catholic

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The word catholic (derived via Late Latin catholicus, from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning "universal"^[1][2]) comes from the Greek phrase καθόλου (kath'holou), meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words κατά meaning "about" and όλος meaning "whole".^[3][4] The word in English can mean either "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing" or "of the Roman Catholic faith" as "relating to the historic doctrine and practice of the Western Church."^[5]

It was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope. In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. In non-ecclesiastical use, it derives its English meaning directly from its root, and is currently used to mean

• universal or of general interest;
• liberal, having broad interests, or wide sympathies^[6]; or
• inclusive, inviting and containing strong evangelism.

The term has been incorporated into the name of the largest Christian communion, the Roman Catholic Church, which consists of 23 churches sui iuris, in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. The largest of these, the Latin Rite, consists of nearly 95% of the population of the Roman Catholic Church; the remaining 5% consist of the 22 Eastern Catholic Churches.

Many other Christians sometimes use the term "catholic" (often with a lower-case letter "c") to refer not to the Roman Catholic Church alone but more broadly, to the Christian Church and all believers in Jesus Christ across the world and across the ages, regardless of denominational affiliation.^{[7] [8]} Generally, to avoid confusion between this concept and the Roman Catholic Church, above, theologians writing in English will refer to the former as the "Church catholic", using the lower-case.

The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, and some Methodists believe that their churches are catholic in the sense that they are in continuity with the original universal church founded by the Apostles, but the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches each maintain that their own denomination is the only original and universal church. In "Catholic Christendom" (including the Anglican Communion), bishops are considered the highest order of ministers within the Christian religion, as shepherds of unity in communion with the whole church and one another.^[9] Catholicity is considered one of Four Marks of the Church, the others being unity, sanctity, and apostolicity.^[10] according to the Nicene Creed of 381: "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church."

History of ecclesiastical use of "catholic"

Ignatius of Antioch

A letter written by Ignatius of Antioch to Christians in Smyrna^[11] around 106 is the earliest surviving witness to the use of the term Catholic Church (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8). By Catholic Church Ignatius designated the universal church. Ignatius considered that certain heretics of his time, who disavowed that Jesus was a material being who actually suffered and died, saying instead that "he only seemed to suffer" (Smyrnaeans, 2), were not really Christians.^[12] The term is also used in the Martyrdom of Polycarp in 155 and in the Muratorian fragment, about 177 .

Cyril of Jerusalem

Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386), venerated as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion, urged those he was instructing in the Christian faith: "If ever thou art sojourning in cities, inquire not simply where the Lord's House is (for the other sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens "houses of the Lord"), nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God" (Catechetical Lectures, XVIII, 26).^[13]

Theodosius I

The term Catholic Christians entered Roman Imperial law when Theodosius I, Emperor from 379 to 395, reserved that name for adherents of "that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff (Pope) Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria ...as for the others, since in our judgement they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles the name of churches." This law of 27 February 380 was included in Book 16 of the Codex Theodosianus.^[14] It established Catholic Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Augustine of Hippo

The use of the term Catholic to distinguish the "true" church from heretical groups is found also in Augustine who wrote:

"In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate (in Rome; here Augustine refers to the Petrine succession of the Pope).

"And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.

"Such then in number and importance are the precious ties belonging to the Christian name which keep a believer in the Catholic Church, as it is right they should ... With you, where there is none of these things to attract or keep me... No one shall move me from the faith which binds my mind with ties so many and so strong to the Christian religion... For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church."

— St. Augustine (354–430): Against the Epistle of Manichaeus called Fundamental, chapter 4: Proofs of the Catholic Faith.^[15]

St Vincent of Lerins

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A contemporary of Augustine, St. Vincent of Lerins, wrote in 434 (under the pseudonym Peregrinus) a work known as the Commonitoria ("Memoranda"). While insisting that, like the human body, church doctrine develops while truly keeping its identity (sections 54-59, chapter XXIII), he stated: "In the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense 'catholic,' which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors" (section 6, end of chapter II) .

Western and Eastern Catholics

The Latin Rite of the Catholic Church and the twenty-two Eastern Catholic Churches consider that they continue and are charged with preserving the catholic tradition as handed down through the Early Church Fathers. Eastern Catholic churches are those particular churches that, in full communion with the Bishop of Rome — the Pope — while remaining autonomous (in Latin, sui iuris), preserve the liturgical, theological and devotional traditions of the various Eastern Christian churches with which they are associated. They include the Ukrainian, Greek, Greek Melkite, Maronite, Ruthenian Byzantine, Coptic Catholic, Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara, Chaldean and Ethiopic Rites. Under Pope John Paul II the Catholic Church issued a book of beliefs under the title Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states: "To believe that the Church is 'holy' and 'catholic,' and that she is 'one' and 'apostolic' (as the Nicene Creed adds), is inseparable from belief in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."^[16]

The term Catholic Church is associated with the whole of the church that is led by the Roman Pontiff, currently Pope Benedict XVI, and whose over one billion adherents are about half of the estimated 2.1 billion Christians. Other Christian churches also lay claim to the description catholic as a theological quality, including the Eastern Orthodox Church and those churches possessing the historic episcopate (bishops), such as those in the Anglican Communion. Some of them claim to be the one true Catholic Church from which, in their view, other Christians, including those in communion with the Pope, have fallen away.^[17][18]

