Cross Denominational Mission
The
Roman Catholic Church, or the Catholic Church is a Christian church in
full communion with the Bishop of Rome, currently Pope Benedict XVI. It
traces its origins to the original Christian community founded by Jesus
and then by the Twelve Apostles, in particular Saint Peter. It is the
largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians, and
is the largest organized religious body in the world. The Catholic
Church's recorded membership at the end of 2005 was one-sixth of the
world's population at 1.115 billion members.
The worldwide
Catholic Church is made up of one Western or Latin church and 22
Eastern Catholic autonomous churches, all of which look to the Pope in
the Vatican (Rome), alone or along with the College of Bishops, as
their highest authority on earth for matters of faith, morals and
church governance. It is divided into jurisdictional areas, usually on
a territorial basis. The standard territorial unit is called a diocese
in the Latin church and an eparchy in the Eastern churches. Each
diocese or eparchy is headed by a bishop, patriarch or eparch. At the
end of AD2006, the total number of all these jurisdictional areas (or
"Sees") was 2,782.
It
calls itself 'the Church' as it sees itself as the one Holy, Universal
and Apostolic church. The word catholic meaning 'universal'. However,
it
refers to itself in its relations with other denominations as either
"the Catholic
Church" or "the Roman Catholic Church". Some, especially Eastern
Catholics, apply the term
Roman Catholic Church only to the Western or Latin church, excluding
the Eastern Catholic Churches. As for the term Catholic Church,
Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Old Catholic,
and other Christians, including members of independent Catholic
Churches, claim to be part of the catholic Church (often
writing "catholic" with a lower-case 'c' to distinguish it from the
Roman Catholic Church). In ordinary use Catholic alone
is used.
Origins and history of the Roman Catholic Church
The
Church traces its history to Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, and sees
the bishops of the Church as the successors of the Apostles,
and the Pope as the successor of Saint Peter, leader of the Apostles. The first known use of the term "Catholic Church"
was in a letter by Ignatius of Antioch in AD107, who wrote: "Where the
bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is,
there is the Catholic Church."
Additionally, Catholic theologians
list a number of quotations from early Church Fathers suggesting that the
See of Rome had jurisdictional authority or primacy over other
churches, (Orthodox theologians dispute this claim
which was one of the reasons behind the East-West Schism,
historically considering the Roman Pope's role as first among equals as
merely bestowing a primacy of honor. However, several pre-schism
Eastern Church leaders contradict this).
A central doctrine of the Catholic Church is Apostolic Succession, the
belief that the bishops are the spiritual successors of the original
twelve apostles, through the historically unbroken chain of
consecration (see: Holy Orders). The Roman Catholic church is not the
only denomination to hold this view. The New Testament contains
warnings
against (false) teachings masquerading as Christianity,
and shows how matters were referred to the leaders of the church
to decide
what was true doctrine. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the
continuation of those who remained faithful to the apostolic and
episcopal leadership and rejected false teachings.
The Early Church and Christological Councils
Right from
the beginning, Christians were subject to persecution. This
involved death for Christians such as Stephen (Acts 7:59) and
James, son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2). Organised persecutions followed at the
hands of the authorities of the Roman Empire, beginning in AD64, when the Emperor Nero
blamed them for the great Fire of Rome (as reported by the Roman historian Tacitus).
According to Church
tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that St. Peter and St. Paul
were martyred in Rome. In AD96 Pope Clement I wrote his first Epistle
to the church of Corinth only a few years before the death of St. John,
the last of the Apostles, in Ephesius. Widespread persecution
of the Church occurred under following nine subsequent Roman emperors
including
Domitian, Decius and Diocletian. From AD150 Christian teachers
began to produce theological and "apologetic" works aimed at defending
the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and study of
them is called Patristics. Notable early Fathers include Ignatius of
Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria and Origen.
Christianity was legalized in the fourth
century, when Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan in AD313.
Constantine was instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of
Nicaea in AD325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated
the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Catholic Church,
Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and various Protestant churches.
In AD326, Pope Sylvester I consecrated the first Basilica of St. Peter
built by Constantine.
On 27 February AD380, Emperor Theodosius I
enacted a law establishing Catholic Christianity as the official
religion of the Roman Empire and ordering others to be called heretics.
This period of history was also marked by the inauguration of a series
of (worldwide) Ecumenical Christological Councils which established and
formally codified critical elements of the theology of the Church. In
AD382, the Council of Rome set the Canon of the Bible, listing the
accepted books of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Also, the
Council of Ephesus in AD431 declared that Jesus existed both as fully Man
and fully God simultaneously, clarifying his status in the Trinity. The
meaning of the Nicene Creed was also declared a permanent doctrine of
the Church.
Medieval Period
In AD452 Pope Leo the Great
met Attila the Hun, and dissuaded him from ransacking Rome. However, in
AD476, the last Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed. Following
the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the Church entered into a
long period of missionary activity and evangelism among the former
barbarian tribes. Catholicism spread among the Germanic peoples
(initially in competition with Arianism), the Celts, the Slavic
peoples; the Vikings and other Scandinavians; the Hungarians, the
Baltic peoples and the Finns. The rise of Islam from AD630 onwards, took
the formerly Christian lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and much of
Spain out of Christian control.
In AD480 St. Benedict set out his
Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation
and running of religious communities. Monasticism became a powerful force
throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centres of learning,
most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Northern France (Gaul), contributing to the
Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.
The Middle Ages
brought about major changes within the Church. Pope Gregory the Great
dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration. In
the early eighth century iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it
was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Roman Pope challenged imperial
power and preserved the use of images outside the empire. The Second
Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (AD787) finally pronounced in favour of
icons. In the early tenth century, western monasticism was further
rejuvenated through the leadership of the great Benedictine monastery
of Cluny.
Late Middle Ages
From the eleventh century
onward, older cathedral schools developed into Universities (i.e.
University of Paris, University of Oxford, and University of Bologna.)
Originally teaching only Theology, these steadily added subjects
including Medicine, Philosophy and Law, becoming the direct ancestors
of modern Western institutions of learning.
Accompanying the
rise of the "new towns" throughout Europe, mendicant orders were
founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery
and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements
were the Franciscans and the Dominicans founded by St. Francis and St.
Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the
development of the great Universities of Europe. Another new order were
the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the
settlement of former wilderness areas. In this period church building
and ecclesiastical architecture reached new heights, culminating in the
orders of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and the building of the
great European cathedrals.
From AD1095 under the
pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched. These were a
series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated
in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid
against Turkish (Islamic) expansion. The crusades ultimately failed to stifle
Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the
sacking and occupation of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
Beginning
around AD1184, following the wars brought about by the Cathar heresy,
various institutions broadly referred to as the Inquisition, were
established to suppress heresy and secure religious and
doctrinal unity within Christianity through conversion, and
if that failed, prosecution of alleged heretics. Historians distinguish between the
Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the Roman Inquisition,
and the Portuguese Inquisition as distinct historical institutions,
some under state control; others under church control.
East-West Schism
Gradually, from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, the
church underwent a slow schism that divided it into a Western
(Latin) branch, generally known as the Catholic Church, and an Eastern
(Greek) branch, which has become known as the Orthodox Church. These
two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and
doctrinal issues, most notably the Filioque clause and papal primacy of
jurisdiction.
The Second Council of Lyon (AD1274) and the
Council of Florence (AD1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in
both cases the Orthodox refused to ratify the decisions. Some Eastern
churches have subsequently reunited with the Roman Catholic Church, and
others claim never to have been out of communion with the Roman Pope. However the two principal churches remain
in schism to the present day, although excommunications were lifted
mutually between Rome and Constantinople in AD1965.
Reformation and Counter-Reformation
The
fifteenth century Renaissance brought about a renewed interest in
ancient and classical learning, and a re-examination of accepted
beliefs. The discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in AD1492
brought about a new wave of missionary activity as the Catholic Church
sought to spread the faith throughout the colonies. Pope Alexander VI
awarded colonial rights over most of the newly-discovered lands to
Spain and Portugal.
On October 31, AD1517, Martin Luther posted
his 95 Theses, which protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well
as the sale of indulgences. Others like Zwingli and Calvin developed
even more radical and extreme critiques of catholic teaching and
worship. These challenges developed into a movement called the
Protestant Reformation. Repudiated issues included the primacy of the
pope, clerical celibacy, the seven sacraments, the eucharist, and
various other Catholic doctrines and practices.
In AD1534, the
English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy making the King of
England Supreme Head of the Church of England. The
monasteries throughout England, Wales, and Ireland were dissolved and Pope
Paul III excommunicated King Henry VIII in AD1538, beginning a decisive schism between Rome and Canterbury.
The
Counter-Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, is the name given to the
response of the Catholic Church to the challenge of Protestantism. Led by the Council of Trent, the
Counter-Reformation was a renewed conviction in the validity of
traditional Catholic doctrine and practice. This was seen as the source
of ecclesiastic and moral reform, and the answer to halting the spread
of Protestantism. Renewed enthusiasm led to the founding of new
religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries
for the proper training of priests, worldwide missionary activity, and
the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that
of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality. The
Council of Trent clarified and reasserted doctrine, issued dogmatic
definitions, and produced the Roman Catechism. Catholicism spread
worldwide, alongside European colonialism: to the Americas, Asia,
Africa and Australasia.
18th Century to Present
In the 18th and 19th
centuries the church found itself facing not only the teachings of
Protestantism, but also Enlightenment and Modernist teachings about the
nature of the human person, the state, and morality. Atheism and
anti-clericalism were increasingly powerful forces. These expressed
themselves in movements to secularise church lands , properties and
functions. In many parts of the world religious orders were suppressed,
worship discouraged, and education, healthcare and other functions were
taken over by the state. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution,
and the increased concern about the deteriorating conditions of urban
workers, 19th and 20th century popes issued encyclicals such as Rerum
Novarum explaining Catholic Social Teaching. The First Vatican Council
(1869-1870) affirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility which
Catholics hold to be in continuity with the history of St Peter's
supremacy in the church.
Second Vatican Council Reforms
The Catholic
Church engaged in a comprehensive process of "reform" during and
immediately after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Convened by
Pope John XXIII, the Council stressed what it saw as positive rather
than what it saw as negative in other Christian communities and other
religions. It was a primarily pastoral but authoritative council,
called to make the historical teachings of the Catholic Church clear to
the modern world. It issued documents on a number of topics,
including the nature of the church, the mission of the laity, and
religious freedom. It also issued directions for a revision of the
liturgy, including permission for the Latin liturgical rites to use
vernacular languages as well as Latin in the Mass and the other
sacraments.
Beliefs
The
Crucifix, a cross with corpus or symbol of the dying Jesus, is a symbol used in Catholicism in contrast
with some other Christian communions, which use only a cross. In its
teachings, the Church uses the Nicene Creed and the
Apostles' Creed, as structured summaries of the main points of Catholic
belief. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives members and others a
"systematic presentation of the faith" and a "complete exposition of
Catholic doctrine". In addition, the Compendium of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, first published in 2005 and in English in 2006,
provides a more concise version of the Catechism, in question and
answer form.
Catholicism embodies the main beliefs of orthodox
trinitarian Christianity, placing particular importance on the Church
as an institution founded by Jesus and kept from doctrinal error by the
presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, as the font of salvation for
humanity. The seven sacraments of the Church, of which the most
important is the Eucharist, are of prime importance in obtaining
salvation.
The teachings
of the Catholic Church are derived from two sources, firstly the Sacred
Scriptures (the Bible) and secondly the Sacred Tradition. Both are
ultimately governed and interpreted by the Magisterium of the Church.
In AD1943 , Pope Pius XII
(encyclical letter, Divino Afflante Spiritu) encouraged Biblical scholars to study the original languages
of the books of the Bible (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic for the Old
Testament; Greek for the New Testament) and other languages, to get a deeper and fuller understanding of these
texts, stating that "the original text ... having been written by the
inspired author himself, has more authority and greater weight than any
even the very best translation, whether ancient or modern." The
canonical list of sacred books, and their contents, accepted by the
Catholic Church are those as contained in the old Latin Vulgate edition.
There
is a variety of sources for knowledge of Sacred Tradition, taught by
the Church to be originally passed from the apostles in the form of
oral tradition. Many of the writings of the early Church Fathers
reflect teachings of Sacred Tradition, such as apostolic succession.
Sacred Tradition, unlike man-made traditions, are understood to be the
lived experience of the teachings of Christ in the early Church.
Nature of God
Catholicism
is monotheistic: it believes that God is one, eternal, all-powerful
(omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), and
omnipresent. God exists as distinct from and prior to his creation
(that is, everything which is not God, and which depends directly on
him for existence) and yet is still present intimately in his creation.
In the First Vatican Council the Church taught that, while by the
natural light of human reason God can be known in his works as origin
and end of all created things, God has also chosen to reveal himself
and his will supernaturally in the ways indicated in the Letter to the
Hebrews 1:1-2.
Catholicism is also Trinitarian: it believes
that, while God is one in nature, essence, and being, this one God
exists in three divine persons, each identical with the one essence,
whose only distinctions are in their relations to one another: the
Father's relationship to the Son, the Son's relationship to the Father,
and the relations of both to the Holy Spirit, constitute the one God as
a Trinity.
Catholics are baptized in the Name (singular) of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — not three gods, but one
God subsisting in three Persons. While sharing in the one divine
essence, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, not simply
three "masks" or manifestations of one Person. The faith of the church
and of the individual Christian is based on a relationship with these
three Persons of the one God.
The Catholic Church believes that
God has revealed himself to humanity as Father to his only-begotten
Son, who is in an eternal relationship with the Father: "No one knows
the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the
Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."
Catholics
believe that God the Son, the Divine Logos, the second of the three
Persons of God, became incarnate as Jesus Christ, a human being, born
of the Virgin Mary. He remained truly divine and was at the same time
truly human. In what he said, and by how he lived, he taught all people
how to live, and revealed God as Love, the giver of unmerited favours
or Graces.
After Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, his
followers (foremost among them the Apostles), spread more and more
extensively their faith with a vigour that they attributed to the
presence of the Holy Spirit, the third of the three Persons of God,
sent upon them by Jesus.
Original sin
Human beings, in
Catholic belief, were originally created to live in union with God.
Through the disobedience of the first humans (Adam and Eve), that
relationship was broken and sin and death came into the world. The Fall
of Man left humans in a state called original sin, that is, separated
from their original state of intimacy with God which carried into death
through the idea of the individual human soul being immortal. But when
Jesus came into the world, being both God and man, he was able through
his sacrifice to reconcile humanity with God. By becoming one in
Christ, through the church, humanity was once again capable of intimacy
with God and also offered participation in the divine life on Earth,
which will reach its fullness in heaven in the beatific vision. The
sacrament of baptism is the ordinary means for the remission of
original sin.
The Church (Ecclesiology)
By
the end of the
1400s, Catholics such as Johann Gutenberg were operating 250 printing
workshops all over Europe.The Church is, as scripture states, "the body
of
Christ," and Catholics teach that it is one united body of believers
both in heaven and on earth. There is therefore only one true, visible
and physical church, not several: and to this one church, originally
founded by Jesus on Peter and the Apostles, Jesus gave a mandate to be
the authoritative teacher and guardian of the faith. To transmit
Christ's divine revelation, the apostles were given the mandate to
"preach the Gospel," which they performed both orally and in writing,
and which they preserved by leaving bishops as their successors. The
Catechism states "the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a
special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous
line of succession until the end of time. This living transmission,
accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is
distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it."
The Church is also a fount of divine grace which is administered
through the sacraments. The Church claims infallibility in
teaching the faith, based on Jesus' scriptural promises to remain with
his church always, and to maintain it in truth through the Holy Spirit,
so that the church is, in the words of 1 Timothy 3:15, "the pillar and
the ground of the truth". Furthermore, Jesus promised divine protection
to the teachings and judgements of the Apostles (Matt. 18:18 & Luke
10:16), and those who
succeeded them in their teaching office (i.e. the bishops). Moreover,
Jesus set up the church as the final arbiter between all believers
(Matt. 18:17):
"And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he
refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile
and a tax-gatherer" (1 Tim. 3:15). In this, it bases its
doctrines both on the
written Apostolic record, The New Testament, and upon the oral
traditions passed down from the Apostles to their successors (the
bishops) through the continuous witness of the church.
Lumen
Gentium states that "the one
Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic
and apostolic" subsists "in the Catholic Church, which is governed by
the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with
him." The term successor of Peter refers to the Bishop of Rome,
the Roman Pope. (Section 8 of the Second Vatican Council's
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church,
states that authentic interpretation of the Word of God is entrusted to
the living Magisterium of the Church, namely the bishops in communion
with the successor of Saint Peter. Catholic theology places the
authoritative interpretation of Scripture in the hands of the
consistent judgment of the Church down the ages (what has always and
everywhere been taught) rather than the private judgment of the
individual. The Magisterium does, however, encourage its flock to read
Sacred Scripture.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, "the Church's first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner
union of men with God." Therefore the Church's "structure is totally ordered
to the holiness of Christ's members."
Salvation
The
Church teaches that salvation to eternal life is God's will for all
people, and that God grants it to sinners as a free gift, a grace,
through the sacrifice of Christ. "With regard to God, there is no
strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there
is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from
him, our Creator." It is God who justifies, that is, who frees from sin
by a free gift of holiness (sanctifying grace, also known as habitual
or deifying grace). We can either accept the gift God gives through
faith in Jesus Christ and through baptism, or refuse it. Human
cooperation is needed, in line with a new capacity to adhere to the
divine will that God provides. The faith of a Christian is not without
works, otherwise it would be dead. In this sense, "by works a man is
justified, and not by faith alone," and eternal life is, at one and the
same time, grace and the reward given by God for good works and merits.
Faith, and subsequently works, are a result of God's grace - thus, it
is only because of grace that the believer can be said to "merit"
salvation.
The Church teaches that a person must be in a state
of Sanctifying Grace at the moment of death in order to be saved.
