Growing up I heard the expression several times: “So they led ya to believe.”
In other words, if you believed something contrary to what they believed you had been deceived by others who hold the same view. Now of course, just analizing the statement we find that it is highly condescending and arrogant, as it is used to belittle another and presumes that they are right in their own views.
However, the principle of the statement - that people can be misled - is a valid concern. Ironically, those who used this statement around me when I was a youth were Protestants who had a strong dislike for anything Catholic.
Why did they hate the Catholic Church so much? Precisely because they were “led to believe” that The Church is something that it is not!
In my last blog about Facing Family & Convert Books I mention that after the Protestant Revolt people began demonizing the Catholic Church in order to justify the sin of their division. Calling the papacy (the office of the pope) the “anti-Christ” was just one of these tactics. Biblically and historically a good Christian scholar can point out the papacy in the New Testament (starting with the Apostle Peter), its perpetuation through history (265 popes since the first century), and its practical nature (as the “final authority” to unify Christians doctrinally).
IN OTHER WORDS, just because some people call the pope an “anti-Christ” doesn’t mean he is. In fact, such statements are quite foolish, since the popes have always taught Christians to draw near to Jesus Christ and to prayer.
The real dilemma for anti-Catholic Protestants is bound up in their own misconceptions of the Catholic Church, of Catholic practice, and of what they were “led to believe” concerning their view of what Christianity is “supposed to look like.”
For the first 1,500 years of Church History there was 1 Church. The Protestant Revolt changed that. Now Christians are highly divided and many are very confused about “Christianity” and especially “The Church.” A good study of Church History and of Ecclesiology (the theology of the nature of the Church) can help.