Is the term "Roman Catholic Church" offensive?

[Pecksniff]

Lepato and Ricco

Undermentioned is the address in reply by Our Holy Father to the President of Ireland. I can’t provide the link because I can’t get it to work. Enormous frustration on my part but in an early comment in this string you will find where Tantum ergo confirms the contents.

My point is whether you are offended by the term Roman Catholic or otherwise, the Pope describes himself as the Head of the Roman Catholic Church and quite frankly if it is good enough for our Holy Father to accept that title it is good enough for me to accept such an appellation. By the way comments that suggest Pope John Paul II can be described by the following comment:

“As with most heads of state, such documents are written by ghost-writers, not the speakers themselves.”

which suggests that the Holy Father would only read what was written for him without any care for the accuracy is a most unworthy comment in itself.

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC

Dublin
Saturday, 29 September 1979

Mr President,

I wish to express my gratitude for the warm welcome that I have received on my arrival in Ireland from the people of Ireland, as well as from their distinguished Representatives. I express my sincere thanks to you, Mr President, for the kind words that you addressed to me, with which you have wished to honour not only my person but the Head of the Roman Catholic Church.

 

[Thing]

My point is whether you are offended by the term Roman Catholic or otherwise, the Pope describes himself as the Head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Probably all Catholics in Ireland call themselves Roman Catholic, and are proud to do so.
Their ancestors were called Roman Catholic by the English protestant occupiers of Ireland. Being Roman Catholic in Ireland was a crime. For priests it was a crime punishable by death. For those laypersons who refused to reject Catholicism it was a crime punisable by the confiscation of all property and possessions, by the removal of any state protection for that person and by making it a crime for any preson to aid the one convicted of being Catholic on pain of the same sanction.
To get a glimpse of life under protestant rule, imagine your country at this present moment, please do the following:

Watch your priests and bishops being arrested on sight; dragged behind a horse through the streets; they are hanged but cut down before they are dead; tied flat to a board; their abdomen cut open from stomach to chest while they are still alive; their intestines are pulled out but left attached to the body and are burnt in a brazier beside the still living victim; beheaded; their body cut into quarters and boiled in oil and impailed on stakes around the city streets.

Thoses who hide or help thses priests to evade capture are put to death generally, or, now you must imagine this as your present life; your house is not your house as Catholics are not allowed to own property, though this is their country [your country], you pay a rent on your home your land and give your landlord a share of youir produce. Your house is one or two rooms built of stone or mud and wattle; the roof is made from dried reeds; the floor is dried mud; you have a fire place inside but a chimney you may or may not have; your bed is a heap of loose straw beside the fireplace; there are two tiny windows, if you want another window your rent will increase probably beyond your income. In winter you are half frozen and wet constantly. For food you have watery gruel, water and oats, some vegetables and probably no meat.
You are Catholic, or Roman Catholic, as these protestant oppressors call you. As a Catholic you are not allowed to educate your children, schools are destroyed, teachers eradicated; you are not allowed to enter any of the professions, only a protestant may enter College, work as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, politician, etc., etc.
So you own nothing in your own country. Even your home and land you must rent from your English protestant landlord.
If you manage to survive childhood and grow up and fall in love your new bride will be taken from you on your wedding night by some landlords and he will have her first.
If you help a Catholic priest to evade capture you will be imprisoned or killed, while arrested you will be asked to renounce your religion and become protestant, when you naturally refuse your house is taken from you, your land, your animals, the protestant state officially removes from itself any responsibility to protect you and worse if any of your neighbours or friends help you the also are treated to the same punishment. You must wander the mud and rocky roads for the remainder of your life with literally nothing. Westminister politician bravely stands up in the house and declares ‘there are no Catholics in Ireland’; it is done, they have gone as far as thay can, they declare the, whatever the number is 4 - 6 million, Catholics in Ireland to no longer exist to the protestant state. The absolve themselves from responsibility to the people of whose country they have taken and are occupying.

A thousand years before protestantism ever existed Ireland had re-converted Europe to Christianity after the fall of the Roman ERmpire and the Barbarian Invasion. Ireland converted Scotland, England, missionary Irish monks built monestaries in France, Germany, Austria, Italy to teach the Faith once more in Europe.
How this uniquely Christian country could be persecuted by so-called christians for so long is a mystery with its roots in the greed, pride and arrogance that protestantism brought to a once Catholic England.

Almost every Catholic in Ireland will call himself or herself Roman Catholic because somewhere deep inside is a memory of a country, a ancestory persecuted under the propaganda driven xenophobic lablel of ‘Roman’ Catholic. When you see an old man standing beside a mass grave on the grounds of a tiny parish church you get a sense of what it all means, ‘there are ten thousand people burried in this grave’ he says softly. Being a Roman Catholic was an intended insult as if to say that it was you who have abandoned Christianity to follow a foreign ruler in Rome, an altogether foreign place. But being Roman Catholic is the accepted label in Ireland today, it recalls the protestant English invasion and attempt to eradicate Catholicism and the Irish.

