Did " Roman Catholic " replace the term " Latin Rite "

[BVMFatima]

Hello everybody,

I have witnessed a similar thread on this topic which made me really think, and since this is for apologists I was wondering if Roman Catholic replaced the term Latin Rite Catholic? It seems all parishes of the Latin Church call themselves Roman Catholic, and why is this so if the catechism calls it the Latin Church?

What did the early western rite Catholics call themselves? They they call themselves Roman also?

Thank you and God Bless,

BVMFatima

 

[Bookcat]

They both get used.

 

[Hat4]

I’m sure someone can expand on this but the name Roman Catholic was actually a term started by the Church of England in the 17th century. They wanted to qualify the name Catholic and tried to make it sound like Catholics were under the control of a foreign king. We kept it anyway. It’s very similar to how Lutheran’s got their name, it started as a slur but got co-opted.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

“Latin rite” and “Roman rite” are interchangeable. The term “Roman Catholic Church” was not widely used until Protestantism. Individuals or parishes may use the term Roman Catholic but, when speaking of the entire Church, we should the term Catholic to be inclusive of the Eastern Churches.

 

[Formosus]

It should be clear that the phrase “Roman Catholic” and “Latin Rite Catholic” refer to different things.

A Roman Catholic is a Catholic who is a canonical member of the Roman Catholic Church. Those whose Patriarch is the Bishop of Rome. The Latin rite(s) is the set of ritual celebrated within the Roman Church, the most common of these is the Roman Rite but it is not the only one. For instance, certain Roman Catholics in Spain celebrate the Mozarabic Rite, or Roman Catholics in Milan celebrate the Ambrosian Rite. One can’t “belong” to a rite, so a “Latin Rite Catholic” would merely be a member of the Roman Catholic Church who celebrates according to the Latin Rite, which is every Roman Catholic. Now Roman Catholic and Latin Catholic could be used interchangeably since all Romans are Latins.

It is not true that the “Roman” moniker was invented by the reformers. Many pre-reformation papal documents refer to the Church as the “Most Holy and Roman Church” or some such phrase. People before the Reformation were proud of being “Romans” and believed themselves to be the successors of Western Roman civilization. Likewise, the East (who were Roman citizens still) called their Church the Roman Church. Today if one asks for the a Roman parish in the middle east, chances are you will get sent to the Melkite or Greek Orthodox parish. To get to the Roman Catholic parish you gotta ask for the “Latin parish.”