"Roman" Catholic

[R3VAN]

Why do people put so much emphasis on Roman? That church has never openly called itself that and its not an official name of the church. Its a universal church that belongs to no one sect/country/group so I see no need to seperate it from anything. In fact IIRC, it was mostly employed by protestants for the longest time who used the term to show it was not the true church (as they believed they were) but just a Roman Church, not the Catholic church.

 

[NikitaRhea]

Why do people put so much emphasis on Roman? That church has never openly called itself that and its not an official name of the church. Its a universal church that belongs to no one sect/country/group so I see no need to seperate it from anything. In fact IIRC, it was mostly employed by protestants for the longest time who used the term to show it was not the true church (as they believed they were) but just a Roman Church, not the Catholic church.

I may not give the best answer you are looking for, but here is what I have. The said Headquarters for the Catholic Church was in Rome, and when the great schism happened this is turn made a distinct difference between those who split from the Church.So you have Eastern Orthodox Catholics and Roman Catholics.

 

[ConstantineTG]

Why do people put so much emphasis on Roman? That church has never openly called itself that and its not an official name of the church. Its a universal church that belongs to no one sect/country/group so I see no need to seperate it from anything. In fact IIRC, it was mostly employed by protestants for the longest time who used the term to show it was not the true church (as they believed they were) but just a Roman Church, not the Catholic church.

There are actually 22 Catholic Churches and the Roman Catholic Church is just one of them, albeit the one with the biggest membership (over 98% of Catholics are Roman Catholics) and has the widest number of locations where they are present (virtually every country, officially and unofficially).

Roman really comes from the fact that the Church is based in Rome. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome. The same way that the Ukrainian Catholic Church is based in the Ukraine, or that the Chaldean Catholic Church is composed of Chaldeans, people from the area of Syria, Iraq and some parts of Iran.

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

The Roman Church is more properly called the Latin Catholic Church.

The Latin Catholic Church is not the universal Catholic Church, it is one of 23 Catholic Churches that are all in communion with the Pope that make up the universal Catholic Church. The Latin Church is the largest but is not the only one.

Your Church membership goes though one of these sui juris Churches. While you are a member of the Latin (Roman) Catholic Church and under the Bishop of your Diocese there are Byzantine Catholics who are also living in your city who are under their own bishops for the Byzantine Eparchy (Greek for Diocese) and no under your bishop.

Also every diocese here in America calls itself a Roman Catholic Diocese so I do not get where you are coming from when you say that the Church does not use this name.

 

[LemonAndLime]

Here in the UK, the sign outside of my local Catholic Church alongside the mass times proclaims that it is a “Roman Catholic” Church, so I don’t see what you mean by the term not being in use at all.

 

[svid]

Because Holy Mother Church has sent the most missionaries to the most remote places in the world, She became known as the Roamin’ Catholic Church and the name stuck.

 

[ConstantineTG]

Also read the translation of Summorum Pontificum
ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b16summorumpontificum.htm

The Popes are called Roman Pontiffs
The Rite is called the Roman Rite
The Missal is called the Roman Missal

Also an example will be the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver (rcav.org). So the Church indeed uses “Roman” to refer to the Roman Catholic Church

 

[pnewton]

I see two reasons. For one, a “Catholic of the Latin Rite” is a little unwieldy. I think there is also a desire to wear that title which has so often been the object of derision, persuction and prejudice. A third reason, for some, is no doubt to conteract such names as American Catholic, which has gained a little bit of a reputation for unorthodoxy. In this last case, the title Roman Catholic emphasizes both orthodoxy and obedience to the Roman pontiff.

I have a little of all three in me.

 

[JackVk]

Here in the UK, the sign outside of my local Catholic Church alongside the mass times proclaims that it is a “Roman Catholic” Church, so I don’t see what you mean by the term not being in use at all.

Well, you are in England. They have to make sure they know where we heathenous papists dwell so they can execute us

 

[Ed_Normile]

Here in the UK, the sign outside of my local Catholic Church alongside the mass times proclaims that it is a “Roman Catholic” Church, so I don’t see what you mean by the term not being in use at all.

Yes I agree with your post, its that way in a phone book when you need to find mass times etc., its displayed on every church I have ever been to.