Sanctifying Grace is conferred at Baptism, and is lost when a soul
commits a mortal sin. A mortal sin is a deliberate and serious
transgression of God's law. Sanctifying Grace is regained when a person
confesses his or her sin in the Sacrament of Penance. If a person
repents of his or her sin before he or she dies but is unable to obtain
the actual Sacrament of Penance before death due to reasons outside of
the person's control, the person's sin is forgiven by nature of the
person's desire to receive it.
The
Roman Catholic Church teaches
that through the graces Jesus won for humanity by sacrificing himself
on the cross, salvation is possible even for those outside the visible
boundaries of the Church. Christians and even non-Christians,
if they respond positively to the grace and truth that God reveals
to
them through the mercy of Christ, may be saved (in the case of non-Christians often
referred to as "baptism of desire").
This may sometimes include awareness of an obligation to become part of
the Catholic Church. In such cases, "whosoever, therefore, knowing
[believing] that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ,
would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved."
Baptism
is essential in the life, and it is through the lens of baptism that
the Church is understood to be a sacramental Church. Baptism not only
purifies a person from sin, "it also creates an adopted son of God, who
has become a "partaker of the divine nature." As such, baptism returns
humanity to its original state, having been formed in the image of
God. Yet there is only one image of God, for there is only one God.
Therefore, with sin, we have fractured the image of God, the imago Dei.
As Origen states, "where there is sin, there is multiplicity." Thus,
only in Christ is the image of God restored, for "Christ is the image
of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15) and "it pleased the Father that all of
creation should dwell fully in him". Therefore, when one is
baptized into the Church, which is the body of Christ, the person
shares in the death of Christ so that they might also share in Christ's
resurrected life.
Baptism ties the person into the communal life
of the Church, and it is through the Church that the person is saved.
As the theologian Henri de Lubac stated, "Christ the Redeemer does not
offer salvation merely to each individual; he effects it, he is himself
the salvation of the whole, and for each one salvation consists in a
personal ratification of his original 'belonging' to Christ, so that he
be not cast out, cut off from this whole." Salvation is a communal
act, not one of the individual.This is why the Roman Catholic Church
rejects Protestant concepts of the Church. The essential disagreements
between the two can be summed up in de Lubac's quote:
" [The
Church is not] the simple gathering together of those who as
individuals have accepted the Gospel and henceforward have shared their
religious life, whether in accordance with a plan of their own or as
the occasion demanded, or even by following the instructions of the
Master. She is neither an external organism brought into being or
adopted after the event by the community of believers. It is impossible
to maintain either of these two extreme theses, as it is impossible to
keep them entirely separate. Yet that is the vain endeavor of most
Protestant theology.”
According to doctrine, a devout
Catholic will be saved. However, the church does not claim that those
outside of the church will necessarily be condemned. In fact, the claim
that only Catholics will be saved is considered heretical and is known
as Feeneyism, after Father Leonard Feeney, who was excommunicated from
the church for this belief. Catholics believe that God will not deny
the help necessary for salvation to anybody, even those outside the Church.
Catholic life
Catholics
are obliged to endeavour to be true disciples of Jesus. They seek
forgiveness of their sins and follow the example and teaching of Jesus.
They believe that Jesus has provided seven sacraments which give Grace
from God to the believer.
If a person dies in
unrepented mortal sin, which can be forgiven through the Sacrament of
Penance, he loses God's promise of salvation and goes to Hell. However,
if the sinner truly regrets his or her actions before the moment of
death, then he or she can undergo a purification, known as Purgatory,
and eventually enter Heaven.
Catholics believe that
God works actively in the world. Catholics grow in grace through
participation in the sacramental life of the Church, and through
prayer, the work of mercy, and spiritual disciplines such as fasting
and pilgrimage. The Catholic laity also grow in grace when they fulfill
their secular duties and try to imbue society with Christian values by
being a model of Christ and his teachings.
Prayer for others,
even for enemies and persecutors is a Christian duty. Catholics say
there are four types of prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, contrition,
and supplication. Catholics may address their requests for the
intercession of others not only to people still in earthly life, but
also to those in heaven, in particular the Virgin Mary and the other
Saints. As Mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary is also considered to be
the spiritual mother of all Catholics.
Sanctity of Human life
Pope
John Paul II taught that, "by means of his corporality, his masculinity
and femininity, (mankind) becomes a visible sign of the economy of truth
and love, which has its source in God himself." The Catholic
Church affirms the sanctity of all human life, from conception to
natural death. The Church believes that each person is made in the
"image and likeness of God," and that human life should not be weighed
against other values such as economy, convenience, personal
preferences, or social engineering. Therefore, the Church opposes
activities that it believes destroy or devalue divinely created life,
including abortion, capital punishment, contraception, embryonic stem
cell research, eugenics, euthanasia, genocide, human cloning, murder,
suicide, and war.
Capital punishment, (which has not been
wholly condemned by the Church), has come under increasing criticism by
theologians and church leaders. Pope John Paul II, for instance,
opposed capital punishment in all cases except those in which it is
absolutely necessary for the defense of a society (found almost
exclusively in developing nations). After four years of consultations
with the world's Catholic bishops, John Paul II wrote that execution is
only appropriate "in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when
it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as
a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal
system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent."
This position is also held today by Avery Cardinal Dulles, Msgr.
William Smith, Germain Grisez and other Catholic moral theologians, who
oppose all "intentional killing," as philosophers term it.
Catholic social doctrine
Rerum
Novarum, "On the Condition of the Working Classes," published in AD1891
by Pope Leo XIII, is the first in a series of Church documents
concerning social matters which together is known as Catholic Social
Teaching. As the founding document of this teaching tradition, Rerum
Novarum, avoiding the extremes of laissez-faire capitalism and
communism, articulates a set of principles taught to this day including
the dignity of the human person, the dignity of labor, the living wage,
reforms against child labor, the rights to private property, the common
good, the right of labor to organize, the limited work day among
others. Subsequent popes have added other principles such as
subsidiarity, the option for the poor, and the sanctity of life. The
social teachings of the Catholic Church were a major impetus in the
evolution of the labor movement and the adoption of the major labor
reforms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Sexuality
The
Catholic Church teaches that human life and human sexuality are both
inseparable and sacred. The Church teaches that Manichaeism, the
belief that the spirit is good while the flesh is evil, is a heresy.
