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Summary
- In everyday speech “Roman Catholic” and “Catholic” mean the same Church, the one led by the pope, and its own documents, such as Lumen Gentium 8 (1964), usually call it the Catholic Church.
- “Catholic” comes from the Greek katholikos, universal, and Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 107 to 110, is the first Christian known to have called the Church catholic.
- English Protestant writers first used the double name “Roman Catholic” in the 1580s, and it probably became the official English style in the Spanish Match negotiations of 1618 to 1624.
- The Church uses “Roman” too: the First Vatican Council (1870) spoke of “the holy, catholic, apostolic and Roman church,” and its dialogue with Anglicans runs through the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission.
- The Catholic Church is a communion of 24 churches, the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic churches, and the Eastern ones, 14 of them Byzantine, are Catholic but not of the Roman rite.
- The Orthodox, Anglicans, Old Catholics and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America also call their churches catholic, though Luther’s Small Catechism of 1529 says “one holy Christian Church.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Bible: no passage of Scripture is quoted. The creeds are quoted from the English and Latin texts in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2005), vatican.va.
- Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8, tr. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (1885), newadvent.org; tr. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers (1891), earlychristianwritings.com.
- Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience on St Ignatius of Antioch, 14 March 2007, vatican.va.
- Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 18, tr. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7 (1894), newadvent.org.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 830, 831 and 834, vatican.va.
- Herbert Thurston, “Catholic,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (1908), newadvent.org; “Roman Catholic,” vol. 13 (1912), newadvent.org.
- Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 8 (1964), vatican.va, and its Latin text with Paul VI’s signature, vatican.va; Orientalium Ecclesiarum 3 (1964), vatican.va.
- Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 1, vatican.va, and canon 205, vatican.va; Pope John Paul II, Sacri Canones (1990), promulgating the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, vatican.va.
- First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chapter 1 (1870), in Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (1990), papalencyclicals.net.
- Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis 27 (1950), vatican.va.
- Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, “Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC),” christianunity.va.
- Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, Joint Catholic–Orthodox Declaration, 7 December 1965, vatican.va.
- Constitución de la Nación Argentina (1853, reformed 1994), article 2, argentina.gob.ar.
- Vatican News, “New commission dedicated to Eastern Churches established by Synod,” February 2026, vaticannews.va.
- Victoria Cardiel, “The 23 Eastern Catholic Churches: Ancient traditions in communion with Rome,” Catholic World Report, 20 September 2026, catholicworldreport.com.
- Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, “Church,” Orthodox Church in America, oca.org.
- The Church of England, “History of the Church of England,” churchofengland.org.
- Martin Luther, Small Catechism (1529), Part II, the Creed, Concordia Triglotta translation (1921), bookofconcord.org.
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Vision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with “A Declaration of Ecumenical Commitment” (adopted 1991), resources.elca.org.
- Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches, “History,” utrechter-union.org.
- The Old Catholic bishops at Utrecht, The Declaration of Utrecht, 24 September 1889, translation published by the International Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference, utrechter-union.org.
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