I find it a little insulting in the original post where its written, “it was mostly employed by protestants for the longest time who used the term to show it was not the true church (as they believed they were) but just a Roman Church, not the Catholic church.” , I wonder where he got this tidbit from, it almost seems like an insult hidden plainly in view. First off I do not know how a prot could make a distinction that She is not the Catholic church just a Roman Catholic church, even the most vile hater prots know the origin of the church. She is not just a Roman Church, that is true, She is, The Roman Catholic Church.

ed

 

[5Loaves]

I see two reasons. For one, a “Catholic of the Latin Rite” is a little unwieldy.

Are you referring to the Roman Rite of the Roman Missal of the Latin Church? The Roman Rite is celebrated in most Latin Churches, and is celebrated in either the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, or the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. The Ordinary Form may be in celebrated in the vernacular or in Latin and the Extraordinary Form is celebrated in Latin. There are other Rites in the Latin Church, such as the Ambrosian Rite, the Bragan Rite, the Dominican Rite etc.

The Canon Law of the Latin Church, CIC, begins with canon #1 "Can. 1 The canons of this Code regard only the Latin Church." The Canon law of the 22 Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches, the Code of Canons of Oriental Churches, CCEO, begins “Canon 1 The canons of this Code affect all and solely the Eastern Catholic Churches, unless, with regard to relations with the Latin Church, it is expressly stated otherwise.”

The Latin Church does use the term “Roman” most of the time in many locations, but one can still hear the pejorative sense in which historically it was used for the Church. I’ve heard it used thus mostly by Anglicans, usually as “the Roman Church”.

 

[R3VAN]

Yes I agree with your post, its that way in a phone book when you need to find mass times etc., its displayed on every church I have ever been to.

I find it a little insulting in the original post where its written, “it was mostly employed by protestants for the longest time who used the term to show it was not the true church (as they believed they were) but just a Roman Church, not the Catholic church.” , I wonder where he got this tidbit from, it almost seems like an insult hidden plainly in view. First off I do not know how a prot could make a distinction that She is not the Catholic church just a Roman Catholic church, even the most vile hater prots know the origin of the church. She is not just a Roman Church, that is true, She is, The Roman Catholic Church.

ed

How is it insulting to state a fact? It was in many protestant writings where they would refer to Catholics as “those ROMAN catholics”. Im not insulting anyone other than saying the term was not used by the church but rather those against it.

1. "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.

The term Roman Catholic is not used by the Church herself; it is a relatively modern term, and one, moreover, that is confined largely to the English language. The English-speaking bishops at the First Vatican Council in 1870, in fact, conducted a vigorous and successful campaign to insure that the term Roman Catholic was nowhere included in any of the Council’s official documents about the Church herself, and the term was not included.

Similarly, nowhere in the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council will you find the term Roman Catholic. Pope Paul VI signed all the documents of the Second Vatican Council as “I, Paul. Bishop of the Catholic Church.” Simply that – Catholic Church. There are references to the Roman curia, the Roman missal, the Roman rite, etc., but when the adjective Roman is applied to the Church herself, it refers to the Diocese of Rome!"

1. "In our day, much greater emphasis has been given to these “non-Roman” rites of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council devoted a special document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches), to the Eastern rites which belong to the Catholic Church, and the new Catechism of the Catholic Church similarly gives considerable attention to the distinctive traditions and spirituality of these Eastern rites.

So the proper name for the universal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church. Far from it. That term caught on mostly in English-speaking countries; it was promoted mostly by Anglicans, supporters of the “branch theory” of the Church, namely, that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed was supposed to consist of three major branches, the Anglican, the Orthodox and the so-called Roman Catholic. It was to avoid that kind of interpretation that the English-speaking bishops at Vatican I succeeded in warning the Church away from ever using the term officially herself: It too easily could be misunderstood."

 

[Biedrik]

I’m not sure where it came from, but it’s one of those misnomers that simply catches on. I suspect that it has largely to do with the fact that the Roman Rite is a huge majority of the Church. To many, it simply looked as if it were the Catholic Church, so that probably contributed to it a big deal. Now that the term is so commonly used, most people don’t think twice about it and simply go ahead and use it.

Another contributor to this could be the fact that many of us refer to ourselves as “Roman Catholics.” This is not an incorrect description, and those of us who are Roman (as opposed to Byzantine, Coptic, Maronite, etc.) could also put ourselves under a slightly larger descriptor and call ourselves Latin Catholics. However, since we use that term, I imagine it could have been easy to think that this meant that if we are “Roman Catholic” then the Church to which we belong is “Roman Catholic” too. However, these are just musings. I don’t actually have any idea how the term came about, but these seem plausible to me.

