Catholicism

The faith, doctrine, system, and practice of a Catholic church, especially the Roman Catholic Church.

Catholicism emerged as a distinctive force in Ireland during the late 16th and 17th cents., when it became clear that the imposition of the new Anglican State Church had failed, and that the Counter-Reformation had put down roots among the majority population. Irish Catholics were politically impotent at the beginning of the 18th cent. because of the Penal Laws. An adversarial relationship with the State created an essentially domestic Church, deprived of the public dimension of Continental Catholicism. In a cultural milieu where social and religious behaviour was largely regulated by custom, the central religious events were communal occasions such as the wake, pattern (a celebration of a local patron saint's feastday), and station (when Mass was said in a house for which neighbours gathered). In the aftermath of the French Revolution the British and Vatican administrations moved to neutralize the threat of a Jacobinized Irish Catholic population. Catholic Relief Acts were passed in 1792 and 1793 and Maynooth College was opened in 1795. Daniel O'Connell channelled the national question into a Catholic stream. The rapid politicization of Irish Catholics paved the way for Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Catholicism would henceforth be a dominant force within Irish nationalist culture. Throughout the 19th cent. Irish Catholicism became more assertive and more Roman in character, as the institutional Church eclipsed its vernacular predecessor. The development of a heroic historiography of Irish Catholic resistance also permitted the Church to see itself as the historical, psychic, and societal core of Irish experience. With the emergence of the southern Irish State, the Catholic Church was accorded a ‘special position’ in the 1937 Constitution (a clause removed by referendum in 1972). Irish Catholicism increasingly became a target for oppositional intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, yet it remained resistant to modernizing influences in some respects.

Spanish and French explorers brought Roman Catholicism to what is now the United States in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spanish explorers founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, and it became the site of the oldest Christian community in the United States. Missionary priests established mission towns that stretched from St. Augustine north to Georgia. Their goal was to Christianize and civilize the native population. The golden age of the missions was in the mid-seventeenth century, when seventy missionaries were working in thirty-eight missions. The missions then began to decline, and by the early eighteenth century St. Augustine was the only Catholic mission left in Florida. The mission era ended when the British gained control of Florida in 1763.

The French established a permanent settlement at Québec in 1608 that became the center of New France. Missionary priests traveled from Québec down the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes region seeking to evangelize the native population. This mission era endured through the first half of the eighteenth century, coming to an end when the British took over Canada in 1763. Throughout the Midwest, French missionaries and explorers left their mark in places like St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and St. Louis, Missouri.

The Catholic presence in the Southwest was quite widespread. Spanish explorers settled Santa Fe in 1610 and then branched into what is now Arizona and Texas. In the eighteenth century Spanish missionaries, led by the Franciscan friar Junipero Serra, traveled the Pacific coast and founded a chain of twenty-one mission towns stretching from San Diego to San Francisco. The Mexican government took over the missions in 1833 in what marked the end of the Spanish mission era. The dissolution of the missions, however, did not mean the end of frontier Catholicism. The church survived, ministering to the needs of Hispanic Americans and Catholic Indians. When northern Mexico became part of the United States in 1848 as a result of the Mexican-American War, the Catholic Church there entered a new chapter in its history.

In 1634 Cecil Calvert, an English Catholic nobleman, and a small group of English colonists founded Maryland. That colony became the center of the Catholic colonial presence in the English colonies. St. Mary's City in southern Maryland became the capital of the colony, where Jesuit missionaries from England and Europe established farms. Worship services took place at these farms, which also became the home base for traveling missionaries who ministered to the needs of a rural population scattered about southern Maryland. Catholics were always a minority in Maryland, but they were in a position of prestige and power so long as the Calvert family was in control. That all changed in 1689 when William and Mary ascended to power in England and the Catholic Calverts lost ownership of the colony. Since Maryland was now a royal colony, England's penal laws became law in Maryland. These statutes discriminated against Catholics by denying them such rights and privileges as voting and public worship. Nonetheless, the Catholic population continued to grow, mainly because of the large numbers of Irish immigrants. By 1765, twenty-five thousand Catholics lived in Maryland; while another six thousand lived in Pennsylvania.

One of the most prominent families in colonial Maryland was the Carroll family. Irish and Catholic, Charles Carroll of Carrollton became a distinguished figure in the American Revolution. A delegate to the Continental Congress, he fixed his signature to the Declaration of Independence. He also helped to write the new Maryland state constitution. Like Carroll, the vast majority of Catholics supported the Revolution of 1776.

The Early National Era and the Democratic Spirit

In 1790 John Carroll, an American-born and European-educated priest, was ordained as the first bishop of Baltimore. Only about 35,000 Catholics lived in the United States at that time. Carroll articulated a vision of Catholicism that was unique at this time. Together with many other Catholics he envisioned a national, American church that would be independent of all foreign jurisdiction and would endorse pluralism and toleration in religion; a church in which religion was grounded in the Enlightenment principle of intelligibility and where a vernacular liturgy was normative; and finally, a church in which the spirit of democracy, through an elected board of trustees, defined the government of parish communities.

The vital element in the development of American Catholicism was the parish. Between 1780 and 1820 many parish communities were organized across Catholic America. Perhaps as many as 124 Catholic churches, each one representing a community of Catholics, dotted the landscape in 1820. In the vast majority of these communities, laymen were very involved in the government of the parish as members of a board of trustees. The principal reason for such a trustee system was the new spirit of democracy rising across the land.

In emphasizing the influence of the democratic spirit on the Catholic parish, however, it is well to remember that tradition played a very important role in this development. When they sought to fashion a democratic design for parish government, American Catholics were attempting to blend the old with the new, the past with the present. The establishment of a trustee system was not a break with the past, as they understood it, but a continuation of past practices, adapted to a new environment. Lay participation in church government was an accepted practice in France and Germany, and English and Irish lay Catholics were also becoming more involved in parish government. Thus, when they were forced to defend their actions against opponents of the lay trustee system, Catholic trustees appealed to tradition and long-standing precedents for such involvement. This blending of the old with the new enabled the people to adapt an ancient tradition to the circumstances of an emerging, new society.

Mass Immigration and the Church

Once large-scale immigration began in the 1820s and 1830s, America's Catholic population increased dramatically. Many thousands of Irish and German Catholics arrived in the United States prior to the Civil War, marking the beginning of a new era in the history of American Catholicism. It was the age of the immigrant church. The republican model of Catholicism that defined the era of John Carroll went into decline as a more traditional, European model became normative as a result of the influx of foreign-born clergy who brought with them a monarchical vision of the church. Henceforth, the clergy would govern the parish.

In the closing decades of the century, Catholic immigrants from southern and eastern Europe settled in the United States. As a result, the Catholic population soared, numbering as many as seventeen million by 1920. It was a very ethnically diverse population, including as many as twenty-eight ethnic groups. The largest of these were the Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish, French Canadians, and Mexicans. Together they accounted for at least 75 percent of the American Catholic population. Each of these groups had their own national parishes. Based on nationality as well as language, these parishes became the hallmark of the urban church. A city neighborhood could have several different national parishes within its boundaries. Like separate galaxies, each parish community stayed within its own orbit. The Irish did not mix with the Poles. The Germans never mingled with the Italians. Some of these parishes were so large that their buildings (church, school, convent, and rectory) occupied an entire city block.

Because the public school culture was highly Protestant in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Catholics began to establish their own elementary schools. John Hughes, the Irish-born archbishop of New York City, and John Purcell, the Irish-born archbishop of Cincinnati, were the two most prominent leaders championing parochial schools. The women religious were the key to the success of the schools. Like the clergy, most of these women were immigrants who worked within their own national or ethnic communities. In 1850 only about 1,344 sisters were at work in the United States. By 1900 their number had soared to 40,340, vastly outnumbering the 11,636 priests. This phenomenal increase in the number of women religious made the growth of schools possible, since they were the people who staffed the schools. Their willingness to work for low wages reduced the cost of schooling and made feasible an otherwise financially impossible undertaking.

In addition to the school, parishes sponsored numerous organizations, both religious and social. These organizations strengthened the bond between church and people. Hospitals and orphanages were also part of the urban church and women religious operated many of these institutions.

The Ghetto Mentality Versus Americanization

In the antebellum period a Protestant crusade against Catholics swept across the nation. Anti-Catholic riots took place and convents as well as churches were destroyed. The crusade reached its height in the early 1850s when a new political party, the Know-Nothings, gained power in several states. Their ideology was anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. During this period Archbishop John Hughes became a forceful apologist on behalf of Catholics. Because of the discrimination they encountered, Catholics developed their own subculture, thus acquiring an outsider mentality. Often described as a ghetto mentality, it shaped the thinking of Catholics well into the twentieth century.

Some Catholics wanted the church to abandon this outsider mentality and become more American, less foreign.

Isaac Hecker, a convert to Catholicism and a founder of the religious community of priests known as the Paulists, was the most prominent advocate of this vision in the 1850s and 1860s. Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, with support from James Gibbons, the cardinal archbishop of Baltimore, promoted this idea in the 1880s and 1890s. Advocating what their opponents labeled as an "American Catholicity," these Americanists endorsed the separation of church and state, political democracy, religious toleration, and some type of merger of Catholic and public education at the elementary school level. They were in the minority, however. Authorities in Rome were hostile to the idea of separation between church and state. They also opposed religious toleration, another hallmark of American culture, and were cool to the idea that democracy was the ideal form of government. As a result, in 1899 Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical letter, Testem Benevolentiae, which condemned what he called "Americanism." The papal intervention not only ended the campaign of John Ireland, but also solidified the Romanization of Catholicism in the United States.

Devotional Catholicism

A distinguishing feature of the immigrant church was its rich devotional life. The heart of this devotional life was the exercise of piety, or what was called a devotion. Since the Mass and the sacraments have never been sufficient to meet the spiritual needs of the people, popular devotions have arisen throughout the history of Catholicism. In the nineteenth century some of the more popular of them were devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist through public exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to the passion of Jesus, devotion to Mary as the Immaculate Conception, recitation of the rosary, and of course, devotion to particular saints such as St. Joseph, St. Patrick, and St. Anthony. Prayer books, devotional confraternities, parish missions, Newspapers, magazines, and the celebration of religious festivals shaped the cosmos of Catholics, educating them into a specific style of religion that can be described as devotional Catholicism. This interior transformation of Catholics in the United States was part of a worldwide spiritual revival taking place within Catholicism. The papacy promoted the revival by issuing encyclical letters promoting specific devotions and by organizing worldwide Eucharistic congresses to promote devotion to Christ.

Devotional Catholicism shaped the mental landscape of Catholics in a very distinctive manner. The central features of this worldview were authority, sin, ritual, and the miraculous. The emphasis on authority enhanced the prestige and power of the papacy at a time when it was under siege from Italian nationalists. Bishops and clergy also benefited from the importance attached to authority. Being Catholic meant to submit to the authority of God as mediated through the church—its pope, bishops, and clergy. Such a culture deemphasized the rights of the individual conscience as each person learned to submit to the external authority of the church. Catholic culture was also steeped in the consciousness of sin in this era. Devotional guides stressed human sinfulness and a multitude of laws and regulations sought to strengthen Catholics in their struggle with sin. Confession of sins became an important ritual for Catholics and priests spent long hours in the confessional. The Mass was another major ritual along with other sacraments such as baptism and marriage. Various devotions were associated with public rituals in church or with processions that marched through the streets of the neighborhood. In addition to such public rituals, people practiced their own private rituals of devotion. Fascination with the miraculous was another trait of devotional Catholicism. Catholics believed in the supernatural and the power of their heavenly patrons. Religious periodicals regularly reported cures and other miraculous events. Shrines such as Lourdes in France attracted much attention. In the United States many local shrines were associated with the healing powers of certain statues, relics, or pictures.

