Historically it is the organization from which all other Christian groups evolved. UPDATE I really hate to respond to comments but I must protest about the comment from Lovelane that I am brainwashed. I am from the Depression Generation who learned to read and write and decide for themselves. I have read literally hundreds of works of history and I stand on my comment. I reviewed your comments and you have reviewed primarily television preachers. My suggestion is to turn off the tube and go to a library! If you look at the CV of most of those preachers, you will find they attended Goober Bible College for nine months and studied little but the Bible. Widen your horizons and read! History shows us that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have plugged along for about 2000 years and really don't show much sign of going away. History also shows that the various sects that split from Orthodoxy and Catholicism have a tendency to die out. I don't see why history shall not repeat itself. Protestantism in Europe, its birthplace, is on its last legs. Please look at all the sects and cults in my Christian divisions, sects & cults list. Some may linger for a thousand years but eventually shrivel away. ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I noticed that Lovelane removed the comments about me and I accept that. I would suggest that history should be a part of many if not most schools of theology. Education and learning are a wonderful things and are not opposed to faith or even the Bible. After all were not the Bible, faith, learning and education created by God? If so, ultimatley, how could these things be opposed to each other? SECOND ADDITONAL UPDATE: I notice in the comments below that there was a situation where true Christians were running for their lives from the Catholic holocaust that ran for centuries. I wonder where that was? While the Catholic and Orthodox peoples were defending the very existence of Christianity from the onslaughts of Mohammed's followers and other infidels, the ancestors of most Protestants in the world today were plunged into heathen darkness and worshipping bloody idols, or groves of trees, or stones, or cutting the hearts out of people while still alive, or eating them in ritualistic orgies, etc. Where were these true Christians hiding out? Read that old heathen Gibbon in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to broaden your horizon and perhaps get your feet wet into the truth! Without the victories of those Catholic Popes, Emperors, Kings and the Orthodox Roman Emperors and Despots, holding the line, I daresay most so-called Christians today would be reading the Koran and praying towards Mecca rather then worrying if there is a pre-trib or a post-trib rapture, speaking in tongues and other rites and rituals! THIRD UPDATE: I love this debate about Catholics/anti-Catholics. I too have been delivered, but from a Calvinist background and the older I get the more high church I get. My knowledge about theology is limited but my knowledge of history and literature is strong. I own about twenty different versions of the Bible and you know what folks, each is the same except for updated language. I don't know where this allegation that the denomination's Bibles are different comes from. As to interpretations of the Good Book, increasingly I am drawn to historical religious experts rather than hack tv preachers from Goober Bible Colleges who probably graduated from high school. I guess I would go with Thomas Aquinas as opposed to Jimmy Swaggart, for instance. Looking at this dispensationalist and fundamentalist crowd now braying on the airwaves, their theology has only been around for maybe a century or more. It's funny how the USA throws up these cults! There must be something in the water. To advocate that their interpretation of the Bible is correct and 2000 years of learned discourse on the same subject is wrong, is laughable! After reading all these postings about this and that, supposedly springing from the Bible, I am thinking of looking in the yellow pages for the Latin Mass! Oliver Cromwell when he slaughtered the helpless garrisons at Drogheda or Wexford in 1649 was following the same interpretation of the Gospel that I see in some postings on this site. Was he right? Was the Holy Ghost working throught old Ollie? I am glad I have my guns! Please look at my Chistian issues list. I dug up just about every old heresy, whether it be trinitarian, or Christological or just plain goofy, and the responses based, yes on the Bible, have been all over the board. That should tell us something! My historical comment has created a firestorm! Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice!