what do you believe?

[Guest thatguy]

so.....whats up with catholicism?

[Cam42]

[quote name='thatguy' date='Sep 28 2005, 12:53 PM']so.....whats up with catholicism?
[right][snapback]739973[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]


Gee....that may be the most vague question I have ever seen, however....

The word catholic occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers in what we may call its primitive and non-ecclesiastical sense. However, I don't think that is what you are getting after.

The combination "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 AD.

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. In England, since the middle of the sixteenth century, indignant protests have been constantly made against the "exclusive and arrogant usurpation" of the name Catholic by the Church of Rome. The Protestant, Archdeacon Philpot, who was put to death in 1555, was held to be very obstinate on this point; and among many similar controversies of a later date may be mentioned that between Dr. Bishop, subsequently vicar Apostolic, and Dr. Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, regarding the "Catholicke Deformed", which raged from 1599 to 1614. According to some, such combinations as Roman Catholic, or Anglo-Catholic, involve a contradiction in terms.

As against these and other interpretations which have prevailed among Protestants from the Reformation until quite recent times, the scholastic theologians of the last three centuries have been wont to put forward the conception of the note of Catholicity in various formal propositions, of which the most essential elements are the following. The true Church of Christ, as it is revealed to us in prophecy, in the New Testament, and in the writings of the Fathers of the first six centuries, is a body which possesses the prerogative of Catholicity, i.e. of general diffusion, not only as a matter of right, but in actual fact.

St. Augustine (Epist. cxcix; P. L., XXXIII, 922, 923) explains that the nations which formed no part of the Roman Empire had already joined the Church, which was fructifying and increasing throughout the whole world.

[quote name='St. Augustine']In those nations therefore among whom the Church is not yet known it has still to find a place [in quibus ergo gentibus nondum est ecclesia, oportet ut sit], not indeed in such a way that all who are there should become believers; for it is all nations that are promised, not all the men of all nations. . . . Otherwise how shall that prophesy be fulfilled, 'Ye shall be hated by all for my name's sake', unless among all nations there are those who hate as well as those who are hated?[/quote]

Since you didn't capitalize catholicism......I kept it general, but I suppose that I could have read more into it. There is a difference between catholicism and Catholicism. Although it is very subtle.

[phatcatholic]

The Church of Jesus Christ and the Apostles:
[url="http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/336"]http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/336[/url]