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The Catechism of the Catholic Church in our own day has concisely summed up all the reasons why the name of the Church of Christ has been the Catholic Church: "The Church is catholic," the Catechism teaches, " [because] she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation.
The term 'Roman Catholic' was originally applied by people who disagree with the Catholic church's claim to be the church (when they were not just referring to it as 'the Roman Church'). Over the centuries the usage has mutated, and term has been applied for various reasons, and is used by many people as if it were the official name of the church.
- The Catholic Church does indeed usually refer to itself just as "The Catholic Church". That is what it's Wikipedia article calls it (Wikipedia us...
- There are two parts for this: First part: The Catholic Church ('C' as capital) is that group of churches in communion with the pope. If a group i...
- From the Catechism of Pope St. Pius X : Q. And why is the true Church called Roman? A. The true Church is called Roman, because the four marks...
- Why Catholic Church is called “The Roman Catholic Church”? The answer is simple: The Catholic Church , also known as the Roman Catholic Church ,...
- Overview
- The emergence of Catholic Christianity
Christianity is an important world religion that stems from the life, teachings, and death of Jesus. Roman Catholicism is the largest of the three major branches of Christianity. Thus, all Roman Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Roman Catholic. Of the estimated 2.3 billion Christians in the world, about 1.3 billion of them are Roman Catholics. Broadly, Roman Catholicism differs from other Christian churches and denominations in its beliefs about the sacraments, the roles of the Bible and tradition, the importance of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and the papacy.
Read more below: Christianity: Contemporary Christianity
Roman Catholic Saints
Learn more about the importance of the saints in the Roman Catholic faith.
Who founded Roman Catholicism?
As a branch of Christianity, Roman Catholicism can be traced to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in Roman-occupied Jewish Palestine about 30 CE. According to Roman Catholic teaching, each of the sacraments was instituted by Christ himself. Roman Catholicism also holds that Jesus established his disciple St. Peter as the first pope of the nascent church (Matthew 16:18). Centuries of tradition, theological debates, and the wiles of history have shaped Roman Catholicism into what it is today.
At least in an inchoate form, all the elements of catholicity—doctrine, authority, universality—are evident in the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles begins with a depiction of the demoralized band of the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem, but by the end of its account of the first decades, the Christian community has developed some nascent criteria for determining the difference between authentic (“apostolic”) and inauthentic teaching and behaviour. It has also moved beyond the geographic borders of Judaism, as the dramatic sentence of the closing chapter announces: “And thus we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14). The later epistles of the New Testament admonish their readers to “guard what has been entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 6:20) and to “contend for the faith that was once for all handed down to the holy ones” (Jude 3), and they speak about the Christian community itself in exalted and even cosmic terms as the church, “which is [Christ’s] body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way” (Ephesians 1:23). It is clear even from the New Testament that these catholic features were proclaimed in response to internal challenges as well as external ones; indeed, scholars have concluded that the early church was far more pluralistic from the very beginning than the somewhat idealized portrayal in the New Testament might suggest.
As such challenges continued in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, further development of catholic teaching became necessary. The schema of apostolic authority formulated by the bishop of Lyon, St. Irenaeus (c. 130–c. 200), sets forth systematically the three main sources of authority for catholic Christianity: the Scriptures of the New Testament (alongside the Hebrew Scriptures, or “Old Testament,” which Christians interpret as prophesying the coming of Jesus); the episcopal centres established by the Apostles as the seats of their identifiable successors in the governance of the church (traditionally at Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome); and the apostolic tradition of normative doctrine as the “rule of faith” and the standard of Christian conduct. Each of the three sources depended on the other two for validation; thus, one could determine which purportedly scriptural writings were genuinely apostolic by appealing to their conformity with acknowledged apostolic tradition and to the usage of the apostolic churches, and so on. This was not a circular argument but an appeal to a single catholic authority of apostolicity, in which the three elements were inseparable. Inevitably, however, there arose conflicts—of doctrine and jurisdiction, of worship and pastoral practice, and of social and political strategy—among the three sources, as well as between equally “apostolic” bishops. When bilateral means of resolving such conflicts proved insufficient, there could be recourse to either the precedent of convoking an apostolic council (Acts 15) or to what Irenaeus had already called “the preeminent authority of this church [of Rome], with which, as a matter of necessity, every church should agree.” Catholicism was on the way to becoming Roman Catholic.
Some use the term "Roman Catholic" to refer to Latin Church Catholics who predominantly (but not exclusively) worship according to the Roman Rite, as opposed to Eastern Catholics. An example is the statement in the book When other Christians become Catholic: "the individual becomes Eastern Catholic, not Roman Catholic."
In 1965 the Roman Catholic theologian Marie-Joseph Le Guillou defined the church in these terms: The Church is recognized as a society of fellowship with God, the sacrament of salvation, the people of God established as the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. The progress of Roman Catholic theology can be seen in the contrast ...
Jan 1, 2007 · The Catholic Church is now and forever the visible body of Christ, the visible sign of God’s kingdom on earth. St. John Chrystostom wonderfully reminded the Christians of his era that the Church shall always be seen: “It is an easier thing for the sun to be quenched than for the Church to be made invisible.”.
People also ask
What does 'Roman Catholic' mean?
What does 'Holy Roman Church' mean?
Is 'Roman Catholic' the same as 'Latin Church'?
Why are we called Roman Catholics?
Page Contents. The Latin Church, also known as the Western Church or the Roman Catholic Church, [Note 1] is the largest particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church, employing the Latin liturgical rites. It is one of 24 such churches, the 23 others forming the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is headed by the bishop of Rome, the pope ...
