CATHOLICISM’S ARTIFICIAL UNITY

A Church is a unity. There is visible unity and there is invisible or spiritual unity. Visible unity is unity that we see – like in a football team - and the other is unity of intent that cannot be seen. For an example of the latter, a Catholic who believes in Protestantism would really be a Protestant though there is no visible unity with it. You can have invisible unity without visible unity but you cannot have visible unity without invisible unity. A football team that has lots of disagreements under the surface is only a fake unity. So, you can have a visible and invisible Church. The Church dishonestly uses the texts in the New Testament that command the Church to be one people and one family ignoring the fact that unity does not necessarily consist in visible unity though it ought to (page 28, Roman Catholic Claims). The Church being human could not stay one even if all were of one faith for factions would still oppose one another.
 
The question

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the only visible organisation and unity established by God. The question we want to answer is, “Is the visible unity claimed for the Roman Catholic Church real unity?” When a religion claims to be the true religion it claims to be in visible unity, to be one religion. The true Church has to be one for it is several Churches if it is not. The Roman Catholic Church declares that she is one in faith and in government. And she perceives this as evidence that she is the one true Church as if other religions couldn’t mention their unity as evidence.
 
What makes a Church a Church?
 
Catholicism informs us that it could still be the true Church if it was totally marinating in immorality so it is what it teaches that determines whether or not it is this Church. Moreover, it is the one true Church even if all the members hate each other and are not at one so it is agreement in matters of belief that makes the true Church one.  

A sinful Church cannot be one
 
Another reason that Catholic unity is nothing more than nominal is that if mortal sin exists then the Church is disunited for she regards mortal sinners as still being Catholics. Mortal sin is the complete turning of one’s back on God and by implication, one’s neighbour, for love of God and love of neighbour are mutually dependent (teaching of the First Epistle of John in the Bible). In particular, mortal rejects proper intimate and spiritual unity with the Church. How could a mortal sinner possibly be a Catholic or in union with the Church in any proper way? The sinner might call himself a Catholic and go to Mass but his unity with the Church is purely outward.
 
God is infinitely perfect and so he hates sin infinitely meaning it is intending to offer infinite disrespect to God. If sin exists all sin is mortal which means there are no Catholics. The mortal sinner turns away from truth for God is truth therefore his faith has been renounced and replaced by artificial faith.

No true visible Church
 
If the Roman Catholic Church is not the true Church, and we have proved this to be so, then some say there is no true visible Church and Jesus Christ was a false prophet for his prediction that the gates of Hell would never prevail against his Church failed (Matthew 16:18). This prophecy uses the expression gates of Sheol and Sheol meant death in the Bible. The prophecy may just mean that the Church could die but death will not triumph over it for it could be raised up to life again in the resurrection of the dead. Also, Jesus could be with false Christians to guide them back to the truth or closer to it so his promise that he would abide with us forever would not be annulled by full and total apostasy. God says that the prophet who makes a mistake and gives a revelation that is not from the Lord is a fraud that should be ignored and killed (Deuteronomy 18).
 
When most Christians think the Bible says the true Church will never leave the earth, it follows that God does not approve of their faith in Jesus for they impute false revelation to him and are following what they see as a false prophet but refuse to admit it. This is true even if he is the Son of God for they don’t know. We are talking subjective, not objective, here.
 
The sacraments of the Church only work if the minister intends to be a channel of grace. A priest can pour water on a baby and say the magic words that are used for the sacrament and be merely faking. If he refuses to give grace then the baby is not validly baptised. It is the same with sacraments such as ordination. The Church must have many members who only think they have been baptised be the one visible true Church. The Church must have many priests and bishops who only think they are ordained right. They have no evidence. They are really only hoping that they are baptised and ordained! What a precarious unity! This unity is so weak that it doesn’t deserve to be called unity.
 
The Church must be claiming to be the visible true Church just to attract members. Why? Because the claim doesn’t make sense but people are discouraged from thinking about religion so the Church gets away with it too much. The Roman Church must in its heart agree with the Protestant concept that the true Church is invisible to us for we don’t know who belongs to it even if they say they do so only God sees the true Church and knows who is a member. 

Not one in faith or government
 
The Catholic Church is not one in faith or in government. Therefore it is not a Church but a pretend Church. The proofs for this prove the same about any other group that claims to be the true Church like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If Jesus was the Son of God he did not establish a visible true Church for he could not. It is nonsense to say that a Church that is not a Church could have the marks of universality, holiness and apostolicity. The other three marks of the true Church depend on the universality or Catholicity one. Yet the infallible Nicene Creed speaks of one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Many accuse the Catholics of arrogance when they claim to constitute the true Church. They counter that Jesus said it not them and he is God so God said it. So they are telling us that they are not saying it but they are only saying that God says it. But even if Jesus said his true Church would never leave the earth there is no guarantee that the Roman Catholic Church is the same Church that he founded. A fake pope could be elected one way or another. You cannot see if the Church is run by real believers which would be necessary for preserving the authenticity of the Church for example, many men in the college of Cardinals could be fakes and not Catholics in their hearts. Therefore to believe in the Catholic Church headed by Rome is really to put faith in man not God.

The Church does not have the right government to be from God because we are supposed to believe God not man. Therefore the Church is divorced from God. Jesus never said that his apostles would remain true to the faith he taught forever. Even if Roman Catholicism is the apostolic Church it is still no guarantee of authenticity. The Church is advocating arrogance with its claim that Catholics are part of the true Church for only a handful of Catholics are able to give well-thought out reasons why the Church is true and they still manage to be wrong and flout logic. You evidently need an encyclopaedic knowledge of history, canon law, logic, ecclesiology (theology of the Church) and scripture to be able to properly defend the authenticity of the Church and nobody can have that amount of knowledge. You would need to know the minute by minute history of the popes and the Councils of the Church and their participants to be sure that there was no chance they could have ridden the Church into inauthenticity for it only takes one second for that to happen. It takes only one secret thought to destroy the work of God to make a pope lose his legitimacy and make the Church illegitimate. What claims God made are irrelevant. The Church says that God promised that the Church would never lose the faith as if that settles it! You would need to check it out first to be sure that it happened so then you could conclude that God maybe did make the promise. The claim to be the true Church is incompatible with humility. Anybody who does not claim to be in the true Church but who claims to have the only true saviour Jesus is really no better. How do they know that he is the only plausible candidate?

A unity between deceived people who have many cheating leaders is artificial because relationships need to be based on trust and honesty to be real. They are based on open-mindedness and helping each other to find their own path even if it means going out of the Church. The deceptions of the Church will lead to sectarianism and cannot lead to much else despite the work for unity. Those Catholics who say that the evidence for their religion is sufficient but not very convincing and then to claim to be the true Church must ask themselves if they possess the sin of arrogance in their hearts. The true Church then would have to be the most convincing one and pass logical tests. You need a miraculous pile of knowledge to claim to be the most convincing sect and it is vulgar to claim to be the true Church without it. 

Finally
 
There is more to unity than just being put through certain rites of initiation and carrying a label. Catholicism's unity is artificial and superficial. The unity is largely a screen made up of some cultural elements advertised as religion.