Consolidation

From the 1920s through the 1950s the church underwent a period of consolidation. Many new churches were built, the number of colleges grew, and record numbers of men and women entered Catholic seminaries and convents. In these years Catholicism still retained many features of the immigrant era. At the parish level Catholicism remained very ethnic and clannish into the 1940s. Devotional Catholicism remained the dominant ethos. Within the educated middle class, which was growing, there was a strong desire for Catholics to become more involved in the public life of the nation. What contemporaries called a Catholic renaissance took place in these years as Catholics began to feel more confident about their place in the United States. Catholics supported the New Deal and many worked in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Catholics also held influential positions in the growing labor movement. John Ryan, a priest and professor at the Catholic University of America, gained a national reputation as an advocate of social action and the right of workers to a just wage. Dorothy Day, a convert to Catholicism, founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933 and her commitment to the poor and underprivileged inspired many young Catholics to work for social justice. In the 1950s Catholicism was riding a wave of unprecedented popularity and confidence. Each week new churches and schools opened their doors, record numbers of converts joined the church, and more than 70 percent of Catholics regularly attended Sunday Mass. The Catholic college population increased significantly. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, an accomplished preacher, had his own prime time, Emmy Award–winning television show that attracted millions of viewers. In 1958 a new pope, John XXIII, charmed the world and filled Catholics with pride. The 1960 election of an Irish Catholic, John F. Kennedy, to the presidency of the United States reinforced the optimism and confidence of Catholics.

Reform

In the 1960s the Catholic Church throughout the world underwent a period of reform. The catalyst was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Coupled with the social changes that were taking place in the United States at this time, the reforms initiated by the Council ushered in a new age for American Catholicism. Change and dissent are the two words that best describe this era. The most dramatic change took place in the Catholic Mass. A new liturgy celebrated in English replaced an ancient Latin ritual. Accompanying changes in the Mass was a transformation in the devotional life of the people. People began to question the Catholic emphasis on authority and sin. The popular support for devotional rituals and a fascination with the miraculous waned. An ecumenical spirit inspired Catholics to break down the fences that separated them from people of other religious traditions. Catholics emerged from the cultural ghetto of the immigrant era and adopted a more public presence in society. They joined the 1960s war against poverty and discrimination, and were in the forefront of the peace movement during the Vietnam War. Also, the Catholic hierarchy wrote important pastoral letters that discussed war and peace in the nuclear age along with economic justice. An educated laity became more inclined to dissent, challenging the church's teaching on birth control, clerical celibacy, an exclusively male clergy, and the teaching authority of the pope. Other Catholics have opposed such dissent and have strongly defended the authority of the pope and the hierarchy. Such ideological diversity has become a distinguishing trademark of contemporary Catholicism.

Changes in the Ministry and the New Immigration

The decline in the number of priests and nuns in the late twentieth century also changed the culture of Catholicism. In 1965 there were 35,000 priests; by 2005 their numbers will have declined to about 21,000, a 40 percent decline in forty years. Along with this came a decline in the number of seminarians by about 90 percent from 1965 to the end of the century. In 1965 there were 180,000 sisters in the United States; in 2000 they numbered less than 100,000. This demographic revolution has transformed the state of ministry in the church. Along with this has come the emergence of a new understanding of ministry.

This new thinking about ministry emerged from the Second Vatican Council. The council emphasized the egalitarian nature of the Catholic Church, all of whose members received a call to the fullness of the Christian life by virtue of their baptism. This undermined the elitist tradition that put priests and nuns on a pedestal above the laity. This new thinking has transformed the church. By 2000 an astounding number of laypeople, 29,146, were actively involved as paid ministers in parishes; about 85 percent of them were women. Because of the shortage of priests many parishes, about three thousand, did not have a resident priest. A large number of these, about six hundred, had a person in charge who was not a priest. Many of these pastors were women, both lay women and women religious. They did everything a priest does except say Mass and administer the sacraments. They hired the staff, managed the finances, provided counseling, oversaw the liturgy, and supervised the educational, social, and religious programs of the parish. They were in charge of everything. The priest came in as a special guest star, a visitor who celebrated the Eucharist and left.

In addition to the changes in ministry, Catholicism is experiencing the impact of a new wave of immigration ushered in by the revised immigration laws starting in 1965. The church became more ethnically diverse than ever before. In 2000 Sunday Mass was celebrated in Los Angeles in forty-seven languages; in New York City thirty languages were needed to communicate with Sunday churchgoers. The largest ethnic group was the Spanish-speaking Latino population. Comprising people from many different nations, they numbered about 30 million in 2000, of whom approximately 75 percent were Catholic. It is estimated that by 2014 they will constitute 51 percent of the Catholic population in the United States. The new immigration transformed Catholicism in much the same way that the old immigration of the nineteenth century did.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century Catholicism in the United States is entering a new period in its history. No longer religious outsiders, Catholics are better integrated into American life. Intellectually and politically they represent many different points of view. The hierarchy has become more theologically conservative while the laity has become more independent in its thinking. An emerging lay ministry together with a decline in the number of priests and nuns has reshaped the culture of Catholicism. The presence of so many new immigrants from Latin America and Asia has also had a substantial impact on the shape of the church. Continuity with the past, with the Catholic tradition, will be the guiding force as the church moves into the twenty-first century.

In 2002 a major scandal shocked the American Catholic community, when it was revealed that some priests in Boston's Catholic community had sexually abused children over the course of several years. The crisis deepened with the revelation that church leaders had often reassigned accused priests to other parishes without restricting their access to children. The same pattern of secretly reassigning priests known to be sexual predators was discovered in other dioceses across the country. This unprecedented scandal of abuse and cover-up severely damaged the sacred trust between the clergy and the laity.

Bibliography

Carey, Peter W. People, Priests, and Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the Tensions of Trusteeism. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987.

Dolan, Jay P. The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985.

———. In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Dolan, Jay P., and Allen Figueroa Deck, eds. Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.

Ellis, John Tracy. The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons: Archbishop of Baltimore, 1834–1921. 2 vols. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing, 1952.

Gleason, Philip. Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism, Past and Present. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987.

Greeley, Andrew M. The American Catholic: A Social Portrait. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Hennesey, James, S.J. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

McGreevy, John T. Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Morris, Charles R. American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church. New York: Times Books, 1997.

O'Toole, James M. Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859–1944. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

—Jay P. Dolan

The Roman Catholic Church established ties to the Russian lands from their earliest history but played only a marginal role. The first significant encounter came during the Time of Troubles, when the Catholic associations of pretenders and Polish interventionists triggered intense popular hostility toward the "Latins" and a hiatus in Russian - Catholic relations. Only in the last quarter of the seventeenth century did Muscovy, in pursuit of allies against the Turks, resume ties to Rome. Peter the Great went significantly further, permitting the construction of the first Catholic church in Moscow (1691) and the presence of various Catholic orders (including Jesuits).

But a significant Catholic presence only commenced with the first Polish partition of 1772, when the Russian Empire acquired substantial numbers of Catholic subjects. Despite initial tensions (chiefly over claims by the Russian government to oversee Catholic administration), relations improved markedly under emperors Paul (r. 1796 - 1801) and Alexander I (r. 1801-1825), when Catholic - especially Jesuit - influences at court were extraordinarily strong.

Thereafter, however, relations proved extremely tempestuous. One factor was the coercive conversion of Uniates or Eastern Catholics (that is, Catholics practicing Eastern Rites), who were "reunited" with the Russian Orthodox Church (in 1839 and 1875) and forbidden to practice Catholic rites. The second factor was Catholic involvement in the Polish uprisings of 1830-1831 and 1863; subsequent government measures to Russify and repress the Poles served only to reinforce their Catholic identity and resolve. Hence Catholicism remained a force to be reckoned with: By the 1890s, it had 11.5 million adherents (9.13% of the population), making it the third largest religious group in the Russian Empire. It maintained some 4,400 churches (2,400 in seven Polish dioceses; 2,000 in five dioceses in the Russian Empire proper). The 1905 revolution forced the regime to declare religious tolerance (the manifesto of April 17, 1905); with conversion from Russian Orthodoxy decriminalized, huge numbers declared themselves Catholic (233,000 in 1905-1909 alone).

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, however, brought decades of devastating repression. The Catholic Church refused to accept Bolshevik nationalization of its property and the requirement that the laity, not clergy, register and assume responsibility for churches. The conflict culminated in the Bolshevik campaign to confiscate church valuables in 1922 and 1923 and a famous show trial that ended with the execution of a leading prelate. That was but a prelude to the 1930s, when massive purges and repression eliminated all but two Catholic churches by 1939. Although World War II brought an increase in Catholic churches (mainly through the annexation of new territories), the regime remained highly suspicious of Catholicism, especially in a republic like Lithuania, where ethnicity and Catholicism coalesced into abiding dissent.

The "new thinking" of Mikhail Gorbachev included the reestablishment of relations with the Vatican in 1988 and relaxation of pressure on the Catholic church in the USSR. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 turned the main bastions of Catholicism (i.e., Lithuania) into independent republics, but left a substantial number of Catholics in the Russian Federation (1.3 million according to Vatican estimates). To minister to them more effectively, Rome, in February 2002, elevated its four "apostolic administrations" to the status of "dioceses," serving some 600,000 parishioners in 212 registered churches and 300 small, informal communities.

Bibliography

Zatko, James. (1965). Descent into Darkness: The Destruction of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, 1917-1923. Toronto: Baxter Publishing.

Zugger, Christopher. (2001). The Forgotten: Catholics of the Soviet Empire from Lenin to Stalin. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

—GREGORY L. FREEZE

In 1520, Martin Luther (1483–1546) explained—in his famous open letter to Pope Leo X (reigned 1513–1521)—that he considered the Roman Curia "more corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom ever was," and that it was "characterized by a completely depraved, hopeless and notorious godlessness." For hundreds of years thereafter, Luther's remarks were construed as an indictment not just of the Curia, but of the entire Catholic Church. With this picture of corruption and depravity, he established one side of a polemical divide over ways to describe Catholicism in early modern Europe that has endured to this very day. The argument over whether or not Luther's picture of the church was realistic has been engaged by historians for generations, from Cesare Baronio (1518–1607) and Paolo Sarpi (1562–1623) in the late sixteenth century to Massimo Firpo and John W. O'Malley in the late twentieth century. The debate has been clouded by ahistorical commitments—at first simply religious, then political and cultural as well—that serve as an obstacle to a true comprehension of the past. Since roughly 1945, the argument has turned on whether the terms "Counter-Reformation" or "Catholic Reform," or any of a host of other related terms, can describe the period, or if something more innocuous, like "early modern Catholicism," might be better. No matter where one stands on this battle over historical terminology, all agree that Catholicism in this era was variegated, fascinating in its complexity, and riddled with internal and external conflicts that make simple categorization of this institution quite impossible.

Catholicism between 1500 and 1789 has commonly been defined through the conflict between Protestant reformers and Christians who remained loyal to Rome. Luther, like John Calvin (1509–1564) and many Anglican and Anabaptist thinkers who followed, was not so different from medieval reformers who called for change in Christian practices. He may have insisted initially on reconsideration of the best way to explain the necessity of penitence, not just penance, in the process of salvation. The challenge to common church teaching expressed in his Ninety-Five Theses (1517), however, increasingly came to be understood as a threat to papal authority. This perception, which was reinforced by Luther's own words in the three great Reformation treatises of 1520–1521 and by the rallying of other critical voices at his side, encouraged members of the Catholic hierarchy to see him as the latest in a long line of medieval reformers. They could then treat him, as they did his predecessors, as one who would eventually go away without leaving any substantial impact upon the structure of ecclesiastical authority.

The Papacy and the Council of Trent

The common definition of Catholicism in early modern Europe as hinging on the challenge of Luther and other Protestant reformers, and on Roman reaction to that challenge, has obscured the complexity and multiform nature of the institution. First, consider the complexity of the papacy itself. Popes from Alexander VI (1492–1503) through Pius VI (1775–1799) exhibited many characteristics, but consistency and uniformity were not among them. At the beginning of this era, the papacy was an institution competing for the loyalty of the European people against secular powers attempting to extend the reach of their authority. Fifteenth-century papal claims to absolute power, both spiritual and temporal, were defined in practice during the pontificates of Julius II (1503–1513) and Leo X as an effort to secure the integrity and independence of the Papal State. They used both diplomatic and military resources to do so. By the end of the early modern era, however, the papacy had become quite ineffective in political terms, having been pushed to the periphery of contemporary political society. For example, Clement XIII (1758–1769) and Clement XIV (1769–1774) were unable to save one of the largest religious orders in the church, the Society of Jesus, from its European enemies. Early modern popes attempted to consolidate their religious and governmental authority in a rapidly changing world, but they did so with inconsistent policies and performance. The popular imagination of today often views early modern popes as warriors against heresy. This may have been true of popes like Paul IV (1555–1559) and Pius V (1566–1572), who personally presided over inquisitorial meetings. But later popes, like Innocent XI (1676–1689), saw devotional and theological developments like Jansenism and Quietism as dangerous and still disapproved of the use of force to deal with them. An even later pope, Benedict XIV (1740–1758), had no trouble reconciling the apparent contradiction between support for clerical education and scientific investigation on the one hand, while at the same time continuing prohibitions on reading with a new Index of Prohibited Books. Similar levels of inconsistency exist when examining the actions of popes in artistic patronage, in promotion of church reform, in support for scholarship, and in creation of public services for the Papal State.