Therefore, the Church does not teach that sex is sinful or an
impairment to a grace-filled life. As God created the human body in his
own image and likeness, and because he found everything he created to
be "very good," then the human body and sex must likewise be good. The
Catechism teaches that "the flesh is the hinge of salvation."
Indeed, the Church considers the expression of love between husband and
wife to be a most elevated form of human activity, joining as it does,
husband and wife in complete mutual self-giving, and opening their
relationship to new life. “The sexual activity, in which husband and
wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which
human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, ‘noble
and worthy.’” It is in cases in which sexual expression is sought
outside sacramental marriage, or in which the procreative function of
sexual expression within marriage is deliberately frustrated, that the
Catholic Church expresses its grave moral concern.
Pope John
Paul II's first major teaching was on the Theology of the Body. Over
the course of five years he elucidated a vision of sex that was not
only positive and affirming but was about redemption, not condemnation.
He taught that by understanding God's plan for physical love we could
understand "the meaning of the whole of existence, the meaning of
life." "The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what
is invisible: the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into
the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time
immemorial in God, and thus to be a sign of it."
However the
Church teaches that sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful
because it violates the purpose of human sexuality to participate in
the "conjugal act" before one is actually married. The conjugal act
"aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one
flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul" (Catechism #1643) since the
marriage bond is to be a sign of the love between God and humanity
(Catechism #1617).
Masturbation, fornication, adultery,
pornography, prostitution, rape, homosexual acts, and contraception are
regarded by the Catholic Church as, "gravely
disordered actions" (whether in actual fact they also constitute a
mortal sin depends on other factors). The procurement of, or
performance of (as well as assistance in) abortion can carry the
penalty of excommunication, as a specific offence.
The Church
has been criticized for its teaching on fidelity,
sexual abstinence and its opposition to promoting the use of condoms as
a strategy to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, and STDs.
Prayer and worship
In
the Catholic Church, there is a distinction between Liturgy, which is
the formal public and communal worship of the Church, and personal
prayer or devotion, which may be public or private. The Liturgy is
regulated by church authority and consists of the Eucharist (the Mass),
the other Sacraments, and the Liturgy of the Hours. All Catholics are
expected to participate in the liturgical life of the Church, but
personal prayer and devotions are entirely a matter of personal
preference.
Catholic liturgy
The Catholic Church is
fundamentally liturgical in its public life of worship. Liturgy is
derived from the Greek for "work of the people." The Second Vatican
Council stated "for the liturgy, 'through which the work of our
redemption is accomplished,' most of all in the divine sacrifice of the
Eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in
their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real
nature of the true Church."
Mass (also called Eucharist)
The
chalice is displayed immediately after the transubstantiation of the
wine into the Blood of Christ.Catholics see the Eucharist as the source
and summit of the Christian life, and believe that the bread and wine
brought to the altar are transformed through the power of the Holy
Spirit into the true Body and the true Blood of Christ. The Holy Mass
is a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.
Sacraments
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1131 teaches: "The sacraments are
efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the
Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by
which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces
proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them
with the required dispositions."
According to the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, #1113, "The whole liturgical life of the Church
revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments. There are
seven sacraments in the Church: Baptism, Confirmation or Chrismation,
Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and
Matrimony."
Liturgy of the Hours
The Liturgy of the
Hours, at least in the simple form of morning prayer and evening
prayer, is the daily liturgy of all the Catholic faithful. It is
intended as a communal experience, just as the Eucharist or the
celebration of the other Sacraments, but is often recited by
individuals.
Devotional life and Personal Prayer
In
addition to the liturgy of the Church there is a variety of spirtual
practices, devotions, and pietistic practices that Catholics may
participate in, either communally or individually. Aside from the Mass,
Catholics consider personal and communal prayer to be one of the most
important elements of Christian life.
Important examples are
blessings of people and of objects, as well as devotions to particular
saints, spiritualities, prayers, or Catholic traditions. Popular
devotions are not strictly part of the liturgy, but if they are judged
to be authentic, the Church encourages them. They include veneration of
relics of saints, visits to sacred shrines, pilgrimages, processions
(including Eucharistic processions), the Stations of the Cross (also
known as the Way of the Cross), Holy Hours, Eucharistic Adoration,
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and the Rosary.
Similarly,
the great variety of Catholic spirituality enables individual Catholics
to pray privately in many different ways. The fourth and last part of
the Catechism thus summarized the Catholic's response to the mystery of
faith: "This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it,
that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and
personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship
is prayer."
Nature and mission of the Church
The Church
is the People of God, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Body of
Christ. It is fundamentally a communion of members, and a communion of
communions, with each other and with God. The Second Vatican Council
identified the nature of the Church to be a mystery. As the Body of
Christ, every member has a distinct calling, and is gifted for
different kinds of participation in the mission of the Church. This
mission is essentially to preach the Good News to all people, to form a
worshipping communion, and to help those in need, particularly the poor
and marginalized.
Churches within the Catholic Church
Unlike
"families" or "federations" of churches formed through the grant of
mutual recognition by distinct ecclesial bodies, the Catholic Church
considers itself a single church ("one Body") composed of a multitude
of local or particular churches, each of which embodies the fullness of
the one Catholic Church. The universal Church, however, is believed to
be "a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual
particular Church."
However, the Catholic Church attaches
great importance to the particular churches, Rites, communities and societies within it, whose
theological significance the Second Vatican Council highlighted. Two
uses of the term particular church are distinguished:
Autonomous
(sui iuris) particular churches are called 'rites'. Like for example
the Eastern Catholic Churches or the Latin or Western Rite.
Particular or local churches (Dioceses and National Conferences of Bishops).
Ordained Ministry
The
Church has a hierarchical structure, meaning a holy ordering (as
opposed to a charismatic structure). This hierarchical nature applies
to the entire Church, though it is often used to refer only to the
ordained ministers of the Church, who belong to one of the three holy
orders: episcopate (bishops), presbyterate (priests), or diaconate
(deacons).
Episcopate
The Bishops, who possess the
fullness of Christian priesthood, are as a body (the College of
Bishops) the successors of the Apostles and are "constituted Pastors in
the Church, to be the teachers of doctrine, the priests of sacred
worship and the ministers of governance."
The pope, cardinals (in
principle), patriarchs, primates, archbishops and metropolitans are all
bishops and members of the Catholic episcopate or college of bishops.
Presbyterate (Priesthood)
Bishops
are assisted by priests and deacons. Parishes, whether territorial or
person-based, within a diocese are normally in the charge of a priest,
known as the parish priest or the pastor.
Priests may perform many
functions not directly connected with ordinary pastoral activity, such
as study, research, teaching or office work. They may also be rectors
or chaplains. Other titles or functions held by priests include those
of Archimandrite, Canon Secular or Regular, Chancellor, Chorbishop,
Confessor, Dean of a Cathedral Chapter, Hieromonk, Prebendary,
Precentor, etc.
In the Latin Rite, only celibate men, as a rule, are
ordained as priests, while the Eastern Rites, again as a rule, also
ordain married men. Among the Eastern particular churches, the Ethiopic
Catholic Church ordains only celibate clergy, while also having married
priests who were ordained in the Orthodox Church. Other Eastern
Catholic churches, which do ordain married men, do not have married
priests in certain countries, such as the United States of America. The
Western or Latin Rite does sometimes, but very rarely, ordain married
men, usually Protestant clergy who have become Catholics. All rites of
the Catholic Church maintain the ancient tradition that, after
ordination, marriage is not allowed. Even a married priest whose wife
dies may not then marry again.
Diaconate (Deacons)
Since
the Second Vatican Council, the Latin Rite again admits married men
of mature age to ordination as Permanent deacons. "Deacons are ordained
as a sacramental sign to the Church and to the world of Christ, who
came 'to serve and not to be served.' The entire Church is called by
Christ to serve, and the deacon, in virtue of his sacramental
ordination and through his various ministries, is to be a servant in a
servant-Church. As ministers of Word, deacons proclaim the Gospel,
preach, and teach in the name of the Church. As ministers of Sacrament,
deacons baptize, lead the faithful in prayer, witness marriages, and
conduct wake and funeral services. As ministers of Charity, deacons are
leaders in identifying the needs of others, then marshalling the
Church's resources to meet those needs. Deacons are also dedicated to
eliminating the injustices or inequities that cause such needs."
Candidates
for the Diaconate go through a Diaconate Formation program that is
designed based on the contemporaneous needs of their Diocese but must
meet minimum standards set by the Bishops Conference in their home
country. Upon completion of their formation program and acceptance by
their local Bishop, Candidates receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders
through Ordination. Generally, following Ordination, a Deacon is
assigned by his Bishop to a local Parish in which he will perform his
ministry and serve the local church and community.
Laity
All
baptized members of the Catholic Church are called Christian faithful,
truly equal in dignity, in the call to holiness, and in the work to
build the Church. All are called to share in Christ's priestly,
prophetic, and royal office. While a certain percentage of the faithful
perform roles related to serving the ministerial priesthood (hierarchy)
and giving eschatological witness (consecrated life), the great
majority of the faithful perform a specific role of exercising the
three offices of Christ by "engaging in temporal affairs and directing
them according to God's will...to illuminate and order all temporal
things." These are the Laity, whom John Paul II urged in the post
Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici (December 30, 1988)
"to take an active, conscientious and responsible part in the mission
of the Church," for they not only belong to the Church, but "are the
Church."
Equipped with the common
priesthood in baptism, these ordinary Catholics — e.g., mothers,
farmers, businessmen, writers, politicians — are to take initiative in
"discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political,
and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and
life." They exercise the common, baptism-based priestly office by
offering their prayer and works as spiritual sacrifices, the prophetic
office by their word and testimony of life in the ordinary
circumstances of the world, and the kingly office by self-mastery and
conforming worldly institutions to the norms of justice.
This
theology of the laity, called a "characteristic mark" of Vatican II by
Paul VI and John Paul II, was complemented, and in some cases
influenced, by the rise of many lay ecclesial movements and structures
in the 20th century: examples are Focolare, Neocatechumenal Way,
Communion and Liberation, and the personal prelature of Opus Dei. The
Directory of International Associations of the Faithful, published by
the Pontifical Council for the Laity, lists the names and
characteristics of lay movements that have received official
recognition.
Some of the non-ordained exercise formal, public
ministry in the name of the church, often on a full time and life-long
basis, and often in ministries that were reserved to the presbyterate
in the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council. These are
called Lay Ecclesial Ministers, a broad category which may include
Pastoral Life Coordinators, Pastoral Associates, Pastoral Assistants,
Youth Ministers, Campus Ministers, etc. .
Members of Religious Societies (Consecrated Life)
Consecrated
Life (also called the Religious Life) refers to the life of men and
women dedicated to God in a binding manner that is recognized by the
Church. Its members are not part of the clerical hierarchy, unless they are also
ordained priests, but remain members of the laity. The Catholic Church
recognizes several forms of the Consecrated Life: the cenobitic
life in the religious institutes (often referred to as religious orders
or religious congregations, cf. canons #607-709), the
eremitic/anchoritic life (canon #603), the order of virgins (canon #604),
the life of the consecrated widows/widowers, and in Secular Institutes
(canons #710-730) and Societies of Apostolic Life (canons #731-746). It
also makes a provision for the approval of "new forms of consecrated
life" (canon #605). Most of the existing forms of the Consecrated Life
require their members to consecrate themselves to God by their public
profession, confirmed by vow or other sacred bond, of the three
Evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, or their
Benedictine equivalent, both proper to the
institute and Church law (Canon law). Today the majority of those that
feel called to follow Christ in the
Consecrated Life join a religious institute, in which they follow a
common rule under the leadership of a superior. They usually live in
community, although occasionally permission is given to individual
members to live for a shorter or longer time as a hermit without
ceasing to be a member of their religious institute, others may be
given permission to reside elsewhere, for example as resident chaplain
to a community of nuns, or as priest serving a non-local parish.
Movements, Communities and Realities within the Church
Many
Movements, Communities and Realities work within the Catholic Church.