Pope John Paul II may have been aware of the history of that small but very significant country.

:irish1::irish3::irish1: um… so ‘no’ is my answer.

 

[ricko]

What I find hard to believe is people that call an organization, or church in this case, by a title that that organization or church does not go by. “Roman” is simply not in the name of the Catholic Church. Why would you insist on using the wrong name of something? I guess it proves that no matter what the subject and no matter how clear the truth is, there will always be somebody against that truth. They want it their way and that’s it. They think of every excuse to continue in their falsehood.

The Creed which we recite on Sundays and holy days speaks of one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. As everybody knows, however, the Church referred to in this Creed is more commonly called just the Catholic Church. It is not, by the way, properly called the Roman Catholic Church, but simply the Catholic Church.
ewtn.com/faith/teachings/churb3.htm

I suppose that showing the creed and other forms of statements which I have posted earlier will do nothing to enlighten you. You will do what you will want to. Shame, we can’t even agree on something so simple and basic as the proper name of The Catholic Church.

 

[clmowry]

The Church bears some blame for any confusion in this area as well.

In our Ecumenical zeal we’ve chosen to embrace the language of other Christian groups.

Do a quick search for “Roman Catholic” on the Vatican web site and you will find the Church referring to Herself using this name several times.

The only place I think I’ve seen Her do so, however, is in joint statements (like those with the Anglicans, Lutherans or Orthodox., etc.)

But, if we were to search long enough, I’m willing to bet we could find hundreds of instances of Catholic official referring to the “Catholic Church” as “Roman Catholic”.

That doesn’t necessarily make the usage “correct” but it certainly doesn’t lend any credence to calling it “wrong”.

Chuck

 

[Thing]

The Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church are the same thing.
To someone called Ricardo living in the Philippines he may not see the point of being called ‘Roman’ Catholic.
But for someone whose relative was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for the crime of being ‘Roman Catholic’, that person will be quite happy to retain the name Roman Catholic; not a slur any more, nor an innaccuracy - but now it has become their way of honouring the dead; yes we are Roman Catholics, our ancestors were killed for being Roman Catholics. To change Roman Catholic to Catholic now, would be akin, in a sense, to dishonouring the dead for the sake of some kind of political correctness.

 

[ricko]

The Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church are the same thing.
To someone called Ricardo living in the Philippines he may not see the point of being called ‘Roman’ Catholic.
But for someone whose relative was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for the crime of being ‘Roman Catholic’, that person will be quite happy to retain the name Roman Catholic; not a slur any more, nor an innaccuracy - but now it has become their way of honouring the dead; yes we are Roman Catholics, our ancestors were killed for being Roman Catholics. To change Roman Catholic to Catholic now, would be akin, in a sense, to dishonouring the dead for the sake of some kind of political correctness.

See what I mean?

 

[crazzeto]

Well, I have to say I’ve changed my opinion lurking this thread. I now see greater importance in being accurate (fully) in the name of the Church. Thanks for posting the thread, and the great discussion.

 

[Thing]

A couple of paragraphs on an internet post can hardly fail to be simplistic.

One of the greatest Nationalists was Wolf Tone, a protestant, who attempted to bring a French army into Munster, but he was twarted by bad weather, eventually landed but found himself in an English ambush; was captured and committed suicide in an English prison rather than giving the English the satisfaction of executing him.

That too is a simplified account. A lot needs to be left out in these tiny posts. Protestants were a bit mad back then and yes they even persecuted themselves - which is where the protestant Pilgrims to America came from - protestant persecution of them in England.

b. Do not start on Norn Iron. Where you have Catholic Nationalists who say they do not answer to the Pope; Loyalists who insist they are British though you have as you say protestants who see themselves as Irish - then you have people in the UK who think that the Republic of Ireland is part of Britan and did not know even in 2006 that Ireland was an Independant Republic. Yes it is complicated.

 

[Thing]

See what I mean?

Yes, the Irish turned the insult on its head. The protestants say…die, die…die *Roman *Catholic; and the Irish Catholic says yes we die, die … die, as Roman Catholics, as Catholics loyal to Rome, the Pope, to Catholicism - as opposed to protestant catholics loyal to the Queen and King of England only.

 

[Thing]

That is what I say. Wolf Tone was a Nationalist and protestant. Gerry Adams is Catholic, a Nationalist and says he does not answers to the Pope, whatever that means. There are probably Nationalists who are fed up with religion.