Pope Paul III(1534–1549), anindividualwhose actions were filled with inconsistencies, might be seen as one who epitomized the early modern papacy. He is considered by many to be the first pope of the Catholic Reformation (or the Counter-Reformation). He not only appointed cardinals who presented him with a stinging indictment of the evils in the contemporary church, known as the Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia (1537), but he also convened the Council of Trent in 1545. In addition, he procured the legitimization of three of the four children he fathered before becoming a priest and bestowed enormous ecclesiastical incomes and properties upon one son and upon the two grandsons he appointed as cardinals. This unreformed approach to the enrichment of his family was contradicted by his generous artistic patronage and by his promotion of reform-minded clerics. Among the latter was a Spaniard, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), whose new religious order, the Society of Jesus, Paul formally approved in 1540. Paul revived the Roman Inquisition in 1542, but designed it to operate with a lenience and moderation that some of his successors rejected. He was a pope like many others in this period: a "reformer" who could never fully break away from the traditions of corruption. They were richly human, defying simple categorization.

The Council of Trent (1545–1563), whose decrees—not to mention the drumbeat of anathema within them—epitomized Catholic reaction against Protestant thought, was a richly complicated event riddled with conflict. According to the standard interpretation, popes controlled the assembly through the papal legates who set the agenda for each session, and through Jesuit theologians who, over those eighteen years, ensured that doctrinal and disciplinary decrees were secured that were acceptable to the popes. From the very beginning, however, legates like Marcello Cervini (1501–1555), Giovan Maria de' Ciocchi del Monte (1487–1555), and Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584) struggled to persuade prelates to attend, to remain once they had arrived, and to get along, sometimes in ways that were much more practical than dogmatic. When they were not breaking up shoving matches among the bishops, legates mediated, rather than dictated, among members of the papal, imperial, and French factions that emerged at Trent, while attempting to promote papal plans. Popes themselves varied widely in their commitment to the gathering as a means to solve the problem facing the church. Paul III convened the council, but he clearly feared the conciliarist leanings of some of the prospective council members. Julius III (1550–1555) and Pius IV (1559–1565) moved the Tridentine assembly vigorously toward completion. In between those two, however, Paul IV insisted categorically that the meeting remain in suspension, convinced that he could carry out the reform on his own through the Roman Inquisition, over whose meetings he presided, and through his personal Index of Prohibited Books. In the end, the decrees were formulated by conciliar bishops, who put themselves in charge of bringing the documents from Trent to life in Catholic practice.

Implementing Trent

Implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent—a series of clarifications of doctrine, disciplinary decrees, and directives on such matters as clerical education—should have brought a uniform church into existence in short order, but local realities made this impossible. Papal authority was not strong enough to effect any change as broad-ranging as that outlined at Trent. In France, implementing the decrees was especially slow, as royal control restricted even the publication of the decrees. Bringing clerical behavior there into something resembling conformity with the decrees took centuries, not decades. Recent scholarship on the Netherlands reveals that seventeenth-century bishops faced opposition to their reform plans not just from local constituents, but from Rome as well. They engaged in especially complex negotiations to try to secure claustration of nuns, that Tridentine rule most often cited as evidence of effective, centralized, disciplining control, in local convents. In the end, Netherlandish nuns determined the characteristics of their own common life, apparently at least as much as bishops. In Italy, prelates had the example of Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584), archbishop of Milan, not to mention precedents like Gian Matteo Giberti (1495–1543) in Verona, Bartolomeo de Martyribus (1514–1590) in Braga, and Marcello Cervini in Gubbio, to follow. Borromeo became the model Tridentine bishop, holding diocesan synods, enhancing catechetical instruction, and conducting pastoral visits. But even in Italy the process was relatively slow, as bishops elsewhere butted up against the many cathedral chapters, and monastic institutions that asserted their independence from episcopal control and appealed to Rome any challenge to that independence.

Effective implementation of the decrees was a complicated matter. The process hinged not just on the ability of bishops to operate freely over those at least theoretically under their control, but also upon the determination of some rulers to control their national churches. The papal prerogative of simply naming bishops, let alone controlling their activity, was decidedly limited, especially in Spain, France, and England. The tradition of royal leadership in religious matters in Spain continued throughout the early modern period and was already well established in 1478, when Ferdinand (ruled 1474–1516) and Isabella (ruled 1474–1504) convinced Rome of the need for a Spanish Inquisition controlled by the monarchs. Spanish monarchs retained the right to appoint bishops in the Netherlands, as well as across the so-called New World. Such an arrangement within France was created in the Concordat of Bologna (1516) between Leo X and King Francis I (ruled 1515–1547). Behind these and similar practices—such as monarchical control of appointments to ecclesiastical benefices in England—was a concern over the distribution of revenues that was more financial than religious. When viewed in the context of Tridentine decrees insisting on the appointment only of properly trained clerics who would take seriously the cura animarum, 'care of souls', these facts illustrate that Roman determination to control the reform process, as well as the practical ability to do so, varied considerably.

Some of those who drafted the Tridentine decree on seminaries may have desired a highly centralized clergy obedient to Roman doctrine and leadership, but recent research suggests implementation of this directive was desperately slow, and that any such desire went largely unfilled. In places like Milan, seminary training after Trent was anything but uniform. Many candidates studied in multiple institutions, and only some of those were under the control of the archbishop. Diocesan seminaries there were part of a larger system that included schools run by some of the new Catholic religious orders. In Fiesole, the first attempt to found a seminary did not occur until nearly a generation after the assembly at Trent completed its work. Formal seminary instruction in Fiesole did not commence until 1635. Even if trained, the reshaping of local priests into a professional class through episcopal visitations and instructions may have been the intention of early modern bishops, but they apparently made little progress in this era. In Milan, during the archiepiscopal administrations of Carlo and Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), the majority of priests resembled the superstitious, worldly, sinful laity they served far more than the confessional interrogators the archbishops had in mind.

Religious Revival

The intention of all Catholic reformers was to revive religious life generally, but locally support for revival and opposition to it were both common. Hence, real change was limited. Seminary education and pastoral visits were supposed to create a consistently well-educated and attentive clergy. Local records suggest that the members of the laity supported such an intention, but in practice, some established members of the clergy challenged the change. Giambattista Casale, a carpenter and late-sixteenth-century diarist in Milan, enthusiastically praised the reform work of Carlo Borromeo. Casale related popular support both for the attention Borromeo devoted to his personal pastoral responsibilities, and for his initiatives to improve the quality of local priests. Clerics there, however, were not so favorably impressed. In 1569 and 1570 they assaulted the archbishop, first verbally and then physically, as his reforming ideals were threatening their clerical positions and income. One can find many examples of ecclesiastical and civic leaders developing new institutions and enhancing the power of old ones, designed to enforce religious orthodoxy, proper notions of political sovereignty, and moral purity. At the same time, crime statistics, court records—including the recently opened central archive of the Roman Inquisition—and other forms of documentation all reveal that the goal of conformity was far from achieved. Archbishops and parishioners in the Netherlands in this era did not completely agree on what constituted a good pastor, but one thing was sure: neither were satisfied with those they observed. The well-noted crackdown on questionable belief and behavior among upper-ranking clerics did not preclude behavior by one—Reginald Pole (1500–1558, the cardinal archbishop of Canterbury and papal legate to the early sessions at Trent)—that led his most recent biographer to assert that he was, for all practical purposes, married to his longtime companion, the Venetian noble and cleric Alvise Priuli (d. 1560).

Where Catholic religious practice was effectively reformed in early modern Europe, it often came through leadership from members of a variety of religious orders. The members of long established orders, like the Franciscans, Benedictines, and Augustinians, initiated reforms to improve adherence to the religious rule each followed, but the reform movements frequently resulted in division and the creation of new branches of these orders. This operation followed a well-established pattern in the Franciscan order, for example. The new Capuchin group founded by Matteo di Bassi (1495–1552) was not unlike the so-called spirituals from an earlier age in its call for stricter observance of the rule of Saint Francis. Their emphasis on preaching and identification with common people, especially in towns, contributed to the spread of reformed Catholicism. Angela Merici of Brescia (1474–1540) and Ignatius of Loyola founded brand new orders, the Ursulines and the Society of Jesus, respectively, whose inspiration turned as much on the goal of serving the needs of others as on the pursuit of perfection among its own members. The Ursulines became educators, especially in catechism, as well as servants of orphans and women in need of shelter. The Jesuits engaged in a wide variety of ministries, but like the Ursulines, their principal influence on the European community came through work in education. They were central to the development of secondary schools that prepared young men for university study, and to the beginnings of seminary education. These were just a few of the many new and newly reformed orders of the early modern period.

Members of the secular (that is, diocesan) clergy on the one hand, and members of religious orders (both clerics in religious orders and nuns) on the other, engaged in disputes that further complicate the picture of Catholicism in this age. In general terms, members of religious orders tended to assert their independence from episcopal control based upon their foundations and authorizations that came directly from the papacy. This was a traditional position for religious orders to take. But when they did so in the early modern period, especially after the Council of Trent, they butted up against bishops armed with the decrees of Trent. Many of these bishops intended to exercise their authority to examine clerics and grant permissions to preach and to hear confessions in their dioceses, whether they were secular or regular clergy. Members of religious orders could often, through appeals to the papacy, gain exemption from such episcopal authority. There was not, however, any general position of the papacy in favor of the independence of regular clergy. Paul IV, to take a notable example, was decidedly suspicious of the devotional innovations designed by Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits to facilitate their pastoral activities. For a time, he even insisted that they recite the divine office in unison, in violation of the Jesuit constitutions established under preceding popes. We ought not to think of this distrust of religious orders as a position taken up exclusively by belligerent popes like Paul IV. When questions were raised concerning the propriety of the independence of the Ursulines and their activities outside the convent, the push to cloister them came not just from authorities in Rome, but also from parents of the sisters and other family members.

European members of both branches of the Catholic clergy increasingly engaged in preaching, a fact that undermines one of the most common stereotypes about Catholicism in this era. A common assumption is that, to the Catholic clergy of this period, preaching was either completely marginal or used only for unjust fundraising operations such as the sale of indulgences. But the historical record of preaching in the early modern period is much more complicated. At the beginning of the period, members of religious orders, like Franciscan and Dominican friars, were exceedingly popular preachers. They delivered well-attended sermons on a daily basis during Lent and Advent. In fact, civic leaders vied to secure the best known preachers among them. The popularity of these preachers was based, at least in part, on the lack of preaching by members of the secular clergy, who were largely absent from their pastoral duties. After the Council of Trent, short homilies within the Eucharistic celebration became increasingly common. There was a veritable explosion of publications related to preaching in the early modern period. The explosion included simple instructions by bishops, handbooks of forms for the composition of sermons, and collections of the work of celebrated preachers, in addition to formal treatises on the topic. This literature reveals that theorists recommended explicitly the utilization of humanist rhetorical ideals and clear explication of basic doctrine in sermons. Court preachers speaking before popes and heads of state retained the prominent characteristic of their medieval predecessors. Preaching held a central place in the religious culture of all early modern Europe, not just Protestant lands.

