Roman Catholicism Research Paper

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Roman Catholicism traces its origins to Jesus Christ of Nazareth (born between 6 BCE and 6 CE and died between 28 CE and 30 CE) and regards the bishop of Rome (the pope, as the successor of Peter) as the visible head of the church. Roman Catholics worship Jesus as the Son of God and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The religion had a profound effect on the development of Western civilization.

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Found today in some 235 countries, the Roman Catholic Church is the largest of the Christian churches, with a world population of about 1.147 billion (as of 2007), or 17 percent of the world’s population. The largest number of adherents is found in Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, the United States, and Italy. (In the United States Roman Catholics comprise 22 percent of the population and constitute the largest religious body.) This article is concerned only with the Roman (or Latin) branch and is divided into four sections: basic teachings, major historical developments, contemporary trends and problems, and Roman Catholicism in the non-European world.

Basic Teachings of Roman Catholicism

The teachings of Roman Catholicism rest upon Scripture (revelation as found in the Old Testament and New Testament), tradition, and the magisterium, the teaching authority of the church. Tradition has enabled the church to adapt to new realities. It is closely linked to Scripture, and the interpretation of both is considered the prerogative of the magisterium. The expression of the revealed truth in Scripture may take diverse forms, such as history, prophecy, parable, and allegory. A literal interpretation is not required. Throughout the Christian era, reformulation and adaptation have been characteristic of Roman Catholicism in moral teachings, liturgy, and societal roles. The process has involved change and continuity, conflict and consensus.




The distinctive marks of Roman Catholicism are unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. Unity means that each individual transcends all cultures and classes; holiness signifies that the church is intrinsically sacred despite the sins of its members, either individually or as a body; catholicity is the universality of the church; and apostolicity denotes faith, ministry, and the sacraments in communion with Rome. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes elements of itself in other Christian churches, and it does not require that a state be Catholic or that it enjoy any privileged status. It accepts the principle of religious freedom, and it holds that salvation is possible for all who act in good faith, according to their consciences.

There is a definite hierarchy in the Roman Catholic Church. As the successor of the apostle Peter, the supreme ruler is the pope. Elected by the College of Cardinals since the Middle Ages, the pope resides in Vatican City, a minute but sovereign state in the center of Rome. The other bishops are also seen as the direct successors of the apostles, and most reside in geographical and organizational units known as dioceses. The pope and the bishops are joined together in a collegial body, but collegiality does not lessen the papal primacy or affect papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals.

Just as the pope has primacy over the bishops, the bishops have the final authority in their respective dioceses. After ascertaining their orthodoxy, a bishop ordains priests and deacons, who become his assistants. Priests must be male, and since the fourth century, enter upon a lifetime of celibacy. Deacons, also male, may be married. Most priests reside in ecclesiastical units called parishes. In addition to bishops, priests, and deacons there are monks and nuns who are members of religious orders and normally take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

The “People of God” includes not only the clergy and the religious but the laity as well. Married or single, engaged in secular professions or occupations, lay persons are said to share in the mission of the church. As lay apostles, they assist bishops and priests in the conduct of church affairs, but they cannot act independently or in opposition to their religious superiors. Despite some softening by Vatican II (1962–1965) and more lay participation, the church remains an authoritarian, hierarchical structure.

As defined by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the vehicles of divine grace that enable a Catholic to attain salvation are the seven sacraments: baptism, penance, the Eucharist, confirmation, matrimony, Holy Orders, and anointing of the sick. Only those who have received Holy Orders are authorized to administer all seven sacraments. Other basic teachings of Roman Catholicism are the Trinity (the presence of three Persons in one God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, justification by faith and good works, an afterlife of reward or punishment, and special veneration of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. There is also veneration of the saints, but Catholics are directed not to pay an exaggerated attention to the saints.

