One of the greatest early problems of Church History was a rigorism that did not wish to allow Penance to have the role that it must in the life of sinful Christians. Dr. John Rao shows how the Popes fought this rigorism from the earliest times, and how Donatism, which only wished "the pure" to guide the Church, involves a failure to understand the real nature of the Mystical Body of Christ. Taken from: Early Christianity and Late Antiquity - 1993 VonHildebrand Institute