Despite counterclaims, the logic of Catholicism is really quite straightforward and Biblical. God made man in His image and likeness to live, to love, to rule and reign in communion with Him. Man decided to go his own way, fell into sin, plunging all his descendants into the same plight. In His love, God sought man to restore him to the original order and purpose in and for which he was created.
Throughout ages past, He unfolded His master plan, entering into a covenant bond of friendship and communion with man, represented in a people, a society-hierarchically structured, through which He chose to demonstrate as well as transmit his message of love and forgiveness, ultimately located in a Person Who is one with Him, to be revealed at the appointed time. Entering into the world He made, through this divinely established society, and taking on the very flesh of man so as to become one of him, in the Man Jesus, He began preaching the Kingdom of God-revealing Himself as the promised One . But His own rejected Him and His message, and so He established a new society, a new kingdom, an everlasting kingdom foreseen in the Old Age--one that would extend to the perimeter of the globe, incorporating all peoples, and last to the end of time and beyond, forever. Over this new society (ekklesia-church), He appointed a group of shepherd-leaders with one of them having primacy. He gave them His Spirit and promised to be with them, leading them into all truth as they went forth teaching with (His) authority, speaking in His name, and baptizing all nations, to the end of the world.
Before these men passed off the scene at the close of their earthly lives, they ordained through the laying on of hands, those men who would succeed them in their apostolic ministries. From this time on through the centuries, the Church has carried on the mission which her Lord and His delegates began. Through various times and troubles, She, though wounded with battle scars, some caused from without, some from within, has pressed on. As every organism is small in its beginning, though through nourishment and time develops into a more mature being, so this kingdom-society, ruled over by the King ascended into the Heavens and infused with His life giving Spirit, has weathered the storms of history, speaking to every century's issues with the voice of authority, the voice of Truth.
Yes, She looks different than at her inception, but this is to be expected of a healthy, growing organism. What has developed has not been the truth (which cannot change), but the depth of understanding and the recognition of the certainty of that truth and its application to the world, its people and problems. It all has been, well, very much like a mustard seed growing into a tree, an acorn into an oak...
