Welcome back to Jim's Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And since my recent debate with LDS apologist Jacob Hansen,

there's been a lot of great conversation on this idea of whether the church built by Jesus Christ fell into an apostasy.

But today, I don't want to talk to the global church. I want to get very particular. Did the church in Rome,

the church built up by the apostles Peter and Paul, stray from the true faith, and if so,

when? Now, in making the case that the Roman Church has actually kept the faith, there are really

just two facts you've got to get straight. And these are facts that I think are pretty easy to

prove from history and facts that all Christians really should agree upon. But if these two facts

are right, then I'm going to suggest it's a strong

reason we should all be part of the Catholic Church instead of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

saints or any of the various Protestant denominations or even the Eastern Orthodox Church or the

Oriental Orthodox Church. Now, before I explain those two facts, I want to say a quick word of Thanksgiving

at the beginning of 2026. Last year was an

incredible one for this channel. Subscribers more than doubled, views nearly tripled compared

to the year before. My team, really just Mike and Vanessa, have been working behind the scenes on

everything from upgrading the studio, improving the production quality, crafting shorts,

and a bunch of other stuff, generally making

it easier to see here and enjoy shameless popery. So I am grateful to them. And I'm also grateful

to all of you, whose financial support over at Shamelessjo.com, makes it possible for me to have a

team supporting me, as well as for everybody else who's simply liking, sharing, subscribing,

and most especially

praying for me and for this channel. Okay, so with that said, let's start with a concrete

question. In the first century, were Christians supposed to be part of the visible church

...