Can a protestant church be called a church?

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mabu said:
I was giving directions to a very religious TLM catholic, and said “turn left at the church”. They corrected me, saying “the ‘so-called’ church?”. I thought this was a little bit rude / unnecessary / offputting, but that aside, were they correct? I realize that these churches are not part of “the Church”, but is the word “church” itself reserved for Catholics? Not sure where to go on this one…
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Yes, a Protestant Church is “The Church” where it gathers around word and sacrament rightly administered.
 
I appreciate all the canon law answers and that’s perfectly clear, but I’m still confused I guess on a bit of a jurisdictional level in terms of who gets to say what a church is and isn’t.

The other day on Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy Akin answered a question (Nov 14, part 1, 32:16) why non-denominational bishops are allowed to be called bishops. He talked about how “episcopos” is used in scripture, and refers to an overseer of a church, so it’s not inappropriate for them to call leaders in their churches bishops. I bring this up as an example for two reasons. One is that Jimmy didn’t hesitate in any way calling evangelical churches churches. But mainly, I bring this up as an example of jurisdiction over language. In the context of a Catholic Church, a bishop is one thing; outside the context of a Catholic Church, a bishop is another. Because the word “bishop” itself is not a word owned by Catholics. Can the same be said for the word “church”? Or is it somehow different?

Does my question make sense?
 
Everything you said is exactly what I’m thinking too. Trying to figure out why that’s true. Particularly the “building would be properly called a church” part.
 
Because we refer to people in the way they refer to themselves— good manners.

No ones owns the term “church” or “bishop”.
 
I know it’s hard to believe but the CC is one slice of a very large pie. It is shocking!.. All sarcasm aside, I apologize. But the Church is simply a gathering of believers into the public, assembled from within the universal body to which Christ is the head. Their ecclesiastical traditions will vary based on doctrine and practice. But all bodies must share one common centerpiece. Christ the Lord.
 
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Look at the words of this song:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in His justice,
Which is more than liberty.
There’s no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven;
There is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgement given.

But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.
There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

“With a zeal He will not own”…how true!
 
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mabu said:
I’m not going to cut ties with my parents over a pedantic squabble :roll_eyes:
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Then you’re in a fine position to ask them how they think the BUILDING, as opposed to the congregation, should be referred to.
 
This seemed quite the unprovoked response by them. Oh well, at least you learned something new!

I had quite a similar experience at last week mass actually.
 
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I think we need to consider that the need to reach out to and evangelize non-Catholic Christians will, in all likelihood, be set back if Catholics insist that these Christians do not attend a real church.

What’s more important, being “correct” about language use, or being an instrument that God can use to save a soul?

It might help to know that many of the Evangelical Protestants and non-denominational Christians do NOT refer to their organizations as “churches” anymore, but “fellowships” or other names that they consider to be more attractive to non-Christians.

You see, THEY are thinking about what will be more likely to attract non-believers, who will then hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, Catholics are more concerned about being “correct”.

Here’s my parting shot–once your non-Catholic friends and relatives are confirmed into the Catholic Church, THEN you can tell them that it’s not correct to speak of any community as a “Church” except the Catholic Church. 🙂
 
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The building is a church. The faith community that uses may not be. I think it the height of pedantry to have pulled you up over this. Not only would I refer to any place of worship used by any Christian community as a church I would also use that word in the name of the community. Technically, the Catholic Church does not consider, for example, the Methodist Church to be a church. Rather, the Catholic Church refers to Protestant churches as non-Catholic Christian ecclesial communities. However, it is both practically easier and a simple matter of courtesy to use the name they use. I am sure even the Holy See would refer to such Christian communities by the name they choose to use.
 
mabu said:
Can the same be said for the word “church”? Or is it somehow different?
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Yes it’s the same idea. It’s no different than telling an adopted child, “That’s not really your father”. It’s just a play on words.
 
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This is one of those cases where I would elect to not be a jerk and refer to Protestant churches as ecclesial communities, even if the Church has that perception of them. The Church also acknowledges that they have 2 sacraments, so they are sacramental, just not in a complete sense.

I remember Pope Ratzinger making that reference to Protestant Churches when I was then protestant and it infuriated me. All that does is cause more division, imo.
 
CCC
819 “Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth” are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: "the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements, Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to “Catholic unity.”
 
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mabu said:
I should have added that in the ensuing conversation they insisted that it is absolutely immoral to call it something it’s not. Paraphrasing their argument: "Jesus Christ defined what a church is and anyone who claims to be a church does so in order to deceive naive and lost people and leads them in the opposite direction of salvation. And that’s morally wrong. This is not a church. It is a Protestant congregation that illegally uses the word ‘church’. They should call themselves a worship centre, community fellowship, congregation, etc. – anything but a church. "

I think they see it on the same lines a gay “marriage” or calling a trans person born male a “woman” – whereby using the term they’ve chosen you’re affirming something untrue as if it were true?
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Yeah, this sounds like the kind of person who I would define as being “hung up on language”. I avoid such people because it’s difficult to converse with them without getting a big lecture, which generally comes off as them trying to demonstrate how holy and what a great Catholic they are compared to the great unwashed out there who use common terms like “Baptist church” and “Gay marriage”. The flip side of this coin are those people who would rewrite all the hymns and Psalms in gender-neutral language, who I also find equally tiresome.

Most Catholics I know are perfectly fine with referring to “a Protestant church” or “a Baptist church” or “the Lutheran church” etc., whether they are talking about the building or the overall religious organization.
 
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What is more denigrating is calling a cult bldg a “church”
as in the Mormon church.
It is generally a trend to confuse one of the actual meaning
of a word, as in “love”, which could mean a number of things,
the Greek is more specific, as in Philios, Eros, and Agape.
 
mabu said:
Can the same be said for the word “church”?
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Yes. From the Merriam Webster dictionary:

Definition of church​

(Entry 1 of 4)

1 : a building for public and especially Christian worship

I would argue that it’s a similar concept to a “defined term” in a legal document. Within the document, the capitalized defined term means whatever it’s defined to mean within the document. For example, I like the John’s Hopkins Lacrosse Team (hereinafter, “JHLT” or “The Best Team on the Planet”).

Now nobody on earth (accept maybe @HopkinsReb) might actually believe that the JHLT is The Best Team on the Planet. In fact, when speaking of The Best Team on the Planet outside of this paragraph, somebody might call it “Hopkins” or “that lacrosse team in blue”. Those would all be correct, since outside the scope of the document, we use English definitions to speak to people and not defined terms, since not everybody has access to the documents in which they’re defined.
 
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As a Catholic, what we consider the Church and a church is relatively straight forward.
But it’s like this, in Denmark there’s a tradition for calling the pastors of the Lutheran Church (ecclesial community) “priests”. But some of the trad gang with which I hang insists on saying “you mean pastor” each time someone mentions a Lutheran priest.
Sure, they’re not sacramentally priests, sure they’re not covered by the the Catholic understanding of the word, but colloquially that is the role they take, and everyone outside our circle will be less confused.
 
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