These are groups of usually lay
members following a specific spirituality, aim or target as directed by
the founder or initiator of the Movement, Community or Reality. This specific spirituality
is always in tandem with the teachings of the Church Magisterium and
Canon Law, but they may however consitute a specific way of Christian life.
Movements
in the Catholic Church are groups of church members following a
specific spirituality given to them by the founder of their movement.
In the case of officially recognized movements, this specificity never
finds expression in rejection or overemphasis of certain teachings of
the Magisterium but constitute a specific way of Christian life.
Movements
within the Catholic Church include the Italian Communion and
Liberation, Focolare Movement, the Irish Legion of Mary, Regnum
Christi, The Schönstatt Movement and the Couples for Christ. Recent
youth movements include the Youth Fellowship.
Opus Dei, while
sharing some of the characteristics of the movements listed above is
not categorised by Catholic Church authorities as a Movement, because
as a personal prelature, akin to a diocese or a military ordinariate,
it is an integral part of the hierarchical and jurisdictional structure
of the Church. The Neocatechumenal Way also does not view "itself" as a
Movement, but rather as a ministry for adult faith formation. The
Neocatechumenal Way has enjoyed the widespread support of the late Pope
John Paul II and the present Pope, Benedict XVI, who started it in his
own diocese of Munich when he was an Archbishop there in the 1970s.
Church
Movements, Communities and Realities within the Church have proven to
be hugely popular and have very strong followings. In the case of one
particular Catholic Country, Malta, 22% of the Catholic population
attends a movement, community or a reality within the Roman Catholic
Church.
Membership of the Catholic Church
According to
Catholic Canon law, one becomes a member of the Catholic Church by being
baptized in the Church or by being received into the Church (by making
a profession of faith, if already baptized). Someone who renounces
membership, for example by Actus Formalis Defectionis ab Ecclesia
Catholica, may later be received back into the Catholic Church, after
making a profession of faith or, when the person has not defected by a
formal act, going to confession.
The number of
Catholics in the world is around 1.115 billion and continues to
increase, particularly in Africa and Asia. Brazil is the country with
the largest number of Catholics. The increase between AD1978 and AD2000 was
288 million. In most industrialized countries, church attendance has
decreased since the 19th century, though it remains higher than that of
other "main" churches. In Europe, Romance-speaking countries are
historically Catholic, northern Germanic-speaking countries Protestant,
and Slavic countries split between Orthodox and Catholic, although
there are exceptions. Catholicism's presence in the rest of the world
is due to the work of missionaries mainly from Spain, Portugal, and
France, as well as immigrants from these countries and other Catholic
parts of Europe such as the Irish, who planted Catholicism throughout
the English-speaking world. In Latin America, where it once had a
virtual monopoly, Catholicism has suffered increasing competition from
Protestantism, particularly in parts of Central America and the
Caribbean. In Africa, it is most dominant in the central part of the
continent, while in Asia, there are only two majority-Catholic
countries: the Philippines and East Timor.
Catholic Church and Ecumenism
While
the Catholic Church sees itself as the church founded by Jesus, it
recognizes that many of the salvific elements of the Gospel are found
in other churches and ecclesial communities also. The Second Vatican
Council document Lumen Gentium says that "the one Church of Christ
which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic...
subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of
Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements
of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible
structure." At the same time, it affirms that "the Church, now
sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. ...
Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made
necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could
not be saved."
The
Catholic Church has, since the Second Vatican Council, reached out to
other Christian bodies, seeking reconciliation to the greatest degree
possible. Significant agreements have been achieved on Baptism,
ministry, and the Eucharist with Anglican theologians. On 31 October
1999, a similar agreement was signed with the Lutheran World Federation
on the theology of justification. The same document was adopted by
the World Methodist Council in a tripartite signing ceremony that took
place on 23 July 2006. These landmark documents have brought
closer fraternal ties with those ecclesial communities. However, recent
developments, such as ordination of women to priesthood and acceptance
of homosexual relationships, present new obstacles to reconciliation
with some of them.
Consequently, in recent years the Catholic
Church has focused its efforts at reconciliation with the Orthodox
Churches of the East, with which the theological differences are not as
great. Relations with the Russian Orthodox Church were strained in the
1990s over property issues in countries that were formerly
Soviet-dominated, and these differences are not solved (most notably
the parishes belonging to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church);
however, fraternal relations with other Eastern churches continue to
progress.
Role of the Catholic Church in civilization
Church doctrine and science
Historians of science, including non-Catholics such
as J.L. Heilbron, A.C. Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant,
Thomas Goldstein, and Ted Davis, have argued that the Church had a
significant, positive influence on the development of civilization.
They hold that, not only did monks save and cultivate the remnants of
ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but that the
Church promoted learning and science through its sponsorship of many
universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the
11th and 12th centuries. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's "model
theologian," not only argued that reason is in harmony with faith, he
even recognized that reason can contribute to understanding revelation,
and so encouraged intellectual development. The Church's
priest-scientists, many of whom were Jesuits, were the leading lights
in astronomy, genetics, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and
solar physics, becoming the "fathers" of these sciences. It is
important to remark names of important churchmen such as the
Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel (pioneer in the study of genetics),
Roger Bacon (a Franciscan monk who was one of the early advocates of
the scientific method), and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (the first
to propose the Big Bang theory). Even more numerous are Catholic laity
involved in science: Henri Becquerel who discovered radioactivity;
Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Marconi, pioneers in electricity and
telecommunications; Lavoisier, "father of modern chemistry"; Vesalius,
founder of modern human anatomy; Cauchy one of the mathematicians who
laid the rigorous foundations of calculus.