Popular Piety

Preachers touched local Catholic communities whose common experience of the religion varied considerably. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Milan was a very different place compared to a city in a Protestant territory, like Amsterdam. In the former, priests were on the lookout for both clerics and members of the laity who deviated from the newly defined norms of Trent. They spent the bulk of their time trying to form Catholic identity around those norms, often with minimal success. In the latter, and in many other towns and cities in the British Isles, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Dutch Republic, Catholics created religious spaces in places where such were officially proscribed, but in practice they were tolerated by neighbors and officials who knew well of their existence. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Catholics controlled twenty such semi-secret churches (schuilkerk) in Amsterdam. One was a narrow row house whose third-floor church could hold some 150 persons in pews and galleries. Catholics in early modern Spain probably experienced religion in a manner that was closer to that of the Milanese. They surely were the subjects of a plan for orthodox indoctrination. For some, especially in rural areas, their practice may have become outwardly Christian, even approaching Catholic, but it was mixed with appeals to the supernatural through spells and potions that illustrate the difficulty with which "pagan" superstitions died in this era. Moreover, the divide between Christians and Jews in European communities was often anything but complete. Paul IV set up an enclosed ghetto in Rome that is still widely seen as a precursor of Nazi versions in Eastern Europe. But emphasis on this episode encourages ignorance of the more tolerant policy that both preceded and followed his administration. It also hides the fact that, as recent scholarship has shown, Jews and members of the Catholic laity in Rome shared a good deal in common, and that the ghetto had few negative effects on the religious and cultural identity of Jews in Rome.

Believers, especially in urban areas, organized themselves into confraternities, a vast array of diverse organizations that belied the image of contemporary Catholicism as uniform. Confraternities had existed as devotional organizations promoting piety and social service, mainly in the towns of the medieval period. In the early modern period, when centralizing tendencies in the organization of Catholicism allegedly held sway, such organizations and their independence from hierarchical control should, logically, have disappeared. They did not. Instead, they tended to become stronger. Whether their increased strength was based upon enhanced devotion to more clearly defined dogmas, on the Eucharist, or upon an increasing charitable need in contemporary cities is unclear. Some of these institutions seemed on the surface to cooperate with growing states and their centralization of charity. In some places, however, like Bologna, confraternities that took on a more political role allowed patricians to maintain secure hold on certain elements of administration in the Papal State (specifically over the prison system) against centralization under the papacy.

Individual Catholic believers, and not just those in confraternities, seem to have experienced religion much more through their devotional practices than through any conscious adherence to dogma, whether orthodox or heterodox. Popular religious practice varied widely despite the hope of some Catholic leaders to regularize devotional life. Throughout the sixteenth century, there is little evidence to suggest that instruction in dogma went far beyond practice in the memorization of basic prayers and foundational formulas like the Nicene Creed. Later, increasing expansion of the Confraternities of Christian Doctrine and the publication of the Catechism of the Council of Trent in 1566 surely facilitated the spread of the doctrines defined at Trent. But real work on that document did not begin at least until late in 1562, if not 1563. Once it was completed under Pius V in 1566, priests had to learn and translate the contents of the massive Latin edition before the process of explaining the ideas in terms accessible to common people could begin. Popular cults honoring the mostly unofficial but locally recognized patron saints continued. Pilgrimage sites that had developed in the Middle Ages, such as Loreto, location of the house in which Mary allegedly grew up—miraculously transported from Palestine to the Adriatic coast—maintained their popularity, along with the sacramentals that attended their use. Popular piety found expression throughout Europe, but frequently outside the confines of standard religious instruction, outside of new Tridentine liturgical parameters, and outside of the sacraments. Processions were often more boisterous than devout, the majority of Catholics received Communion infrequently, and clerical reform rarely touched rural areas in large portions of Europe before 1650. Popular piety could be found in other forms, however, as in the well-attended theatrical productions presented in towns, especially the university towns, of northern Europe. Jesuit colleges were famous for presentations that dramatized the spiritual life with scenes of both angels and hell, and these remained popular, especially in southern Germany, through the middle of the eighteenth century. Some earlier religious dramas produced in the Low Countries during the reign of Emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1556) included presentation of varying religious positions from contemporary theological debates.

Missionary Activity

Efforts to spread the faith through missionary activity in Europe and beyond have received scant attention, but consideration of this activity exposes still more variations in the Catholic experience. The revival of Catholicism represented by reform initiatives that predate Luther, as well as those initiatives designed to counteract his work and that of other Protestant reformers, spurred action to spread Catholicism throughout Europe, not to mention the New World. The Jesuits led an attempt to recover believers in the German-speaking territory who were "lost" to the Protestant movement. They were active in cities like Cologne and Vienna in the Holy Roman Empire in the 1550s, where their schools enrolled large numbers and where they attempted to prepare better trained clergy who might help in the recovery process. They tried to do the same in Slavic-speaking lands at approximately the same time, but with much less success. The English crown attempted to thwart Jesuit efforts to spread Catholicism in Britain after the Reformation. Jesuit missionary work there was complicated by the political and theological controversy over the divine right of kings during the age of King James I (ruled 1603–1625). Catholic clerics from a number of religious orders took part in efforts to spread the faith in Spanish and Portuguese holdings in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands. The standard image of these missionaries arriving on the heels of the conquistadors and forcing adherence to the new religion, armed with an ideology that permitted coercion, is only partly true. While mass conversions were frequently carried out, missionaries often faced a hostile initial response from local populations, especially in Asia. When they did, some—like Francis Xavier (1506–1552), for example—simply moved on to other towns and regions where they hoped for better luck. Our image of the character of Catholic proselytism in this era must be able to explain not just the mass conversions, but also the retention of Roman doctrine over the long term. It must explain not just those instances where the value of native culture was discounted, but also Catholic missionary work that accommodated local practices. The latter was so extensive in China, for instance, that Jesuits there like Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) were considered promoters of paganism by some Roman authorities.

Art, Science, and Religion

Perhaps the most enduring image of early modern Catholicism is that of an institution that systematically shut down emergent local culture and freedom of thought. Exploration of the activity of Catholics in art, literature, music, and science demonstrates the inadequacy of that image: the reality was far more complex. In the arts—including sculpture, painting, poetry, drama, prose, oratory, and music—there is no doubt that anti-Protestant ideology contributed to new Catholic production. The Protestant attack on art, not to mention the development of new notions of Christian heroism, certainly influenced the way biographers, preachers, painters, sculptors, and composers expressed themselves. But they looked for effective techniques and for attention-grabbing flourishes to impress audiences and to demand an active response. There is no doubt that rules for propriety in various forms of art, notably oratory and painting, reflect an attempt by church leaders to control. The Tridentine decree on sacred images from the twenty-fifth session (1563) and the discourse on sacred and profane images published in 1582 by Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti (1522–1597) are the texts most frequently cited to suggest that ecclesiastical repression in the world of art was effective. However, the assertion that the attempt was successful ignores a vast body of evidence. Evidence lies in the humanistic oratory of post-Tridentine preachers and funeral eulogists. It can be found in the intense painting and sculpture created by artists like Agostino (1557–1602), Annibale (1560–1609), and Ludovico Carracci (1555–1619), as well as Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) and Giambologna (1529–1608). The era was one of bold creativity that followed from humanistic innovations that were only partly subordinated to the goals of religious leaders. The works produced by popular Italian vernacular authors also serve as evidence. They offered everything from legal to occult texts, in addition to the orthodox religious publications associated with the post-Tridentine printing industry. Yet another example can be found in northern Europe. In Germany, Catholics, and even Jesuits, were behind an artistic revitalization that contributed to the survival of Catholicism there, but also to the emergence of the German baroque movement.

Early modern Catholicism allegedly had a stultifying effect on intellectual life, and especially on the development of science, but recent scholarship suggests that this view needs considerable revision. Intellectual historians have insisted that humanism remained a vital, dynamic intellectual movement in the seventeenth century throughout Europe, despite attempts by church authorities to refocus scholarship to support new confessional ideologies. Spanish intellectual life apparently was much more complex than historians in previous generations had thought. In Spain, humanism mixed with more traditional scholastic thought, and writers moved with considerable flexibility between methods: even Spanish inquisitorial records illustrate this reality. Something similar was largely true in Italy, especially in the age of Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). Jesuits at the Roman College—some from Germany like Kircher, and others from elsewhere—showed considerable favor for the cosmology of Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), even though it stood in sharp contrast to the Aristotelian status quo. The "church," both as an institution and literally as a structure, provided a great deal more support for the development of science, especially astronomy, than most would imagine, given the pervasive image of the struggle Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) had with the bureaucrats of the Roman Inquisition. Observations and calculations carried out in some of the principal cathedral churches of Europe, with the financial support of high-ranking prelates, paved the way for improvements in observational astronomy. They also belie the image of the Catholic Church as an effective, let alone pervasive, barrier to the expansion of learning. However, extreme Catholic opposition to the Enlightenment movement also reared up toward the end of this period. Still, had counter-cultural efforts like these been effective on any significant level, historians would have considerably greater difficulty explaining the emergence of the jarring political revolutions of the late eighteenth century.

If, as the famous American lawmaker Tip O'Neill once said, "All politics is local," then perhaps all history is local, too. The history of early modern Catholicism surely could stand as an example to defend such a thesis. Historians studying more distant ages in the past sometimes face a paucity of sources and data that makes generalization necessary. The early modern period was no such era. It was, on the contrary, the very age in which the passion for record keeping that we take for granted today first emerged. Such records, in their display of local circumstances and realities, illustrate a human complexity that defies categorization. When Martin Luther wrote his letter to Leo X, he set the pattern for consideration of early modern Catholicism, either demon or hero, that is only now being revised and seen with a human face. Further historical investigation will reveal even more wrinkles and complexities. Early modern Catholicism will take a good deal longer to describe, but the description will be closer to the human reality of that fascinating era.

Bibliography

Biagioli, Mario. Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago, 1993.

Bireley, Robert. The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450– 1700. Washington, D.C., 1999.

Carlebach, Elisheva. Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750. New Haven, 2001.

Cochrane, Eric. Italy, 1530–1630. Edited by Julius Kirshner. London, 1988.

Comerford, Kathleen M. Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: Priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole, 1575–1675. Florence, 2001.

Delumeau, Jean. Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation. Translated by Jeremy Moiser. London, 1977.

De Molen, Richard, ed. Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation. New York, 1994.

Firpo, Massimo. Inquisizione romana e controriforma. Bologna, 1992.

Forster, Marc. The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720. Ithaca, N.Y., 1992.

Gibbons, Mary. Giambologna: Narrator of the Catholic Reformation. Berkeley, 1995.

Grafton, Anthony. Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation. Cambridge, Mass., 2001.

Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton, 1977.

Heilbron, J. L. The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge, Mass., 1999.

Homza, Lu Ann. Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance. Baltimore, 2000.

Hudon, William V. "Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy: Old Questions, New Insights." American Historical Review 101, no. 3 (June 1996): 783–804.

Kaplan, Benjamin. "Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe." American Historical Review 107, no. 4 (October 2002): 1031–1064.

Lattis, James M. Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology. Chicago, 1994.

Mayer, Thomas F. Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet. Cambridge, U.K., 2000.

Mc Ginness, Frederick. Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome. Princeton, 1995.

Mc Mahon, Darrin M. Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity. New York, 2001.

Nalle, Sara T. God in La Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650. Baltimore, 1992.

O'Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, Mass., 1993.

——. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge, Mass., 2000.

Prodi, Paolo, and Giuseppe Olmi. "Art, Science and Nature in Bologna, since 1600." In The Age of Coreggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Washington, D.C., 1986.

Schutte, Anne Jacobson. Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750. Baltimore, 2001.

Smith, Jeffrey Chipps. Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany. Princeton, 2002.

Stow, Kenneth. Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century. Seattle, 2001.

