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.

Terminology

Roman Catholic Church is the term most often, though not exclusively, used for this Church by other Christian Churches, especially in the West. However, some use "Roman Catholic Church" to refer instead to the Western or Latin Church to the exclusion of the Eastern-Rite particular Churches in full communion with the Pope and which therefore are part of the same Church taken as a whole. Catholic Church is the designation that the Church itself normally uses, except in its relations with other Churches. On the other hand, there are other claimants to the name of "Catholic Church" and other meanings are attributed to that term (see Catholicism). Without intending to make any judgement on which is the correct term, "Roman Catholic Church" and "Catholic Church" will be treated within this article as alternative names for the entire Church "which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."

Related Topics:
Western or Latin - Eastern-Rite - Particular Church - Full communion - Catholicism

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It has been remarked that what St Augustine (354-430) wrote in 397 still holds in the twenty-first century for common practice, even among those who in formal discourse insist on using "Roman Catholic Church". Note that in Augustine's time Christians applied the word "priest" to bishops, but not to the lower rank of clergy that are today called "priests" in English. The "seat of the Apostle Peter" is, of course, the see of Rome.

Related Topics:
St Augustine - 354 - 430 - 397

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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 (John 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.

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:— Against the Epistle of Manichaeus called Fundamental, chapter 4: Proofs of the Catholic Faithhttp://www.ccel.org/pager.cgi?&file=fathers/NPNF1-04/augustine/bk_fundamental/bk1.html&from=CHAP4&up=

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