Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest organizational body of Christians. Its membership is over one billion. 1,085,557,000 is the figure, rounded to the nearest thousand, given in the 2003 Statistical Yearbook of the Church, page 43. Because of obstacles to regular contacts, this figure does not include Roman Catholics in mainland China and perhaps in some other places. According to canon law, members are those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or have been received into the Catholic Church after being baptized elsewhere, and who have not formally defected.

External links

• Vatican: the Holy See
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• The Catholic Encyclopedia Resource concerning Catholic history and doctrine as well as related matters of philosophy.
• Mass Times A directory of Mass times, parish locations, directions and phone numbers for traveling Catholics
• Catholic Hierarchy information on Catholic bishops and dioceses
• The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church information on the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church
• EWTN American Catholic television station, live streaming in English and Spanish.
• myCatholic.com A customizable Catholic web portal.
• Statistics on the Global Catholic population
• Catholic Culture Excellent Catholic search engine
• Catholic Answers One of the largest lay-run apostolates of Catholic apologetics and evangelization