Terpstra, Nicholas. Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

—WILLIAM V. HUDON

Quotes:

"Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination -- everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell." - John Adams

"Our religion is itself profoundly sad -- a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language -- so long as he knows anguish and is a painter." - Charles Baudelaire

"Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!" - Robert Browning

"The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed -- only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be -- then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!" - Lenny Bruce

"Anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual." - Patrick Buchanan

"All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else." - Anthony Burgess

See more famous quotes about Catholicism

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Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole.^{[1] [2]}Although for many the term usually refers to Christians and churches belonging to the Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See, for others it refers to continuity "back to the earliest churches",^[3] as claimed even by churches in dispute with one another over doctrine and practice such as the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Old Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.^[3] The claim of continuity may be based on Apostolic Succession, especially in conjunction with adherence to the Nicene Creed.^[4] In this sense of indicating historical continuity, the term "catholicism" is at times employed to mark a contrast to Protestantism, which tends to look instead to the Bible as interpreted by the 16th-century Protestant Reformation as its ultimate standard.^[5] It was thus used by the Oxford Movement.^[6]

According to Richard McBrien, Catholicism is distinguished from other forms of Christianity in its particular understanding and commitment to tradition, the sacraments, the mediation between God, and communion.^[1] Catholicism can include a monastic life, religious orders, a religious appreciation of the arts, a communal understanding of sin and redemption, missionary activity, and always "communion the Bishop of Rome" and the degree or form of primacy that what he calls the Communion of Catholic Churches attribute to his chair or office.^[7]

McBrien maintains that Eastern Catholic Churches should not come under the heading "Roman Catholic Church": "The Catholic Church itself is a communion of local churches, known as dioceses and patriarchates, of Roman and non-Roman Churches." Thus "to be Catholic --whether Roman/Latin or non-Roman/Latin -- is to be in full communion with the Bishop of Rome and as such an integral part of the Communion of Catholic Churches."^[8] Other writers, such as Kenneth D. Whitehead, disagree with McBrien by objecting to the use of the term "Roman Catholic Church" even for the Catholic Church of the West. Whitehead has pointed out that this term appears nowhere in the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council.^[9] Avery Dulles pointed out that in the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium the Council used instead of "Roman Catholic Church" the circumlocution, "the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in union with that successor", and referred only in a footnote to documents of similar authority that used the term "Roman" for the whole Church (the Profession of Faith of Trent and the documents of the First Vatican Council).^[10] The Popes^[11] continue to use the term "Roman Catholic Church", especially for identifying the Church unambiguously in written agreements with other churches, but even when addressing Catholics.^[12] In all these references, the Popes apply the term "Roman Catholic Church" to the whole Church, not to the Latin or Western Church.^[13] In popular usage also, "Catholic" usually means "Roman Catholic",^[14] a usage decried by some, including certain Protestants.^[15] "Catholic" usually refers to members of all the 23 constituent Churches, the one Western and the 22 Eastern. Newspaper reports generally reflect common usage.^[16][17]

Contents 1 History of use of "Catholic Church" 2 Divergent interpretations of the term "Catholic" 3 Brief organizational history of the Church 4 Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches 4.1 Sui iuris (i.e., self-governing) Churches in communion with the Holy See 5 Eastern Christianity 5.1 Eastern Christian churches 5.1.1 Eastern Orthodox churches in communion 5.1.2 Eastern Orthodox churches not in communion 5.1.3 Oriental Orthodox churches 5.1.4 Assyrian Church of the East 6 Anglicans and other Catholics 6.1 Anglicanism 6.2 Provinces of the Anglican Communion 7 Protestant churches 8 Distinctive beliefs and practices 8.1 Sacraments or Sacred Mysteries 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links

History of use of "Catholic Church"

The earliest recorded evidence of the use of the term "Catholic Church" is the Letter to the Smyrnaeans that Ignatius of Antioch wrote in about 107 to Christians in Smyrna. Exhorting Christians to remain closely united with their bishop, he wrote: "Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."^[18][19]

Of the meaning for Ignatius of this phrase J.H. Srawley wrote:

This is the earliest occurrence in Christian literature of the phrase 'the Catholic Church' (ἡ καθολικὴ ἒκκλησία). The original sense of the word is 'universal'. Thus Justin Martyr (Dial. 82) speaks of the 'universal or general resurrection', using the words, (ἡ καθολικὴ ἀνάστασις. Similarly here the Church universal is contrasted with the particular Church of Smyrna. Ignatius means by the Catholic Church 'the aggregate of all the Christian congregations' (Swete, Apostles Creed, p. 76). So too the letter of the Church of Smyrna is addressed to all the congregations of the Holy Catholic Church in every place. And this primitive sense of 'universal' the word has never lost, although in the latter part of the second century it began to receive the secondary sense of 'orthodox' as opposed to 'heretical'. Thus it is used in an early Canon of Scripture, the Muratorian fragment (circa 170 A.D.), which refers to certain heretical writings as 'not received in the Catholic Church'. So too Cyril of Jerusalem, in the fourth century, says that the Church is called Catholic not only 'because it is spread throughout the world', but also 'because it teaches completely and without defect all the doctrines which ought to come to the knowledge of men'. This secondary sense arose out of the original meaning because Catholics claimed to teach the whole truth, and to represent the whole Church, while heresy arose out of the exaggeration of some one truth and was essentially partial and local.^[20][21]

As indicated in this quotation, Cyril of Jerusalem (circa 315–386) used the term "Catholic Church" in opposition to other groups, whose right to call themselves ἐκκλησία (assembly or church) he admitted:

Since the word Ecclesia is applied to different things (as also it is written of the multitude in the theatre of the Ephesians, And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the Assembly (Acts 19:14), and since one might properly and truly say that there is a Church of evil doers, I mean the meetings of the heretics, the Marcionists and Manichees, and the rest, for this cause the Faith has securely delivered to you now the Article, "And in one Holy Catholic Church"; that you may avoid their wretched meetings, and ever abide with the Holy Church Catholic in which you were regenerated. And if ever you are 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.^[22]

Only slightly later, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) 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.

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.^[23]

On 27 February 380, by an edict issued in Thessalonica and published in Constantinople, Emperor Theodosius declared Catholic Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, and defined the term "Catholic" in Roman Imperial law as follows

It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our clemency and moderation, should continue the profession 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 Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one Deity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in our judgment 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. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of divine condemnation and the second the punishment of our authority, in accordance with the will of heaven will decide to inflict.^[24] Theodosian Code XVI.i.2

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:

"[I]n 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).

Divergent interpretations of the term "Catholic"

Many individual Christians and Christian denominations consider themselves "catholic" on the basis, in particular, of Apostolic Succession. They fall into five groups:

1. The Western and Eastern Churches of the Catholic Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome.^[25] These understand "Catholic" to involve unity with the Bishop of Rome,^[26] and hold that "the one Church of Christ ... subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure."^[27]
2. Those, like the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, that claim unbroken Apostolic Succession from the early Church and identify themselves as the Catholic Church; they see themselves (along with the See of Rome) as part of a patriarchal structure that developed in the East but never developed in the West. To disassociate the See of Rome from this equalisation of the "five Patriarchal Sees," Pope Benedict XVI dropped the title "Patriarch of the West," seeing the designation as an attempt to Orientalize Western ecclesiology. ^[28][29]
3. Those, like the Old Catholic, Anglican, and some Lutheran and other denominations, that claim unbroken Apostolic Succession from the early Church, and see themselves as a constituent part of the Church.
4. Those who claim to be spiritual descendants of the Apostles but have no discernible institutional descent from the historic Church, and normally do not refer to themselves as catholic.
5. Those who have acknowledged a break in Apostolic Succession, but have restored it in order to be in full communion with bodies that have maintained the practice. Examples in this category include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada vis-à-vis their Anglican and Old Catholic counterparts.

For some confessions listed under category 3, the self-affirmation refers to the belief in the ultimate unity of the universal church under one God and one Saviour, rather than in one visibly unified institution (as with category 1, above). In this usage, "catholic" is sometimes written with a lower-case "c". The Western Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, stating "I believe in ... one holy catholic ... church", are recited in worship services. Among some denominations in category 3, "Christian" is substituted for "catholic" in order to denote the doctrine that the Christian Church is, at least ideally, undivided.^[30][31][32]

Brief organizational history of the Church

Ancient statue of Saint Peter in the Basilica dedicated to him in the Vatican

According to the theory of Pentarchy, the early Catholic Church came to be organised under the three patriarchs of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, to which later were added the patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem. The Bishop of Rome was at that time recognized as first among them, as is stated, for instance, in canon 3 of the First Council of Constantinople (381)—many interpret "first" as meaning here first among equals—and doctrinal or procedural disputes were often referred to Rome, as when, on appeal by St Athanasius against the decision of the Council of Tyre (335), Pope Julius I, who spoke of such appeals as customary, annulled the action of that council and restored Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra to their sees. The Bishop of Rome was also considered to have the right to convene ecumenical councils. When the Imperial capital moved to Constantinople, Rome's influence was sometimes challenged. Nonetheless, Rome claimed special authority because of its connection to Saint Peter.^[33][34] and Saint Paul, who, all agreed, were martyred and buried in Rome, and because the Bishop of Rome saw himself as the successor of Saint Peter.

The 431 Council of Ephesus, the Third Ecumenical Council, was chiefly concerned with Nestorianism, which emphasised the distinction between the humanity and divinity of Jesus and taught that, in giving birth to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary could not be spoken of as giving birth to God. This Council rejected Nestorianism and affirmed that, as humanity and divinity are inseparable in the one person of Jesus Christ, his mother, the Virgin Mary, is thus Theotokos, God-bearer, Mother of God. The first great rupture in the Church followed this Council. Those who refused to accept the Council's ruling were largely Persian and are represented today by the Assyrian Church of the East and related Churches, which, however, do not now hold a "Nestorian" theology. They are often called Ancient Oriental Churches.

The next major break was after the Council of Chalcedon (451). This Council repudiated Eutychian Monophysitism which stated that the divine nature completely subsumed the human nature in Christ. This Council declared that Christ, though one person, exhibited two natures "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation" and thus is both fully God and fully human. The Alexandrian Church rejected the terms adopted by this Council, and the Christian Churches that follow the tradition of non-acceptance of the Council—they are not Monophysite in doctrine—are referred to as Pre-Chalcedonian or Oriental Orthodox Churches.

The next great rift within Christianity was in the 11th century. Longstanding doctrinal disputes, as well as conflicts between methods of Church government, and the evolution of separate rites and practices, precipitated a split in 1054 that divided the Church, this time between a "West" and an "East". England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, and Western Europe in general were in the Western camp, and Greece, Romania, Russia and many other Slavic lands, Anatolia, and the Christians in Syria and Egypt who accepted the Council of Chalcedon made up the Eastern camp. This division between the Western Church and the Eastern Church is called the East-West Schism.

The fourth major division in the Church occurred in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation, after which many parts of the Western Church either entirely rejected the teachings and structure of the Western Church at that time and became known as "Reformed" or "Protestant", or else repudiated papal authority in the Western Church for the authority of a civil ruler in religious matters (e.g., in Anglicanism and parts of the Lutheran Church).

A much less extensive rupture occurred when, after the Roman Catholic Church's First Vatican Council, in which it officially proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility, small clusters of Catholics in the Netherlands and in German-speaking countries formed the Old-Catholic (Altkatholische) Church.

Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches

Main article: Roman Catholic Church

Catholicism portal

The Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches together form the "Catholic Church"^[35] or "Roman Catholic Church",^[36] the world's second largest single religious body after Sunni Islam and the largest Christian church, comprising over half of all Christians (1.1 billion Christians) and one-sixth of the world's population.^[37][38] Richard McBrien would put the proportion even higher, extending it to those who are in communion with the Bishop of Rome only in "degrees".^[39] It comprises 23 component "particular churches" (also called "rites" in the Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches),^[40] all of which acknowledge a primacy of jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome^[41] and are in full communion with the Holy See and each other. These particular churches or component parts are the Latin Rite or Western Church (which uses a number of different liturgical rites, of which the Roman Rite is the best known) and 22 Eastern Catholic Churches. Of the latter particular churches, 14 use the Byzantine liturgical rite.^[42] Within the Church as a whole, each "particular Church", whether Eastern or Western, is of equal dignity.^[43] Finally, in its official documents, the Church, though made up of several particular Churches, "continues to refer to itself as the 'Catholic Church'"^[44] or, less frequently but consistently, as the 'Roman Catholic Church', owing to its essential^[36] link with the Bishop of Rome.^[45] Theologian Richard McBrien, in his book Catholicism, disagrees, saying: "But is 'Catholic' synonymous with 'Roman Catholic'? And is it accurate to refer to the Roman Catholic Church as simply the 'Roman Church'? The answer to both questions is no. The adjective 'Roman' applies more properly to the diocese, or see, of Rome than to the worldwide Communion of Catholic Churches that is in union with the Bishop of Rome. Indeed, it strikes some Catholics as contradictory to call the Church 'Catholic' and 'Roman' at one and the same time. Eastern-rite Catholics, of whom there are more than twenty million, also find the adjective 'Roman' objectionable. In addition to the Latin, or Roman, tradition, there are seven non-Latin, non-Roman ecclesial traditions: Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, East Syrian (Chaldean), West Syrian, and Maronite. Each to the Churches with these non-Latin traditions is as Catholic as the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, not all Catholics are Roman Catholic." Thus "to be Catholic -- whether Roman or non-Roman -- in the ecclesiological sense is to be in full communion with the Bishop of Rome and as such to be an integral part of the Catholic Communion of Churches.^[46] In spite of the use of "Roman Catholic Church" by Popes and departments of the Holy See, McBrien affirms that, on an official level, the "Communion of Catholic Churches" always refers to itself as "The Catholic Church".^[47]

Sui iuris (i.e., self-governing) Churches in communion with the Holy See

Main article: Sui iuris

• Of Alexandrian tradition:
  • Coptic Catholic Church
  • Ethiopic Catholic Church

• Of Antiochian or West Syrian tradition:
  • Maronite Church
  • Syrian Catholic Church
  • Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

• Of Armenian tradition:
  • Armenian Catholic Church

• Of Byzantine (Constantinopolitan) tradition:
  • Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
  • Belarusian Greek Catholic Church
  • Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
  • Byzantine Church of the Eparchy of Križevci
  • Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
  • Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
  • Italo-Albanian Catholic Church
  • Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
  • Melkite Greek Catholic Church
  • Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic
  • Russian Byzantine Catholic Church
  • Ruthenian Catholic Church
  • Slovak Greek Catholic Church
  • Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

• Of Chaldean or East Syrian tradition:
  • Chaldean Catholic Church
  • Syro-Malabar Church (in India, dating back to the Apostle Thomas)

• Of Western tradition:
  • Latin Church, a single particular Church that uses various liturgical rites.

