Catholic "Inventions"

Boettner's list

Boettner's book, the "Bible" of anti-Catholicism, lists forty-five "inventions." Mixing true but misleading claims with misrepresentation, it makes the Church look strange and unsettles poorly instructed Catholics.

• Latin "imposed" by Gregory I in 600. The Church reached the Latin West in apostolic times; there were Christians in Caesar's household (Philippians 4:22). Worship was in the vernacular, Greek or Latin, and Latin was used long before 600. Calling it "imposed" is a rhetorical device.
• "Baptism of bells" in 965. New church bells were blessed with a ceremony resembling baptism, popularly so called. No one thought bells received a sacrament.
• Transubstantiation "proclaimed" in 1215. The belief is ancient, from John 6, 1 Corinthians 11 and the Last Supper. The term was adopted at the Fourth Lateran Council (not by the pope alone, as Boettner says) to exclude errors, just as "Trinity," first used by Theophilus of Antioch in 181, names an apostolic belief.
• The Bible forbidden by the "Council of Valencia," 1229. The Index was created in 1559, no council was held in Valencia, and the city was under the Moors until 1238. The Council of Toulouse in 1229 forbade a corrupt vernacular Bible published by the Albigensians, as a Protestant pastor might warn against the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation.
• The cup forbidden at Constance, 1414. Christ is wholly present in each species, so receiving one is a complete Communion. The restriction emphasized this against misunderstanding and prevented spilling the Precious Blood.

A living Church

Boettner gives no sources and assumes anything not plainly in the New Testament is sinister. Yet Fundamentalists have their own unbiblical customs: many forbid wine, though Jesus drank it (Luke 7:34) and made it his first miracle (John 2:1-11), and their ministers dress differently from their people. No church looks exactly like the first-century one. A living Church grows and matures, keeping its substance while understanding it more deeply. Why should it have fossilized at the end of the first century?