Many of those who apply the term "catholic church" to all Christians indiscriminately object to this use of the term to designate what they view as only one church within what they see as the "whole" catholic church. However, the church in communion with the Bishop of Rome, both in its Western form and in that of the Eastern Catholic Churches, has always considered itself to be the historic Catholic Church, with all others as "non-Catholics" and regularly refers to itself as "the Catholic Church". This practice is an application of the belief that not all who claim to be Christians are part of the Catholic Church, as Ignatius of Antioch, the earliest known writer to use the term "Catholic Church", considered that certain heretics who called themselves Christians only seemed to be such.^[19]

Though normally distinguishing itself from other churches by calling itself the "Catholic Church", it also uses the description "Roman Catholic Church". Even apart from documents drawn up jointly with other churches, it has sometimes, in view of the central position it attributes to the See of Rome, adopted the adjective "Roman" for the whole church, Eastern as well as Western, as in the papal encyclicals Divini illius Magistri and Humani generis. Another example is its self-description as the "Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church"^[20] in the 24 April 1870 Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith of the First Vatican Council. In all of these documents it also refers to itself both simply as the Catholic Church and by other names. The Eastern Catholic Churches, while united with Rome in the faith, have their own traditions and laws, differing from those of the Latin Rite and those of other Eastern Catholic Churches.

Divergent usages

The Eastern Orthodox Church also identifies itself as Catholic, as in the title of The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church. So does the Coptic Church, which, being part of Oriental Orthodoxy, is not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church and considers itself "the True Church of the Lord Jesus Christ".^[21]

Anglicans and Old Catholics see themselves as a communion within the Catholic Church and Lutherans see themselves as "a reform movement within the greater church catholic".

Roman Catholics view the Bishop of Rome as the "Successor of Peter" to serve as universal pastor to the entire Church, though all the particular Churches in communion with him have their own distinct pastoral heads, who, taken as a college in union with the Successor of Peter, are considered to be the subject of supreme power in the universal Church.^[22] Some Anglicans and Old Catholics accept that the Bishop of Rome is primus inter pares among all primates^{[citation needed]}, but they embrace Conciliarism as a necessary check on what they consider to be the "excesses" of Ultramontanism.

Recent historic ecumenical efforts on the part of the Catholic Church have focused on healing the rupture between the Western ("Catholic") and the Eastern ("Orthodox") churches. Pope John Paul II often spoke of his great desire that the Catholic Church "once again breathe with both lungs",^[23][24] thus emphasizing that the Roman Catholic Church seeks to restore full communion with the separated Eastern churches.^[25]

After the East-West Schism, conventionally dated to 1054, a brief reunification was agreed to between the Pope and a number of Eastern Orthodox bishops at the Council of Florence. However, this agreement was denied by one of the EO bishops present, namely Mark of Ephesus, and the common folk of the EOC generally rejected said agreement as well. The present pope, Benedict XVI, has stated his wish to restore full unity with the Orthodox. The Roman Catholic Church considers that almost all of the ancient theological differences have been satisfactorily addressed (the Filioque clause, the nature of purgatory, etc.), and has declared that differences in traditional customs, observances and discipline are no obstacle to unity.^[26]

Other Western Christians

• Most Reformation and post-Reformation churches use the term catholic (often with a lower-case c) to refer to the belief that all Christians are part of one church regardless of denominational divisions; e.g., Chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession of Faith refers to the catholic or universal Church. It is in line with this interpretation, which applies the word catholic (universal) to no one denomination, that they understand the phrase "One Holy catholic and Apostolic Church" in the Nicene Creed, the phrase the Catholic faith in the Athanasian Creed and the phrase holy catholic church in the Apostles' Creed.

• The term is used also to mean those Christian churches that maintain that their episcopate can be traced unbrokenly back to the apostles and consider themselves part of a catholic (universal) body of believers. Among those who regard themselves as catholic (lower-case "c"), but not Roman Catholic (upper-case "c"), are Anglicans and some Lutherans, who stress that they are both Protestant and catholic. The Old Catholic Church and the various groups classified as Independent Catholic Churches lay claim to the description Catholic (upper-case C). Traditionalist Catholics, even if they may not be in communion with Rome, consider themselves to be not only Catholics but the "true" Roman Catholics.

• Some use the term catholic to distinguish their own position from a Calvinist or Puritan form of Reformed-Protestantism. These include a faction of Anglicans often also called Anglo-Catholics, 19th century Neo-Lutherans, 20th century High Church Lutherans or evangelical-Catholics and others.

Methodists and Presbyterians believe their denominations owe their origins to the Apostles and the early church, but do not claim descent from ancient church structures such as the episcopate. However, both of these churches hold that they are a part of the catholic (universal) church. According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine:

The various Protestant sects can not constitute one church because they have no intercommunion...each Protestant Church, whether Methodist or Baptist or whatever, is in perfect communion with itself everywhere as the Roman Catholic; and in this respect, consequently, the Roman Catholic has no advantage or superiority, except in the point of numbers. As a further necessary consequence, it is plain that the Roman Church is no more Catholic in any sense than a Methodist or a Baptist.^[27]

—Henry Mills Alden, Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 37, Issues 217-222

As such, according to one viewpoint, for those who "belong to the Church," the term Methodist Catholic, or Presbyterian Catholic, or Baptist Catholic, is as proper as the term Roman Catholic.^[28] It simply means that body of Christian believers over the world who agree in their religious views, and accept the same ecclesiastical forms.^[28]

Avoidance of usage

Some Protestant churches avoid using the term completely, to the extent among many Lutherans of reciting the Creed with the word Christian in place of catholic.^[29][30][31] The Orthodox churches share some of the concerns about Roman Catholic papal claims, but disagree with some Protestants about the nature of the church as one body .

See also

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References

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