Origen, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, which was the focal point of Isis worship.

Roman Catholicism has "saints" to whom one can pray to gain a particular blessing. For example, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla is the patron saint of fertility. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals. There are multiple patron saints of healing and comfort. Nowhere in Scripture is there even a hint of this. Just as the Roman pantheon of gods had a god of love, a god of peace, a god of war, a god of strength, a god of wisdom, etc., so the Catholic Church has a saint who is "in charge" over each of these and many other categories. Many Roman cities had a city-specific god, and the Catholic Church also provided "patron saints" for cities.

The idea that the Roman bishop is the vicar of Christ, the supreme leader of the Christian Church, is utterly foreign to the Word of God. The supremacy of the Roman bishop (the papacy) was created with the support of the Roman emperors. While most other bishops (and Christians) resisted the idea of the Roman bishop being supreme, the Roman bishop eventually rose to supremacy —again —due to the power and influence of the Roman emperors. After the western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, the popes took on the title that had previously belonged to the Roman emperors—Pontifex Maximus.

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