Eastern Christianity

Eastern_Christianity portal

Main articles: Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Assyrian Church of the East

The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, as well as the Assyrian Church of the East, each consider themselves to be the universal and true Catholic Church. Each of these three regards the others — since the divisions at the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedonia (451) — as heretical or at least as schismatic and as having thus left the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches are autocephalous hierarchs, which roughly means that each is independent of the direct oversight of another bishop, although still subject, according to their distinct traditions, either to the synod of bishops of each one’s jurisdiction, or to a common decision of the patriarchs of their own communion. Today, the Orthodox believe that among the five Patriarchs of the Pentarchy (i.e., Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) a special place of honor belongs to the pope, a "primacy of honor," but not of supremacy.^[48] In this context, the Orthodox are willing to concede a primacy of honor to the See of Rome, but not of authority; nor do they accept its claim to universal and immediate jurisdiction. However, in the 2007 Joint International Commission (of Orthodoxy and Catholicism) held at Revenna, Italy, the delegates of the Orthodox and Catholic churches clearly asserted: "The fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both East and West." Kallistos Ware notes that this Ravenna statement has to be "received" and ratified by the Orthodox Church as a whole. In October, 2009, at a new session at Paphos, Cyprus, "the role of the Bishop of Rome in the communion of the Church in the first millennium" will be considered. "The key question," Ware notes, "will be, how far did the Pope during the first millennium exercise jurisdiction that was not only appellate but direct and ordinary."^[49] The assertions and statements of the Commission are not necessarily similar to the positions taken by the Lutheran World Federation, the Anglican Communion, and the Old Catholic Church. There are about 250 million Orthodox, comprising 11.4% of global Christianity.^[50]

Eastern Christian churches

Eastern Orthodox churches in communion

• Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
  • Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
  • Finnish Orthodox Church
  • American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese
• Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria
• Church of Antioch
  • Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
• Orthodox Church of Jerusalem
• Russian Orthodox Church
  • Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
  • Japanese Orthodox Church
  • Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchy (UOC-MP) (Ukrainian only)
  • Hungarian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchy (Hungarian and Russian only)
• Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church
• Church of Serbia
  • Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric (Macedonia)
• Romanian Orthodox Church
• Bulgarian Orthodox Church
• Church of Cyprus
• Church of Greece
• Church of Albania
• Polish Orthodox Church (Polish only)
• Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church (Czech or Slovak only)
• Orthodox Church in America

Eastern Orthodox churches not in communion

• Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece
• Macedonian Orthodox Church

Oriental Orthodox churches

• Armenian Apostolic Church
• Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria
• British Orthodox Church
• Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church
• Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
• Malankara Jacobite Syriac Orthodox Church
• Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of the East (also known as the Indian Orthodox Church)
• Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch (also known as the Syrian Orthodox Church)

Assyrian Church of the East

• Assyrian Church of the East

Anglicans and other Catholics

Part of a series on the Anglican Communion
Organisation
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Background
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Theology
Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) Theology • Doctrine Thirty-Nine Articles Caroline Divines Oxford Movement Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral Sacraments • Mary • Saints
Liturgy and Worship
Book of Common Prayer Morning and Evening Prayer Eucharist • Liturgical Year Biblical Canon Books of Homilies High Church • Low Church Broad Church
Anglican Topics Ecumenism • Monasticism Prayer • Music • Art
Anglicanism Portal

Within Western Christianity, the churches of the Anglican Communion, the Old Catholics, the Liberal Catholic Church, the Apostolic Catholic Church (ACC), the Aglipayans (Philippine Independent Church), the Polish National Catholic Church of America, and many Independent Catholic Churches, which emerged directly or indirectly from and have beliefs and practices largely similar to Latin Rite Catholicism, regard themselves as "Catholic" without full communion with the Bishop of Rome, whose claimed status and authority they generally reject. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a division of the People's Republic of China's Religious Affairs Bureau exercising state supervision over mainland China's Catholics, holds a similar position, while attempting, as with Buddhism and Protestantism, to indoctrinate and mobilize for Communist Party objectives.^[51]

Anglicanism

Main article: Anglicanism

Introductory works on Anglicanism, such as The Study of Anglicanism, typically refer to the character of the Anglican tradition as "Catholic and Reformed",^[52] which is in keeping with the understanding of Anglicanism articulated in the Elizabethan Settlement and in the works of the earliest standard Anglican divines such as Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. Yet different strains in Anglicanism, dating back to the English Reformation, have emphasized either the Reformed, Catholic, or "Reformed Catholic" nature of the tradition.

Anglican theology and ecclesiology has thus come to be typically expressed in three distinct, yet sometimes overlapping manifestations: Anglo-Catholicism (or "high church"), "Evangelicalism" (or "low church"), and Latitudinarianism (or "broad church"), whose beliefs and practices fall somewhere between the two. Though all elements within the Anglican Communion recite the same creeds, Evangelical Anglicans regard the word catholic in the ideal sense given above. In contrast, Anglo-Catholics regard the communion as a component of the whole Catholic Church, in spiritual and historical union with the Roman Catholic, Old Catholic and several Eastern Churches. Broad Church Anglicans tend to maintain a mediating view, or consider the matter one of adiaphora. These Anglicans, for example, have agreed in the Porvoo Agreement to interchangeable ministries and full eucharistic communion with Lutherans.^[53][54]

The Catholic nature or strain of the Anglican tradition is expressed doctrinally, ecumenically (chiefly through organisations such as the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission), ecclesiologically (through its episcopal governance and maintenance of the historical episcopate), and in liturgy and piety. Anglicans (except neo-evangelicals) maintain belief in the Seven Sacraments. Many Anglo-Catholics practice Marian devotion, recite the rosary and the angelus, practice Eucharistic adoration, and seek the intercession of saints. In terms of liturgy, most Anglicans use candles on the altar and many churches use incense and sanctus bells in the Eucharist, which is often referred to by the Latin-derived word "Mass". In a small number of churches the Eucharist is still celebrated facing the altar (often with a tabernacle) by a priest assisted by a deacon and subdeacon. Some Anglicans believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Others do not. Likewise, different Eucharistic prayers contain different, if not necessarily contradictory, understandings of salvation. For this reason, no single strain or manifestation of Anglicanism can speak for the whole, even in ecumenical statements (as issued, for example, by the Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission).^[55][56][57] This "ecumenical inconsistency", to quote ecumenist, Edward Yarnold, is especially true in recent agreements made between parts of the Anglican Communion and different Lutheran churches, where decisions (pertaining to traditions and doctrines dating back to the churches of the first millennium) are entrusted to local and national Anglican church bodies.^[58] To deal with other inconsistencies, the current archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has suggested a "two-tier system" in the Communion, putting some bishops on a lower tier than others (for "overturing centuries of Christian understanding of marriage and homosexuality without wider consensus from other Anglicans"), thus over time giving the lower tier bishops a "reduced role in the communion."^[59]

The growth of Anglo-Catholicism is strongly associated with the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century. Two of its leading lights, John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, both priests, ended up joining the Roman Catholic Church, becoming cardinals. Others, like John Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and Charles Gore became influential figures in Anglicanism. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is a patron of the Anglican organisation, Affirming Catholicism, a more liberal movement within Catholic Anglicanism. Conservative Catholic groups also exist within the tradition, such as Forward in Faith. There are about 80 million Anglicans in the world, comprising 3.6% of global Christianity.^[50]

Provinces of the Anglican Communion

As in Orthodoxy, all thirty-eight provinces of the Anglican Communion are independent, each with its own primate and governing structure. These provinces may take the form of national churches (such as in Canada, Uganda, or Japan) or a collection of nations (such as the West Indies, Central Africa, or Southeast Asia). All are in union with the see of Canterbury.

The 38 provinces include:

• The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia
• The Anglican Church of Australia
• The Church of Bangladesh
• The Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil)
• The Anglican Church of Burundi
• The Anglican Church of Canada
• The Church of the Province of Central Africa
• The Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central America (Anglican Church in the Central Region of America)
• The Province de L'Eglise Anglicane Du Congo (Province of the Anglican Church of Congo)
• The Church of England
• Sheng Kung Hui (Hong Kong Anglican Church (Episcopal))
• The Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean
• The Church of Ireland
• The Nippon Sei Ko Kai (The Anglican Communion in Japan)
• The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East
• The Anglican Church of Kenya
• The Anglican Church of Korea
• The Church of the Province of Melanesia
• The Anglican Church of Mexico
• The Church of the Province of Myanmar (Burma)
• The Church of Nigeria
• The Church of North India
• The Church of Pakistan
• The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea
• The Episcopal Church in the Philippines
• The Church of the Province of Rwanda
• The Scottish Episcopal Church
• The Church of the Province of South East Asia
• The Church of South India
• The Anglican Church of Southern Africa
• Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur de las Americas (Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of the Americas)
• The Episcopal Church of the Sudan
• The Anglican Church of Tanzania
• The Church of Uganda
• The Episcopal Church in the United States of America
• The Church in Wales
• The Church of the Province of West Africa
• The Church in the Province of the West Indies

In addition, there are six extraprovincial churches, five of which are under the metropolitical authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

• The Anglican Church of Bermuda (extraprovincial to the Archbishop of Canterbury)
• Iglesia Episcopal de Cuba (Episcopal Church of Cuba) (under a metropolitan council)
• The Parish of the Falkland Islands (extraprovincial to the Archbishop of Canterbury)
• The Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church of Portugal (extraprovincial to the Archbishop of Canterbury)
• The Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church (extraprovincial to the Archbishop of Canterbury)
• The Church of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) (extraprovincial to the Archbishop of Canterbury)

Protestant churches

United States Christian bodies  v • d • e

United States Interchurch National Association of Evangelicals National Council of Churches Churches Uniting in Christ S. Conference of Orthodox Bishops in America North Am. Presbyterian & Reformed Council Anabaptist & Friends Church of the Brethren Friends United Meeting Mennonite Church USA Old Order Amish Mennonite Church Baptist & Stone-Campbell Baptist Alliance of Baptists American Baptist Association American Baptist Churches Baptist Bible Fellowship International Baptist General Conference Baptist Missionary Association of America Conservative Baptist Association of America General Association of Regular Baptist Churches National Association of Free Will Baptists National Primitive Baptist Convention North American Baptist Conference Southern Baptist Convention African-American Baptist National Baptist Convention of America National Baptist Convention, USA National Missionary Baptist Convention of America Progressive National Baptist Convention Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Christian Churches and Churches of Christ Churches of Christ International Churches of Christ Catholic & Anglican Episcopal Church Old Roman Catholic Church Polish National Catholic Church Roman Catholic Church Holiness & Pietist Christian and Missionary Alliance Church of God (Anderson) Evangelical Covenant Church Evangelical Free Church of America Church of the Nazarene Salvation Army Seventh-day Adventist Church Wesleyan Church Lutheran Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod Methodist African Methodist Episcopal Church African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Christian Methodist Episcopal Church Free Methodist Church United Methodist Church Orthodox Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Orthodox Church in America Serbian Orthodox Church Non-Chalcedonic Armenian Apostolic of Am. Armenian Apostolic Diocese of Am. Coptic Orthodox Church Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church of God (Cleveland, TN) Church of God in Christ Church of God of Prophecy Full Gospel Fellowship Intl. Church of the Foursquare Gospel Intl. Pentecostal Holiness Church Pentecostal Church of God Oneness Pentecostal Pentecostal Assemblies of the World United Pentecostal Church Intl. Presbyterian & Reformed Christian Reformed Church in North America Conservative Congregational Christian Conference Cumberland Presbyterian Church Evangelical Presbyterian Church Korean Presbyterian Church in America International Council of Community Churches National Asso. of Congregational Christian Churches Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbyterian Church in America Reformed Church in America United Church of Christ Other Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Community of Christ Grace Gospel Fellowship Independent Fundamental Churches of America Messianic Jewish Alliance of America Plymouth Brethren Vineyard USA See also: Non-denominational Christianity

There are Catholic groups among the Protestant churches. For example, The 20th century "High Church Lutheranism" movement developed an Evangelical Catholicity, combining justification by faith with Catholic doctrine on sacraments, in some cases also restoring lacking Apostolic Succession, especially in Germany.

