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Catholicism
History / Beliefs of Catholic Religion / The Catholic Church



Etymology of 'Catholic'
The word Catholic (katholikos from katholou - meaning 'throughout the whole, universal') occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers.

Etymology & Origins of 'The Catholic Church'
The words "the Catholic Church" (he katholike ekklesia) is found for the first time in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written about the year 110. The words run:

Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church.

However, in view of the context, some difference of opinion prevails as to the precise connotation of the italicized word, and Kattenbusch, the Protestant professor of theology at Giessen, is prepared to interpret this earliest appearance of the phrase in the sense of mia mone, the "one and only" Church [Das apostolische Symbolum (1900), II, 922].

From this time forward the technical signification of the word Catholic meets us with increasing frequency both East and West, until by the beginning of the fourth century it seems to have almost entirely supplanted the primitive and more general meaning. The earlier examples have been collected by Caspari (Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, etc., III, 149 sqq.). Many of them still admit the meaning "universal". The reference (c. 155) to "the bishop of the catholic church in Smyrna" (Letter on the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, xvi), a phrase which necessarily presupposes a more technical use of the word, is due, some critics think, to interpolation. On the other hand this sense undoubtedly occurs more than once in the Muratorian Fragment (c. 180), where, for example, it is said of certain heretical writings that they "cannot be received in the Catholic Church".

A little later, Clement of Alexandria speaks very clearly. "We say", he declares, "that both in substance and in seeming, both in origin and in development, the primitive and Catholic Church is the only one, agreeing as it does in the unity of one faith" (Stromata, VII, xvii; P. G., IX, 552).
The one clear idea underlying all is orthodox as opposed to heretical, and Kattenbusch does not hesitate to admit that in Cyprian we first see how Catholic and Roman came eventually to be regarded as interchangeable terms. (Cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, II, 149-168.)

Among the Greeks it was natural that while Catholic served as the distinctive description of the one Church, the etymological significance of the word was never quite lost sight of. Thus in the "Catechetical Discourses" of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 347) he insists on the one hand (sect. 26): "And if ever thou art sojourning in any city, inquire not simply where the Lord's house is--for the 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 the holy body the mother of us all." On the other hand when discussing the word Catholic, which already appears in his form of the baptismal creed, St. Cyril remarks: (sect. 23) "Now it [the Church] is called Catholic because it is throughout the world, from one end of the earth to the other."

A more or less definite theory of the Catholic Church and its marks was gradually evolved by St. Optatus (c. 370) and St. Augustine (c. 400). These doctors particularly insisted upon the note of Catholicism, and they pointed out that both the Old and the New Testament represented the Church as spread over all the earth. Moreover, St. Augustine insists upon the consensus of Christians in the use of the name Catholic.
" Whether they wish or no", he says, "heretics have to call the Catholic Church Catholic" ("De vera religione", xii). "Although all heretics wish to be styled Catholic, yet if any one ask where is the Catholic place of worship none of them would venture to point out his own conventicle" (Contra Epistolam quam vocant Fundamenti, iv). Of later exponents of this same thesis the most famous Vincent of Lerins (c. 434). His canon of Catholicism is "That which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." "This", he adds, "is what is truly and properly Catholic" (Commonitorium, I, ii).

Although belief in the "holy Church" was included in the earliest form of the Roman Creed, the word Catholic does not seem to have been added to the Creed anywhere in the West until the fourth century. Kattenbusch believes that our existing form is first met with in the "Exhortatio" which he attributes to Gregorius of Eliberis (c. 360).
It is possible, however, that the creed lately printed by Dom Morin (Revue Bénédictine, 1904, p. 3) is of still earlier date. In any case the phrase, "I believe in the holy Catholic Church" occurs in the form commented on by Nicetas of Remesiana (c. 375). With regard to the modern use of the word, Roman Catholic is the designation employed in the legislative enactments of Protestant England, but Catholic is that in ordinary use on the Continent of Europe, especially in Latin countries. Indeed, historians of all schools, at least for brevity's sake, frequently contrast Catholic and Protestant, without any qualification.