Catholic

Catholic is an adjective derived from the Greek adjective καθολικός (katholikos), meaning "universal". In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. For Roman Catholics, the term "Catholic Church" refers to the Church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, including both the Western particular Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches. Protestants sometimes use the term "catholic church" to refer to the entire body of believers in Jesus Christ across the world, and across the ages. Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and some Methodist Christians hold that their churches are catholic in the sense that they are in continuity with the original catholic (universal) church founded by the apostles. In "Catholic Christendom" (including the Anglican Communion), bishops are considered the highest order of ministers within the Christian Church, as shepherds of unity in communion with the whole church and one another. Catholicity is considered one of Four Marks of the Church, the others being unity, sanctity, and apostolicity. according to the Nicene Creed of 381: "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church."

History of ecclesiastical use of "catholic"

Ignatius of Antioch

A letter written by Ignatius to Christians in Smyrna around 106 is the earliest surviving witness to the use of the term catholic church (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8). By catholic church Ignatius designated the Christian Church in its universal aspect, as "catholic" still meant no more than "universal", since it was only later that the word "catholic" took on the ecclesiastical meaning of "orthodox and apostolic". Ignatius considered that certain heretics of his time, who disavowed that Jesus was a material being who actually suffered and died, saying instead that "he only seemed to suffer" (Smyrnaeans, 2), were not really Christians. The term is also used in the Martyrdom of Polycarp in 155 and in the Muratorian fragment, about 177.

St Cyril of Jerusalem

St Cyril of Jerusalem (circa 315-386) urged those he was instructing in the Christian faith: "If ever thou art sojourning in cities, inquire not simply where the Lord's House is (for the other sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord), nor merely where the Church is, but where is the catholic church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Church, the mother of us all, which is the spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God" (Catechetical Lectures, XVIII, 26).

Theodosius I

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

Augustine of Hippo

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

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

"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.

St Vincent of Lerins

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).

Western and Eastern Catholics

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

The term Catholic Church is associated with the whole of the church that is led by the Roman Pontiff, currently Pope Benedict XVI, and whose over one billion adherents are about half of the estimated 2.1 billion Christians. Other Christian denominations also lay claim to the description catholic, including the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Churches possessing the historic episcopate (bishops), such as those in the Anglican communion, but in common usage the term refers to the Roman Catholic Church.

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

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

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