In Reformed churches there is a Scoto-Catholic grouping within the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Such groups point to their churches' continuing adherence to the "Catholic" doctrine of the early Church Councils. The Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland of 1921 defines that church legally as "part of the Holy Catholic or Universal Church".^[52]

The Roman Catholic Church, which views Christians not in communion with itself as "non-Catholics" and which sees a valid episcopate and Eucharist as necessary for being a church, does not consider these denominations and the Anglican Communion as churches "in the proper sense".^[60][61][62]

Distinctive beliefs and practices

Due to the divergent interpretations of the word "Catholicism," any listing of beliefs and practices that distinguish Catholicism from other forms of Christianity must be preceded by an indication of the sense employed. If Catholicism is understood as the Roman Catholic Church understands it, identification of beliefs is relatively easy, though preferred expressions of the beliefs vary, especially between the Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic Churches of Greek tradition, and the other Eastern Catholic Churches. Liturgical and canonical practices vary between all these particular Churches constituting the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches (or, as Richard Mc Brien states, the "Communion of Catholic Churches.")^[63]

In the understanding of another Church that identifies Catholicism with itself, such as the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, clear identification of certain beliefs may sometimes be more difficult, because of the lack of a central authority like that of the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches. On the other hand, practices are more uniform, as indicated, for instance, in the single liturgical rite employed, in various languages, within the Eastern Orthodox Church, in contrast to the variety of liturgical rites in the Roman Catholic Church.

In all these cases the beliefs and practices of Catholicism would be identical with the beliefs and practices of the Church in question. If Catholicism is extended to cover all who consider themselves spiritual descendants of the Apostles, a search for beliefs and practices that distinguish it from other forms of Christianity would be meaningless. Only if Catholicism is understood in the sense given to the word by those who use it to distinguish their position from a Calvinistic or Puritan form of Protestantism is it meaningful to attempt to draw up a list of common characteristic beliefs and practices of Catholicism. In this interpretation, evidently by no means shared by all, Catholicism includes the Roman Catholic Church, the various Churches of Eastern Christianity, the Old Catholic Church, Anglicanism, and at least some of the "independent Catholic Churches".

The beliefs and practices of Catholicism, as thus understood, include:

• Direct and continuous organizational descent from the original church founded by Jesus Matthew 16:18, who, according to tradition, designated the Apostle Peter as its first leader.^[64]
• Belief that Jesus Christ is Divine, a doctrine officially clarified in the First Council of Nicea and expressed in the Nicene Creed.
• Belief that the Eucharist is really, truly, and objectively the Body and Blood of Christ, through the Real Presence. Many Catholics additionally believe that adoration and worship is due to the Eucharist, as the body and blood of Christ.
• Possession of the "threefold ordained ministry" of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.
• All ministers are ordained by, and subject to, Bishops, who pass down sacramental authority by the "laying-on of hands", having themselves been ordained in a direct line of succession from the Apostles (see Apostolic Succession).
• Belief that the Church is the vessel and deposit of the fullness of the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles from which the Scriptures were formed. This teaching is preserved in both written scripture and in unwritten tradition, neither being independent of the other.
• A belief in the necessity and efficacy of sacraments.
• The use of sacred images, candles, vestments and music, and often incense and water, in worship.
• Veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus as the Blessed Virgin Mary or Theotokos (i.e., "God-bearer" or "Mother of God"), and veneration of the saints.
• A distinction between adoration (latria) for God, and veneration (dulia) for saints. The term hyperdulia is used for a special veneration accorded to the Virgin Mary among the saints.
• The use of prayer for the dead.
• The acceptance of canonizations.
• Requests to the departed saints for intercessory prayers.

Sacraments or Sacred Mysteries

Main article: Catholic sacraments

Main article: Sacred Mysteries

Main article: Anglican sacraments

Churches in the Catholic tradition administer seven sacraments or "sacred mysteries": Baptism, Confirmation or Chrismation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. In some Catholic churches this number is regarded as a convention only.

In Catholicism, a sacrament is considered to be an efficacious visible sign of God's invisible grace. While the word mystery is used not only of these rites, but also with other meanings with reference to revelations of and about God and to God's mystical interaction with creation, the word sacrament (Latin: a solemn pledge), the usual term in the West, refers specifically to these rites.

• Baptism - the first sacrament of Christian initiation, the basis for all the other sacraments. Churches in the Catholic tradition consider baptism conferred in most Christian denominations "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (cf. Matthew 28:19) to be valid, since the effect is produced through the sacrament, independently of the faith of the minister, though not of the minister's intention. This is not necessarily the case in other churches. As stated in the Nicene Creed, Baptism is "for the forgiveness of sins", not only personal sins, but also of original sin, which it remits even in infants who have committed no actual sins. Expressed positively, forgiveness of sins means bestowal of the sanctifying grace by which the baptized person shares the life of God. The initiate "puts on Christ" (Galatians 3:27), and is "buried with him in baptism ... also raised with him through faith in the working of God" (Colossians 2:12).

• Confirmation or Chrismation - the second sacrament of Christian initiation, the means by which the gift of the Holy Spirit conferred in baptism is "strengthened and deepened" (see, for example, Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1303) by a sealing. In the Western tradition it is usually a separate rite from baptism, bestowed, following a period of education called catechesis, on those who have at least reached the age of discretion (about 7) and sometimes postponed until an age when the person is considered capable of making a mature independent profession of faith. It is considered to be of a nature distinct from the anointing with chrism (also called myrrh) that is usually part of the rite of baptism and that is not seen as a separate sacrament. In the Eastern tradition it is usually conferred in conjunction with baptism, as its completion, but is sometimes administered separately to converts or those who return to Orthodoxy. Some theologies consider this to be the outward sign of the inner "Baptism of the Holy Spirit," the special gifts (or charismata) of which may remain latent or become manifest over time according to God's will. Its "originating" minister is a validly consecrated bishop; if a priest (a "presbyter") confers the sacrament (as is permitted in some Catholic churches) the link with the higher order is indicated by the use of chrism blessed by a bishop. (In an Eastern Orthodox Church, this is customarily, although not necessarily, done by the primate of the local autocephalous church.)

• Eucharist - the sacrament (the third of Christian initiation) by which the faithful receive their ultimate "daily bread," or "bread for the journey," by partaking of and in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and being participants in Christ's one eternal sacrifice. The bread and wine used in the rite are, according to Catholic faith, in the mystical action of the Holy Spirit, transformed to be Christ's Body and Blood—his Real Presence. This transformation is interpreted by some as transubstantiation or metousiosis, by others as consubstantiation or Sacramental Union.

• Penance (also called Confession and Reconciliation) - the first of the two sacraments of healing. It is also called the sacrament of conversion, of forgiveness, and of absolution. It is the sacrament of spiritual healing of a baptized person from the distancing from God involved in actual sins committed. It involves the penitent's contrition for sin (without which the rite does not have its effect), confession (which in highly exceptional circumstances can take the form of a corporate general confession) to a minister who has the faculty to exercise the power to absolve the penitent,^[65] and absolution by the minister. In some traditions (such as the Roman Catholic), the rite involves a fourth element — satisfaction — which is defined as signs of repentance imposed by the minister. In early Christian centuries, the fourth element was quite onerous and generally preceded absolution, but now it usually involves a simple task (in some traditions called a "penance") for the penitent to perform, to make some reparation and as a medicinal means of strengthening against further sinning.

• Anointing of the Sick (or Unction) - the second sacrament of healing. In it those who are suffering an illness are anointed by a priest with oil consecrated by a bishop specifically for that purpose. In past centuries, when such a restrictive interpretation was customary, the sacrament came to be known as "Extreme Unction", i.e. "Final Anointing", as it still is among traditionalist Catholics. It was then conferred only as one of the "Last Rites". The other "Last Rites" are Penance (if the dying person is physically unable to confess, at least absolution, conditional on the existence of contrition, is given), and the Eucharist, which, when administered to the dying, is known as "Viaticum", a word whose original meaning in Latin was "provision for a journey".

• The Sacrament of Holy Orders - that which integrates someone into the Holy Orders of bishops, priests (presbyters), and deacons, the threefold order of "administrators of the mysteries of God" (1 Corinthians 4:1), giving the person the mission to teach, sanctify, and govern. Only a bishop may administer this sacrament, as only a bishop holds the fullness of the Apostolic Ministry. Ordination as a bishop makes one a member of the body that has succeeded to that of the Apostles. Ordination as a priest configures a person to Christ the Head of the Church and the one essential Priest, empowering that person, as the bishops' assistant and vicar, to preside at the celebration of divine worship, and in particular to confect the sacrament of the Eucharist, acting "in persona Christi" (in the person of Christ). Ordination as a deacon configures the person to Christ the Servant of All, placing the deacon at the service of the Church, especially in the fields of the ministry of the Word, service in divine worship, pastoral guidance and charity. Deacons may later be further ordained to the priesthood, but only if they do not have a wife. In some traditions (such as those of the Roman Catholic Church), while married men may be ordained, ordained men may not marry. In others (such as the Anglican), clerical marriage is permitted, as is the ordination of women.^[66] Moreover, some sectors of Anglicanism "in isolation of the whole" have approved the ordination of openly active homosexuals to the priesthood and episcopacy, in spite of the support that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, voiced for the Anglican Church's teaching on homosexuality, which he said the Church "could not change simply because of a shift in society's attitude", noting also that those churches blessing same-sex unions and consecrating openingly gay bishops would not be able "to take part as a whole in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue." Thus in ecumenical matters, only if the Roman Catholic as well as Orthodox churches come to an understanding with first tier or primary bishops of the Anglican Communion can those churches (representing 95% of global Catholicism) implement an agreement with second tier or secondary Anglican bishops and their respective Anglican communities.^{[67][68][69][70]}

• Marriage (or Holy Matrimony) - is the sacrament of joining a man and a woman (according to the churches' doctrines) for mutual help and love (the unitive purpose), consecrating them for their particular mission of building up the Church and the world, and providing grace for accomplishing that mission. Western tradition sees the sacrament as conferred by the canonically expressed mutual consent of the partners in marriage; Eastern and some recent Western theologians not in communion with the see of Rome view the blessing by a priest as constituting the sacramental action.