The expression of Roman Catholicism takes the form of the liturgy, the rites and ceremonies of the church. The most important act of worship is the Mass, which is composed of the Liturgy of the Word (readings from Scripture) and the Liturgy of the Eucharist (Holy Communion). Like other aspects of Roman Catholicism, the liturgy, especially the Mass, has been adapted to regional environments, and the uniqueness of each culture is respected. Since Vatican II the vernacular has been used extensively, and although Gregorian chant is considered proper to the Roman liturgy, other forms of music are permitted.

Major Historical Developments

The beginning of the Roman Catholic community, as of other Christian bodies, is dated from the appearance of Jesus Christ to the apostle Peter after his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The apostles, like Jesus, were Jewish, as were the first Christians. What distinguished these early Christians from other Jews was their conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, that he had been resurrected from the dead. After the martyrdom of the Deacon Stephen, about 33 CE, these Christians, who had maintained close ties with the Temple, scattered and preached the Gospel wherever they settled. With Paul (died c. 67 CE), Christianity came out of its Jewish mold, and Paul’s missionary labors in the Mediterranean world made it the religion of the Gentiles.

Christianity spread rapidly in the Roman Empire. Women, especially widows and unmarried women, were active in the evangelization of pagan areas. Whether as preachers, deaconesses disbursing charity, or leaders of groups studying devotional literature, these women made their mark on the early church. Their influence, however, was short-lived; by the third century their activities had been curtailed, and they were gradually excluded from any clerical function. The patristic writings disparaged women. Saint Augustine of Hippo considered women innately inferior to men and saw them as symbols of carnality and original sin.

Another important development of Christian antiquity was the emergence of the concept of the primacy of Rome. Although Jesus had conferred preeminence on Peter among the apostles, he did not directly establish a papacy in Rome. Peter was almost certainly martyred in Rome, and thus Rome became a sacred place, a new Jerusalem for early Christians. The prestige of the bishopric of Rome because of its association with Peter was enhanced by the fact that Rome was the political and cultural center of the vast Roman Empire. In an age of heresies such as Arianism, Montanism, and Pelagianism, the bishop of Rome was frequently called upon to condemn unorthodox teachings and mediate jurisdictional disputes.

The first pope to claim primacy for Rome was Damascus (366–384 CE) at a council in 382 CE. Leo I (440–461 CE) made the formulation of the doctrine, which stated that the pope had the plenitude of power over the universal church. Papal authority was subsequently augmented by papal missionaries who evangelized new kingdoms. It was also strengthened by the secession of Eastern Orthodoxy, first in the ninth century and then in 1054 in a final and permanent break.

To the concept of the primacy of Rome was added that of the primacy of the pope over secular rulers as well. Thus in the eleventh century Pope Gregory VII (1073–1085) and his successors ended the control of feudal lords and kings over the selection of bishops and abbots, but in the process, brought about major changes in Roman Catholicism. Secular and sacred domains were sharply delineated, and the role of the laity in the selection of bishops, which dated back to Christian antiquity, was completely eliminated. Absolute papal monarchy over the whole of Christendom reached its apogee under Innocent III (1198–1216) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303). In his quarrel with John of England, Innocent III claimed that temporal authority depended on spiritual authority. Boniface VIII went even further, maintaining in Unam Sanctam (1303) that every human being had to be subject to the pope in order to be saved.

Despite the extravagance of papal statements, Roman Catholicism contributed much to the development and achievements of Western civilization. The concepts of popular sovereignty and limited government were part of Catholic political thinking, and canon law, which was applicable whenever a sacrament or a cleric was involved, was the most humane and equitable law of the times. In education, first the monastic schools and then the cathedral schools and the universities made formal schooling more accessible than ever before, though men, and especially those destined for a clerical life, were the principal beneficiaries. However, until the High Middle Ages, talented women in female monastic establishments received a high level of education and made contributions to theology, philosophy, and literature.

Gothic art and architecture, the magnificent works of Dante and Chaucer, and liturgical art, music, and drama all owed their inspiration to Roman Catholicism. In the universities the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1275) provided a systemization of Catholic theology and philosophy that was to last well into the twentieth century. Members of religious orders, such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans, provided social services and medical assistance.

