It has been 3 and a half years that I have been working in the UK. Since the beginning I had tried to find a group of Catholic adult people who were meeting and praying together using the Bible, which is something I was used to do in Italy.
That proved very difficult: the answer I was usually receiving was something like
1. "we don't have such groups"Then speaking with the other priest 1. would have followed.
2. "please speak to (name of another priest)!"
It happened, and more than once. I blame the fact that my natural language is not English (it is also true that my English has improved during these years).
Anyway, the fact is that I had become so frustrated and disappointed by such behaviour that I had started to have a bad idea of the Catholic Church of Edinburgh.
I even thought to leave the Catholic Church. Fortunately, I continued to participate to the sacraments and during the Mass, at the Creed, I could not but think that I was still believing in those assertions (some doubt about the "One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic.." started to appear, though).
Given that I think that my faith in Jesus is one of the key points of my life, and given that I usually have a good sense of smell for books (mistakes in this area are quite expensive, though...), I started to look over the Internet in order to find something that could give me some answers.
And here the book: The gnostic gospels by Elaine Pagels (1979). The introduction alone is more fascinating than a film of the Indiana Jones saga.
The underlying thesis is that Christianity at the beginning was presenting much more variety, which she briefly and appropriately outlines. Such variety disappeared when the Church started to face the social and political problems related to the development of every institution.
She is not Catholic and looks quite attracted by some of the gnostic themes (e.g. "know yourself"), however she is extremely fair and reports in a very reliable way documents and resulting debates on the effects of the gnostic creed (she is more critical towards gnosticism in her subsequent books).
It's a risky reading, if you want; however, it confirmed me in the belief of the apostolic succession.