This position is a
reverse of the view, held by some enlightenment philosophers, that the
Church's doctrines were superstitious and hindered the progress of
civilization:-
In the most famous example cited by these critics,
Galileo Galilei, in AD1633, was denounced for his insistence on teaching
a heliocentric universe, previously proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus,
who was probably a priest. After numerous years of investigations,
consultations with the Popes, promises kept and then broken by Galileo,
and finally a trial by the Tribunal of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition, Galileo was found "suspect of heresy" - not heresy, as is
frequently misreported. Although the church includes all his books on
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and Galileo was forced to recant his
heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest
on orders of the Inquisition, Pope John Paul II, on 31 October
1992, publicly expressed regret for the actions of those Catholics who
badly treated Galileo in that trial. An abstract of the acts of
the process against Galileo is available at the Vatican Secret
Archives, which reproduces part of it on its website. Cardinal John
Henry Newman, in the nineteenth century, stated that those who attack
the Church can only point to the Galileo case, which to many historians
does not prove the Church's opposition to science since many of the
churchmen at that time were encouraged by the Church to continue their
research.
Recently, the Church has
been both criticized and applauded for its teaching that embryonic stem
cell research is a form of experimentation on human beings, and results
in the killing of a human person. Criticism has been on the grounds
that this doctrine hinders scientific research. The Church argues that
advances in medicine can come without the destruction of humans (in an
embryonic state of life); for example, in the use of adult or umbilical
stem cells in place of embryonic stem cells.
Church, art, literature, and music
Several
historians credit the Catholic Church for the brilliance and
magnificence of Western art. They refer to the Church's fight against
iconoclasm, a movement against visual representations of the divine,
its insistence on building structures befitting worship, Augustine's
repeated reference to Wisdom 11:20 (God "ordered all things by measure
and number and weight") which led to the geometric constructions of
Gothic architecture, the scholastics' coherent intellectual systems
called the Summa Theologiae which influenced the intellectually
consistent writings of Dante, its creation and sacramental theology
which has developed a Catholic imagination influencing writers such as
J. R. R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and William Shakespeare, and of
course, the patronage of the Renaissance popes for the great works of
Catholic artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, Borromini and
Leonardo da Vinci. In addition, we must take into account the enormous
body of religious music composed for the Catholic Church, a body which
is profoundly tied to the emergence and development of the European
tradition of classical music, and indeed, all music that has been
influenced by it.
Church and economic development
Francisco
de Vitoria, a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who
studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives, is
recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law, and
now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light
for the West's democracy and rapid economic development.
Joseph
Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, referring to the
scholastics, wrote, "it is they who come nearer than does any other
group to having been the ‘founders’ of scientific economics."
Other economists and historians, such as Raymond de Roover, Marjorie
Grice-Hutchinson, and Alejandro Chafuen, have also made similar
statements. Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the
Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values,
ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call
Western civilization."
Social justice, care-giving, and the hospital system
Historian
of hospitals, Guenter Risse, says that the Church spearheaded the
development of a hospital system geared towards the marginalized. The
Catholic Church has contributed to society through its social doctrine
which has guided leaders to promote social justice and by setting up
the hospital system in Medieval Europe, a system which was different
from the merely reciprocal hospitality of the Greeks and family-based
obligations of the Romans. These hospitals were established to cater to
"particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age,"
according to historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse.
James Joseph Walsh wrote the following about the Catholic Church's contribution to the hospital system:
"During
the thirteenth century an immense number of [these] hospitals were
built. The Italian cities were the leaders of the movement. Milan had
no fewer than a dozen hospitals and Florence before the end of the
Fourteenth century had some thirty hospitals. Some of these were very
beautiful buildings. At Milan a portion of the general hospital was
designed by Bramante and another part of it by Michelangelo. The
Hospital of the innocents in Florence for foundlings was an
architectural gem. The Hospital of Sienna, built in honor of St.
Catherine, has been famous ever since. Everywhere throughout Europe
this hospital movement spread. Virchow, the great German pathologist,
in an article on hospitals, showed that every city of Germany of five
thousand inhabitants had its hospital. He traced all of this hospital
movement to Pope Innocent III, and though he was least papistically
inclined, Virchow did not hesitate to give extremely high praise to
this pontiff for all that he had accomplished for the benefit of
children and suffering mankind."
In spite of the lingering
problems of the Dark Ages, hospitals began to appear in great numbers
in France and England. Following the French Norman invasion into
England, the explosion of French ideals led most Medieval monasteries
to develop a hospitium or hospice for pilgrims. This hospitium
eventually developed into what we now understand as a hospital, with
various monks and lay helpers providing the medical care for sick
pilgrims and victims of the numerous plagues and chronic diseases that
afflicted Medieval Western Europe. Benjamin Gordon supports the theory
that the hospital – as we know it - is a French invention, but that it
was originally developed for isolating lepers and plague victims, and
only later undergoing modification to serve the pilgrim.
Owing
to a well-preserved 12th century account of the monk Eadmer of the
Canterbury cathedral, there is an excellent account of Bishop
Lanfranc’s aim to establish and maintain examples of these early
hospitals:
"But I must not conclude my work by omitting what he
did for the poor outside the walls of the city Canterbury. In brief, he
constructed a decent and ample house of stone…for different needs and
conveniences. He divided the main building into two, appointing one
part for men oppressed by various kinds of infirmities and the other
for women in a bad state of health. He also made arrangements for their
clothing and daily food, appointing ministers and guardians to take all
measures so that nothing should be lacking for them."
The
beauty and efficiency of the Italian hospitals inspired even some who
were otherwise critical of the Church. The German historian Ludwig von
Pastor recounts the words of Martin Luther who, while journeying to
Rome in the winter of AD1510–1511, had occasion to visit some of these
hospitals:
In Italy, he remarks, the hospitals are handsomely
built, and admirably provided with excellent food and drink, careful
attendants and learned physicians. The beds and bedding are clean, and
the walls are covered with paintings. When a patient is brought in, his
clothes are removed in the presence of a notary who makes a faithful
inventory of them, and they are kept safely. A white smock is put on
him and he is laid on a comfortable bed, with clean linen. Presently
two doctors come to him, and the servants bring him food and drink in
clean glasses, showing him all possible attention.
The
Catholic Church as opus proprium, says Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas
Est, has conducted throughout the centuries from its very beginning and
continues to conduct many charitable services — hospitals, schools,
poverty alleviation programs, among others.
On November 14,
2006, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also issued the document
'Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination' to provide
"guidelines for the pastoral care of people with a homosexual
inclination".Links:
The Vatican
Catholic Online
Catholic Churches
Catholic Directory
Some Typical Catholic Churches