Early Church: Catholic or Christian?

[mercygate]

I posted these things in that they refer to the Catholic Church, all of these titles the Church claims, also, I would like to add one, Apostolic.

St. Ambrose, Doctor of the Church, On the Eucharist: “we will take great pains to prove that the sacraments of the Church are both more ancient than those of the synagogue… The Church, beholding so great grace, exhorts her sons and her friends to come together to the sacraments…”

St. Augustine, De agon. Christ, III: “Let us not listen to those who deny that the Church of God has power to forgive all sins”

St. Cyprian of Carthage:
“Does he who does not hold this unity of the Church think that he holds the faith? Does he who strives against and resists the Church trust that he is in the Church, when moreover the blessed Apostle Paul…”
…bishops who preside in the Church, that we may also prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided…The Church also is one, which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness."

Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ…He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. If any one could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church. …He who breaks the peace and the concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathers elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ.

St. Gregory Nazienzen (c. A.D. 329-389), Oration 26: “Seest thou that of the disciples of Christ, all of whom were great and deserving of the choice, one is called Rock, and is entrusted with the foundations of the Church…”

Ah. I see. I was confused because I thought you meant that the early Church designated itself by these names as if it were a separating identifier. But you simply meant that the Church used those terms the same way she uses them today.

 

[DianJo]

need help here how can you answer when a excatholic come an tell you that he is a christian catholic but not a roman catholic? need some good apologetics here thank you. V. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
R. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

First of all, I would say that that person has got somewhat of an attitude about the Roman Catholic Church - ex-catholics usually do and they will use the term “roman catholic” as a derrogatry term to insinuate extreme distaste. I’ve never heard the term christian catholic unless that person means they are a “universal christian” or something like that…

*Ex-Catholics have had some bad experience and are now out to discredit the Roman Catholic Church of which they used to be a member. They can be extremely angry about their previous faith for whatever reason but they, obviously, were never catechized properly therefore that translates into “the Catholic Church did nothing for me and their beliefs are false,” because they don’t understand what they left. It’s a shame, really, that when they yearned for Christ they went looking somewhere else rather than their own home and then let those people “teach” them lies and half-truths about the Catholic Church. I never understood that reasoning. (The really sad part is that they believe what others tell them instead of coming home to learn the truth for themselves! *(BTW, this is all an oversimplification)

The term Roman Catholic simply denotes the particular rite used - in this case, we use the Latin rite, i.e., Roman Catholic. There is also the Byzantine Rite, Eastern Catholic, etc. The core beliefs are essentailly the same, but their worship practices may be a little different.

A Catholic Christian is just a descriptive name for a Christian. After all, Catholics were the first Christians. A Roman Catholic Christian is a Catholic Christian of the Roman or Latin Rite.

 

[DianJo]

need help here how can you answer when a excatholic come an tell you that he is a christian catholic but not a roman catholic? need some good apologetics here thank you. V. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
R. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

First of all, I would say that that person has got somewhat of an attitude about the Roman Catholic Church - ex-catholics usually do and they will use the term “roman catholic” as a derrogatry term to insinuate extreme distaste. I’ve never heard the term christian catholic unless that person means they are a “universal christian” or something like that…

*Ex-Catholics usually have had some bad experience and are now out to discredit the Roman Catholic Church of which they used to be a member. They can be extremely angry about their previous faith for whatever reason but they, obviously, were never catechized properly therefore that translates into “the Catholic Church did nothing for me and their beliefs are false,” because they don’t understand what they left. It’s a shame, really, that when they yearned for Christ they went looking somewhere else rather than their own home and then let those people “teach” them lies and half-truths about the Catholic Church. I never understood that reasoning. (The really sad part is that they believe what others tell them instead of coming home to learn the truth for themselves! *(BTW, this is all an oversimplification)

The term Roman Catholic simply denotes the particular rite used - in this case, we use the Latin rite, i.e., Roman Catholic. There is also the Byzantine Rite, Eastern Catholic, etc. The core beliefs are essentailly the same, but their worship practices may be a little different.

A Catholic Christian is just a descriptive name for a Christian. After all, Catholics were the first Christians. A Roman Catholic Christian is a Catholic Christian of the Roman or Latin Rite.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

• When does a river become that river in particular, & no other ?
• And, was it that particular river at its headwaters ?
• And, is it impossible for rivers that flow from that river to have their headwaters in its own ?
• IOW - how we answer the question depends on the metaphors by which we picture it to ourselves.
  ISTM that the earliest Christians were & were not Catholics or any other specific group; that they were potentially any or all of them. A mathematical point is not a line, or a circle - it is potentially either & both. And that means that both the Lineal Church & the Circular Church - not to mention the Spherical, Triangular, Hexagonal, Trapezoid, Cubic, Conical & other Churches - can all with equal justice trace their earliest beginnings to that point. Which is why Anglicans, Orthodox, Catholics, Presbyterians all claim descent from the Apostles. (If that sounds complicated, it gets more complicated still, because there is also the detail of the NT to consider. All these Churches have the same NT.)

And that means that members of the Cubic Church (say) can dismiss developments after that initial point which are approved as good & holy & right within the Hexagonal Church, as being inauthentic, perverse, or unfaithful to the original point. The Hexagonalists, from their perspective, can do exactly the same. Which means that both risk being condemned as utterly pointless (& a nuisance) by those who don’t see the point in the first place.

As it stands, I think the question is impossible to answer - it’s a bit like asking, “How long is a piece of string ?”

 

[reald]

The oldest reference for our church “CATHOLIC” was from St. Ignatius.

St. Ignatius of Antioch used the word Catholic in reference to the church in 110 A.D. The Nicene Creed, which is the profession of our Christian faith, goes back to 325 A.D.

….and you belong to that Church whose faith St. Paul describes as being "proclaimed (KATanggeletai) in the whole universe (en HOLO to kosmo)” (Rom. 1:8)

Thus the word KATAHOLOS or Catholic in English originated from Scriptures - Romans 1:8