See also

• One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
• Religious Orders
• Anglican Catholic Church
• Anglican Church in North America
• Arianism
• Evangelical Catholic
• Global Anglican Future Conference
• Neo-Lutheranism
• Porvoo Agreement
• Traditionalist Catholic

References

1. ^ ^{a b} McBrien, Richard P. (1994). Catholicism. HarperCollins. pp. 3–19. ISBN 9780060654054. 
2. ^ For McBrien, the "broad term" refers exclusively and specifically to that "Communion of Catholic Churches" in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Richard McBrien, The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 6, 281-2, and 356. In its Letter on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stressed that the idea of the universal Church as a communion of Churches must not be presented as meaning that "every particular Church is a subject complete in itself, and that the universal Church is the result of a reciprocal recognition on the part of the particular Churches". It insisted that "the universal Church cannot be conceived as the sum of the particular Churches, or as a federation of particular Churches".
3. ^ ^{a b} Pierre Whalon, What is the difference between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism
4. ^ Parsons, Evelyn C. (2007). It Makes a Difference Being a Catholic. AuthorHouse. p. 40. ISBN 9781434314772. 
5. ^ The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 978-0-19-280290-3), article Catholic, p. 308
6. ^ Connor, Charles Patrick (2001). Classic Catholic Converts. Ignatius Press. ISBN 9780898707878. 
7. ^ Richard McBrien, The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, 6, 281, 356.
8. ^ McBrien, p. 356
9. ^ Whitehead, "How Did the Catholic Church Get Her Name?"
10. ^ Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church, p. 132
11. ^ For example, Pope Benedict XVI in the 23 November 2006 Common Declaration of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Dr Rowan Williams
12. ^ The 1950 encyclical Humani Generis is an example; another is the talk that Pope John Paul II gave at the general audience of 26 June 1985, in which he spoke of the division between "the Catholic (Roman Catholic) Church and the Orthodox Church or Churches".
13. ^ In a speech by John Paul II to President Hillery of Ireland, the Pope referred to the church he headed both as the "Roman Catholic Church" and as the "Catholic Church".
14. ^ J.C. Cooper, Dictionary of Christianity (Taylor & Francis, Inc. 1996 ISBN 9781884964497), p. 47
15. ^ James Hastings Nichols, Primer for Protestants (Kessinger Publishing Company 2004 ISBN 9781417998241), p. 9
16. ^ the New York Times.
17. ^ See also the Second Vatican Council Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, "Orientalium Ecclesiarum" (Latin, "Of the Eastern Churches"). The document proclaims the equality of the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity (no. 3), as well as the importance of preserving the spiritual heritage of the Eastern Churches (no. 5), "for it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each individual Church or Rite should retain its traditions whole and entire and likewise that it should adapt its way of life to the different needs of time and place" (no. 2).
18. ^ "Chapter VIII.—Let nothing be done without the bishop". Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.v.vii.viii.html. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
19. ^ Angle, Paul T. (2007). The Mysterious Origins of Christianity. Wheatmark, Inc.. ISBN 9781587368219. 
20. ^ [J.H. Srawley, The Epistles of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, vol. II,] pp. 41-42
21. ^ another edition, p.97
22. ^ Knight, Kevin. "Catechetical Lecture 18 - #26". New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310118.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
23. ^ "Chapter 5.—Against the Title of the Epistle of Manichæus". Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.iv.viii.vi.html?. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
24. ^ Bettenson, Henry (1967). Documents of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press US. p. 22. ISBN 9780195012934. http://books.google.com/books?id=k9L2UaDJLGkC&pg=PP1&dq=. 
25. ^ This Church is commonly referred to by this name even by others (see for instance Cultural Portraits: A Synoptic Guide, by Byron P. Palls (AuthorHouse, 2008 ISBN 1434388670) and even by those who are hostile to it mention that it is "commonly called the Catholic Church" (A discourse on the worship of Priapus, and its connection with the mystic theology of the ancients).
26. ^ Porvaznik, Phil. "Papal Authority and the Primacy of Rome". Evangelical Catholic Apologetics. http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num12.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
27. ^ "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church - Chapter 1: The Mystery of the Church". The Vatican. 1964-11-21. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
28. ^ John Allen, "the 'Patriarch of the West' retires," The National Catholic Reporter April 7, 2006, 21.
29. ^ Joseph Ratzinger, "Sister Churches," The Tablet 9 September, 2000, 1205.
30. ^ "Apostles' Creed". The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=3355. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
31. ^ "Nicene Creed". Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. http://www.wels.net/cgi-bin/site.pl?2617&collectionID=711&contentID=4334&shortcutID=2077#nicene. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
32. ^ "Texts of the Three Chief Symbols are taken from the Book of Concord, Tappert edition". The International Lutheran Fellowship. http://www.ilflutheran.org/page11.html. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
33. ^ Radeck, Francisco; Dominic Radecki (2004). Tumultuous Times. St. Joseph's Media. p. 79. ISBN 9780971506107. 
34. ^ "The Hierarchical Constitution of the Church - 880-881". The Vatican. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P2A.HTM#RC. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
35. ^ McBrien, The Church, 356. McBrien also says they form the "Communion of Catholic Churches", a name not used by the Church itself, which has pointed out the ambiguity of this term in a 1992 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "on some aspects of the Church understood as communion", 8.
36. ^ ^{a b} "The Catholic Church is also called the Roman Church to emphasize that the centre of unity, which is an essential for the Universal Church, is in the Roman See" (Thomas J. O'Brien, An Advanced Catechism of Catholic Faith and Practice, Kessinger Publishers, 2005, ISBN 1417984473, page 70)
37. ^ "Number of Catholics and Priests Rises". Zenit News Agency. 12 February 2007. http://www.zenit.org/article-18894?l=english. Retrieved 21 February 2008. 
38. ^ "CIA World Factbook". United States Government Central Intelligence Agency. 2008. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html#People. Retrieved 22 December 2008. 
39. ^ Richard McBrien, The Church: The Evolution of Catholicism, 6. ISBN 978-0-06-124521-3 McBrien says this: Vatican II "council implicitly set aside the category of membership and replaced it with degrees." "...it is not a matter of either/or -- either one is in communion with the Bishop of Rome, or one is not. As in a family, there are degrees of relationships: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, neices, in-laws. In many cultures, the notion of family is broader than blood and legal relationships."
40. ^ Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 2
41. ^ Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, canon 43
42. ^ Annuario Pontificio, 2007 edition, pages 1169–1170 (ISBN 978-88-209-7908-9).
43. ^ Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 3
44. ^ Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., Catholicism in the Third Millennium (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press), xii.
45. ^ For example, in his encyclical Humani Generis, 27-28 Pope Pius XII decried the error of those who denied that they were bound by "the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing"; and in his Divini Illius Magistri Pope Pius XI wrote: "In the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing." On other occasions too, both when signing agreements with other Churches (e.g. that with Patriarch Mar Ignatius Yacoub III of the Syrian Orthodox Church) and in giving talks to various groups (e.g. Benedict XVI in Warsaw, the Popes refer to the Church that they head as the Roman Catholic Church.
46. ^ Richard McBrien, The Church, 6.
47. ^ McBrien, The Church, 351-371
48. ^ Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Press, 1993), 27.
49. ^ Kallistos Ware, "Primate or Protos?" The Tablet, 25 July, 2009, 8-9.
50. ^ ^{a b} David Barrett, "Christian World Communities: Five Overviews of Global Christianity, AD 1800-2025," in International Bulletin of Missionary Research January, 2009, Vol. 33, No 1, pp. 31.
51. ^ Simon Scott Plummer, "China's Growing Faiths" in The Tablet, March, 2007. Based on a review of Religious Experience in Contemporary China by Kinzhong Yao and Paul Badham (University of Wales Press).
52. ^ ^{a b} Fahlbusch, Erwin; Geoffrey William Bromiley (2005). The Encyclopedia of Christianity. David B. Barrett. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 269,494. ISBN 9780802824165. 
53. ^ Anglican-Lutheran agreement signed," The Christian Century 13 November, 1996, 1005.
54. ^ "Two Churches Now Share a Cleric," New York Times, 20 October, 1996, 24.
55. ^ Rowan A. Greer," "Anglicanism as an ongoing argument," The Witness May, 1998, 23.
56. ^ Matt Cresswell, "Anglican conservatives say 'second reformation' is already under way," The Tablet 28 June, 2008, 32.
57. ^ Philip Jenkins, "Defender of the Faith," The Atlantic Monthly Novermber, 2003, 46-9.
58. ^ Edward Yarnold, S.J., "A word in due season", The Tablet 18, July 1998, 935-6. Yarnold, a Jesuit ecumenist and former member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, says this: "The recent agreements made between parts of the Anglican Communion and different Lutheran Churches are a case in point [of this inconsistency] -- in Germany (Meissen), in northern Europe (Provoo), and in the United States (though the Lutherans failed to ratify this third scheme). Each of these documents involves not only the mutual participation of Anglican and Lutheran bishops in future ordinations, but in the interim recognizes orders as they stand, even though there was an acknowledged breach in the episcopal succession. Yet when Anglicans are talking to Catholics, a different principle is accepted: both the Final Report of the first Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the Clarifications to that report affirm the need for ordination to take place within an unbroken episcopal succession. I am glad to acknowledge that the drafters of Porvoo made an effort not to contradict ARCIC, but although I have looked again and again, I cannot see that they were successful. The problem once again illustrates the impossibility of deciding which voice speaks for the Anglican Communion."
59. ^ Daniel Burke, "Williams suggests secondary role for rebel Episcopal church", National Catholic Reporter 7 August, 2009, 6.
60. ^ Fowler, Jeaneane D. (1997). World Religions. Sussex Academic Press. p. 82. ISBN 9781898723486. 
61. ^ "The ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dominus Iesus, 17
62. ^ "(The expression sister Churches) has been applied improperly by some to the relationship between the Catholic Church on the one hand, and the Anglican Communion and non-catholic ecclesial communities on the other. ... it must also be borne in mind that the expression sister Churches in the proper sense, as attested by the common Tradition of East and West, may only be used for those ecclesial communities that have preserved a valid episcopate and Eucharist" (Note on the expression "sister Churches" issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 30 June 2000).
63. ^ Mc Brien, The Church, 6.
64. ^ "And I tell you, you are Peter [Πετρός, meaning "rock"], and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." (Mt 16:18)
65. ^ "Chapter II : The Minister of the Sacrament of Penance". IntraText. http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0017/_P3F.HTM. Retrieved 2008-11-21. 
66. ^ In regard to the ordination of women to the episcopacy, one cannot underestimate the chasm that is currently developing between the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental and Roman Catholic Chuches, on the one hand, and the Lutheran, Anglican and Independent Catholic Churches, on the other hand. Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for example, noted this when he addressed some Anglican bishops in 2006. Quoting St Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258), he said the episcopate is one, which means that "each part of it is held by each one for the whole"; that bishops were instruments of unity not only within the contemporary Church, but also across time, within the universal Church. This being the case, he continued, "the decision for the ordination of women to the Episcopal office ... must not in any way involve a conflict between the majority and the minority." Such a decision should be made "with the consensus of the ancient Churches of the East and West." To do otherwise "would spell the end" to any kind of unity. James Roberts, "Women bishops 'would spell the end of unity hopes'" in The Tablet, 10 June 2006, 34.
67. ^ "Rowan Williams predicts schism over homosexuality" (The Tablet 1 August 2009, 33).
68. ^ The Russian Orthodox Church, which because of the episcopal ordination of Gene Robinson severed its dialogue with the United States Episcopal Church, while declaring itself open to "contacts and cooperation with those American Episcopalians who remain faithful to the gospel’s moral teaching", stated that it was willing to restore relations with those Episcopal dioceses that refused to recognize the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as their Church's presiding bishop (Letter of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad).
69. ^ Stan Chu Ilo, "An African view on ordaining Gene Robinson," The National Catholic Reporter, 12 December, 2003, 26.
70. ^ Matthew Moore, "Archbishop of Canterbury foresees a 'two-tier' church to avoid gay schism," The Telegraph.co.uk, 27 July, 2009.

Further reading

• Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam by Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Basic Books, 0465006345, 2006).
• Catechism of the Catholic Church English translation (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000). ISBN 1-57455-110-8
• H. W. Crocker III, Triumph—The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church: A 2,000-Year History (Prima Publishing, 2001). ISBN 0-7615-2924-1
• Leo J. Trese, The Faith Explained Third Edition (Fides/Claretian, 2001). ISBN 1-889334-29-4
• Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale Nota Bene, 2002). ISBN 0-300-09165-6
• K. O. Johnson, Why Do Catholics Do That? (Ballantine, 1994). ISBN 0-345-39726-6
• Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages; Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources, 40 vols. St. Louis, B.Herder 1898
• Basic Catechism Seventh Revised Edition (Pauline Books & Media, 1999). ISBN 0-8198-0623-4
• Peter Lynch, The Church's Story: A History of Pastoral Care and Vision (Pauline Books & Media, 2005). ISBN 0-8198-1575-6

External links

• Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
• A library of public domain Catholic writings

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