 

[Vince1022]

Why do people put so much emphasis on Roman?

Because the vast majority of Catholics are Roman Catholics.

 

[R3VAN]

Because the vast majority of Catholics are Roman Catholics.

We are a part of the holy catholic apostolic church. Not the holy roman catholic apostolic church.

“Today in an era of widespread dissent in the Church, and of equally widespread confusion regarding what authentic Catholic identity is supposed to consist of, many loyal Catholics have recently taken to using the term Roman Catholic in order to affirm their understanding that the Catholic Church of the Sunday creed is the same Church that is united with the Vicar of Christ in Rome, the Pope. This understanding of theirs is correct, but such Catholics should nevertheless beware of using the term, not only because of its dubious origins in Anglican circles intending to suggest that there just might be some other Catholic Church around somewhere besides the Roman one: but also because it often still is used today to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church is something other and lesser than the Catholic Church of the creed. It is commonly used by some dissenting theologians, for example, who appear to be attempting to categorize the Roman Catholic Church as just another contemporary “Christian denomination”–not the body that is identical with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed.”

 

[Vince1022]

We are a part of the holy catholic apostolic church. Not the holy roman catholic apostolic church.

“Today in an era of widespread dissent in the Church, and of equally widespread confusion regarding what authentic Catholic identity is supposed to consist of, many loyal Catholics have recently taken to using the term Roman Catholic in order to affirm their understanding that the Catholic Church of the Sunday creed is the same Church that is united with the Vicar of Christ in Rome, the Pope. This understanding of theirs is correct, but such Catholics should nevertheless beware of using the term, not only because of its dubious origins in Anglican circles intending to suggest that there just might be some other Catholic Church around somewhere besides the Roman one: but also because it often still is used today to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church is something other and lesser than the Catholic Church of the creed. It is commonly used by some dissenting theologians, for example, who appear to be attempting to categorize the Roman Catholic Church as just another contemporary “Christian denomination”–not the body that is identical with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed.”

Yes of course. So?

 

[Gregory_I]

Mybe it’s called Roman because the Roman Catholic Church is the Mother and mistress of all the churches which form the Catholic communion outside of which is no salvation?

 

[Vince1022]

Mybe it’s called Roman because the Roman Catholic Church is the Mother and mistress of all the churches which form the Catholic communion outside of which is no salvation?

I don’t think so. If you have any support for that idea, please share. Thanks!

 

[R3VAN]

I just think we should all be called Catholic. The term Roman Catholic derived from the Protestant Reformation, from protestants, and not the church or any Catholics.

The Church of Jesus Christ subsists entirely in the Catholic Church with the office of Peter as visible head. The Church was born at Calvary in Jerusalem, with Jesus total self giving of Himself for His Bride the Church. This is from the Will of God, who established His Church, with the office of Prime Minister (Head Bishop). The first Head Bishop moved to Rome, and was martyred on Vatican hill by Emperor Nero. Jesus promised His Church will last until the end of time, and the successors to the first Head Bishop Peter, also become the Bishop of Rome. This is typically why people refer to it as Roman Catholicism. However, it is really Catholicism. There is only one Church built by Christ, and it is the universal Church for all Christ’s family, the Catholic Church.

Read more: wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_roman_Catholic_come_from#ixzz1CJZ6op51

 

[ConstantineTG]

I just think we should all be called Catholic. The term Roman Catholic derived from the Protestant Reformation, from protestants, and not the church or any Catholics.

The Church of Jesus Christ subsists entirely in the Catholic Church with the office of Peter as visible head. The Church was born at Calvary in Jerusalem, with Jesus total self giving of Himself for His Bride the Church. This is from the Will of God, who established His Church, with the office of Prime Minister (Head Bishop). The first Head Bishop moved to Rome, and was martyred on Vatican hill by Emperor Nero. Jesus promised His Church will last until the end of time, and the successors to the first Head Bishop Peter, also become the Bishop of Rome. This is typically why people refer to it as Roman Catholicism. However, it is really Catholicism. There is only one Church built by Christ, and it is the universal Church for all Christ’s family, the Catholic Church.

Read more: wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_did_roman_Catholic_come_from#ixzz1CJZ6op51

We are all called Catholic. But we also have to distinguish each Catholic tradition and sui juris from one another. If all Catholic parishes just say “Catholic Church” outside, how would you know if its saying the Roman Missal, Byzantine Divine Liturgy, Chaldean Holy Qurbana, etc?