Are you an Irish citizen or do you live in or come from any part of Ireland. If not, much of your post smacks of ‘boston-Irish.’

Hmm… I consider myself to be a celt and the world to be my house.

Please don’t try and tell someone from another country their own history, your understanding is simplistic.

The protestant philosophy behind the term Roman Catholic is summed up in Cromwells words ‘If I could break the Rosary chain I could destroy the Irish’. Simply put it was a struggle against the Catholics loyal to Rome, Roman Catholics, by the ‘Catholics’ loyal to the English protestant King, representing the protestant Catholics.
That is the origin of the term - the Roman Catholics are the True Catholics in the struggle against the false Catholics, the protestants, who wished and did also call themselves Catholics.

 

[MariaG]

The Church bears some blame for any confusion in this area as well.

In our Ecumenical zeal we’ve chosen to embrace the language of other Christian groups.

Do a quick search for “Roman Catholic” on the Vatican web site and you will find the Church referring to Herself using this name several times.

The only place I think I’ve seen Her do so, however, is in joint statements (like those with the Anglicans, Lutherans or Orthodox., etc.)

But, if we were to search long enough, I’m willing to bet we could find hundreds of instances of Catholic official referring to the “Catholic Church” as “Roman Catholic”.

That doesn’t necessarily make the usage “correct” but it certainly doesn’t lend any credence to calling it “wrong”.

Chuck

The Catholic Church does refer to the Latin Rite part of the Catholic CHurch as Roman Catholic in official documents to distinguish from other rites, Marionite, etc.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church are the same thing.
To someone called Ricardo living in the Philippines he may not see the point of being called ‘Roman’ Catholic.
But for someone whose relative was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for the crime of being ‘Roman Catholic’, that person will be quite happy to retain the name Roman Catholic; not a slur any more, nor an innaccuracy - but now it has become their way of honouring the dead; yes we are Roman Catholics, our ancestors were killed for being Roman Catholics. To change Roman Catholic to Catholic now, would be akin, in a sense, to dishonouring the dead for the sake of some kind of political correctness.

Tell that to a Byzantine Catholic in communion with the Pope. Roman Catholic ignores the many other rites that are in communion with the Catholic Church but are not Latin Rite. There was a thread a few years ago I believe in which it was the consensus of those who were Catholic but NOT Latin Rite Catholics who found the term exclusionary to refer to the Catholic Church as the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic Church and Catholic Church is not the same thing at all. And to insist it is, One ignores and insults all those in communion with the Pope who are not Latin Rite Catholics.

Respectfully,
Maria

 

[mariyka]

All Roman Catholics are Catholic, but not all Catholics are Roman Catholics.

 

[Lepanto]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is called just that, not the Catechism of the “Roman” Catholic Church.

vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm

Outside of the bible itself, the catechism is the most authoritative magisterial document that the Church has. The catechism talks extensively about ecclesiology, the nature of the Church herself, yet nowhere to be found in those pages is there a single reference to the “Roman” Catholic Church.

If you can find such an occurrence anywhere in the catechism, please provide the paragraph number.

 

[Bbigam]

Tell that to a Byzantine Catholic in communion with the Pope. Roman Catholic ignores the many other rites that are in communion with the Catholic Church but are not Latin Rite. There was a thread a few years ago I believe in which it was the consensus of those who were Catholic but NOT Latin Rite Catholics who found the term exclusionary to refer to the Catholic Church as the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic Church and Catholic Church is not the same thing at all. And to insist it is, One ignores and insults all those in communion with the Pope who are not Latin Rite Catholics.

I have a question, then. Would you/they be comfortable with calling a person, parish, or diocese “Roman Catholic?” In reference, of course, to a Catholic person/parish/diocese of the Roman/Latin Rite?

 

[Thing]

…Tell that to a Byzantine Catholic in communion with the Pope. Roman Catholic ignores the many other rites that are in communion with the Catholic Church but are not Latin Rite. There was a thread a few years ago I believe in which it was the consensus of those who were Catholic but NOT Latin Rite Catholics who found the term exclusionary to refer to the Catholic Church as the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic Church and Catholic Church is not the same thing at all. And to insist it is, One ignores and insults all those in communion with the Pope who are not Latin Rite Catholics.

Respectfully,
Maria

Dear Maria, of course it is an exclusionary term. It was coined by English protestants in 16th century England to refer to ‘Old Catholics’ in Ireland and England, otherwise known to us as simply Catholics. English protestantism wanted to turn history and logic on its head and claim that the new religion ‘protestantism’ was actually Catholicism and that the ‘Old Catholicism’, as they also called it, which had existed in Ireland and England for a thousand years before protestantism was not Catholicism but Roman Catholicism, or Romanism, Romish, Papist, Popery, - or any other insult they could think of.
So ‘Roman Catholicism’ for the protestants and the Catholics is Catholicism; and protestantism for the English protestants is Catholicism.
Of course Roman Catholic is exclusionary, it was designed to be exclusionary, designed to exclude all the True Catholics from this new protestant idea of their own Catholicism.

