Why do you use the name "Catholic Answers"?

[rshaward]

I am wondering why you insist on using the name “Catholic Answers” and not “Roman Catholic Answers”? You say your answers are the “Catholic” answer but the Orthodox would differ with you. The Orthodox are Catholic, but not Roman which your site is. I find your use of “Catholic” historically offensive as an Orthodox Christian. Your site should be called “Roman Catholic Answers” to be honest and truthful.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

In the sense that you are using the term “Roman Catholic,” that applies only to the Latin church within the universal Catholic Church. There are also 23 Eastern Catholic churches in union with the Holy See, none of which would appreciate being termed “Roman.” Catholic Answers uses the name that it does because we seek to explain and defend the faith of the universal Catholic Church, and not just one particular church in union with the universal Church.

On the other hand, it would be well for you to keep in mind that many Catholics may be piqued by your insistence of co-opting the term “Catholic” to describe your affiliation with a church that is not in communion with the Holy See. The argument over the use of the term “Catholic” is an ancient one. St. Augustine once answered it this way:

In the Catholic Church … a few spiritual men attain [wisdom] in this life, in such a way that … they know it without any doubting, while the rest of the multitude finds [its] greatest safety not in lively understanding but in the simplicity of believing… [T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in her bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called “Catholic,” when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house (*Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation” *4:5 [A.D. 397]) source, emphasis added].