The history of the term Roman Catholic is exclusive to the history of England and Ireland which was why I said it would not mean much to a modern person living in the Philippines or a modern Byzantine Catholic living in Greece.
The term Roman Catholic did not drop out of the sky yesterday and you cannot view it as a modern term to be analyzed by itself. It only begins to make any sense when you relive the history which produced it.
The ‘Roman Catholics’ in England and Ireland were in fact the True Catholics loyal to the Pope in Rome, or in other words they were simply Catholics as you understand the word today. But since the 16th century English protestants were attempting to use the name Catholic to convert everyone to protestantism they needed to call the Real Catholics of those lands something else. Roman Catholics.
After that history becomes complicated as it tries to come to terms with itself without conceeding any fault of its own or appearing to lose face. English officials in later centuries refused to speak to Irish representatives unless the Irish referred to themselves as Roman Catholics. The Irish, intelligent and obliging, as always, define the former insult of ‘Roman Catholic’ as meaning the original Catholics of the two lands.
Ever since Pope Celestine I sent the Bishops Palladius and St Patrick to Ireland in the 5th century Ireland has been a Catholic country; that the English protestants renamed the Catholics Roman Catholics does not alter the Catholics it alters the term Roman Catholic to mean, for most of these people, ‘Catholic’. In England and Ireland Catholic and Roman Catholic are synonyms, with the word ‘Roman’ now recalling, however feebly to some, the history of the Faith in their own countries and the truth that Catholicism is the one true faith loyal to the bitter end to Rome, the Pope.

 

[Joan_M]

I am Irish. I see no problem with what was posted by thing. Of course it does leave out your (a) and (b), but those had little effect on the fact that we were truly persecuted by the British Government for being Roman Catholics. The whole point of it all was that we remained loyal to the Bishop of Rome and not the King of England.

Remember, many of the Anglicans regarded themselves as Catholics, too. The term Roman Catholic came about to distinguish the two.

No one is saying that Protestant Irish are not Irish. That is a red herring in this argument.

 

[ricko]

I have a question, then. Would you/they be comfortable with calling a person, parish, or diocese “Roman Catholic?” In reference, of course, to a Catholic person/parish/diocese of the Roman/Latin Rite?

There is no church called “Roman Catholic” so why use the term at all? Before all this started a Catholic would never dream of calling himself Roman Catholic or his church Roman Catholic. That was a name/title used by the Protestants. It was never the name of the Church and is not now.

I noticed the poll results have changed from 17% to 22% against using that incorrect term. It appears that education is the key. The Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, it’s our Church. We love it and are proud of it and we would not and should not allow its name to become corrupt.

 

[Thing]

There is no church called “Roman Catholic” so why use the term at all? Before all this started a Catholic would never dream of calling himself Roman Catholic or his church Roman Catholic. That was a name/title used by the Protestants. It was never the name of the Church and is not now.

I noticed the poll results have changed from 17% to 22% against using that incorrect term. It appears that education is the key. The Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, it’s our Church. We love it and are proud of it and we would not and should not allow its name to become corrupt.

See here, you’ve used three names already to refer to the one thing, - the Catholic Church.

ricko:

The **Catholic Church **is the Church of Christ, it’s our Church.

The term Roman Catholic is just such another term used by other people within the two countries in which the term originated; Roman Catholic refers to the Catholic Church and none other.

 

[Drawmack]

Roman Catholic is incorrect and improper simply because the name of the Church is not “Roman Catholic” It is the Catholic Church. Look above and you will see that it says “Catholic Answers”. Many Catholics are ignorant of the history and even of the correct name of the Church and use “Roman Catholic” instead of the correct name “Catholic Church”. It’s like calling you Bill when your name is Paul. It just ain’t right.

Check out the link for a complete explantation

catholic.com//thisrock/2006/0601fea4.asp

Interestingly enough this appears right after JPII calling it the Roman Catholic Church.

 

[Drawmack]

I just find it annoying because they use the term “Roman” to designate ALL Catholics simply so they can get some weird pleasure from saying they’re part of the "c"atholic church. It doesn’t offend me, it’s just REALLY annoying.

Who is this they you speak of? I say Roman Catholic to designate the Rite just like I say Byzantine, etc. I just leave out the word Rite. Personally, I just don’t see the need for the word Rite to be there it would be like Lutherans insisting that you call them the Lutheran Denomination and being offended when you left our the word Denomination.