Marring these achievements were coercion in religious matters through the Inquisition, established by Boniface VIII, and the persecution of Jews. The cruelty of the medieval Inquisition, which could employ torture to obtain confessions of guilt and could sentence those convicted of heresy to death by burning at the stake, varied considerably, depending on times and places. Wherever and whenever it existed it was a dreaded institution. As for anti-Semitism, ever since the beginning of the Christian era, Jews had encountered hostility when living among Christians, because they were considered guilty of deicide, of rejection of the Messiah.

As commerce and trade entered the medieval world, and as the proportion of Jews to Christians in these areas, especially money lending, increased, so did aggression against Jews. Jews were accused of avarice and economic exploitation, as well as of more serious charges, such as child murder and alliance with Satan. The worst of the persecutions took place during the Black Death of 1348/49, when Jews from Spain to Poland were accused of having deliberately caused the plague. In vain did the Avignon Pope, Clement VI (1342–1352), denounce this persecution, pointing out that the plague was striking Christian and Jewish communities indiscriminately and offering Jews a haven in Avignon.

The most traumatic event in the history of Roman Catholicism was the Protestant Reformation, which made the Roman Catholic Church a distinct and separate entity in the Christian world. By the beginning of modern times, the Renaissance, the scandal of the Great Western Schism ([1378–1417], when there were two or three who claimed to be Pope), the notorious immorality in the church from top to bottom, and the prevalence of superstitious practices produced skepticism among intellectuals, anticlericalism among the common people, and fodder for nationalistic rulers. The indulgence controversy following Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses united all who had reason to oppose the papacy, and by the end of the century Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Calvinism had cost the church the allegiance of half of Europe.

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was convoked to deal with this crisis. Adopting a very rigid, defensive position, the Council defined the sacraments, especially those that had been questioned by the Protestant reformers, and upheld traditional teachings regarding papal primacy, the hierarchical structure of the church, justification, the nature of the Mass, clerical celibacy, and both tradition and Scripture as the deposit of faith. Latin was retained as the mandatory language of the Roman Church. The legacy of Trent was a very conservative Roman Catholicism.

During the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, members of the curia opposed the heliocentric theory proposed by Galileo and brought about his condemnation (to be reversed by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s). During the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century a climate of opinion that endorsed religious freedom, the power of reason, the possibility of a heavenly city on Earth, and a natural religion ran counter to the tenets of Catholicism. The era of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1789–1815) inaugurated a period when secular nationalism became the new religion. Almost all modern trends and movements were declared anathema by Pope Pius IX (1846–1878) in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). This pontiff convened the First Vatican Council (1869– 1870), which formally defined the doctrine of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals, much to the consternation of many Catholic theologians, ecclesiastics, and lay persons of the period.

Early in the twentieth century, Pope Pius X (1903– 1914) railed against “Modernism,” excommunicated “Modernists,” and suppressed liberal Catholic theologians and historians. His successor, Benedict XV (1914–1922), ended the hunt for “Modernists.” He also permitted Italian Catholics full participation in politics, something that had been forbidden by previous popes because Italy had been unified at the expense of the Papal States. During the era of totalitarianism, Roman Catholicism came under attack by Italian Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.

World War II broke out during the reign of Pope Pius XII (1939–1958), a controversial figure. As the war developed and Nazi atrocities, especially against Jews, became known, he was expected to speak out on behalf of Jews. For reasons that became the subject of heated debate after the war in both Catholic and non-Catholic circles, he alluded to the genocide of Jews only in general, not specific, terms, even while providing Jews with money and refuge in the religious houses of Rome.

Contemporary Trends and Problems

With Pope John XXIII (1958–1963), Roman Catholicism embarked upon uncharted waters. A compassionate and approachable man, John XXIII’s most momentous act was the convocation of a general council, known as Vatican II (1962–1965). In his inaugural address to the three thousand bishops and theologians drawn from all over the world, he declared that the “Church could and should adapt to the needs of the world.” His message was one of aggiornamento. During the four sessions held between October 1962 and December 1965, every aspect of Roman Catholicism was explored, with a view to creating more openness and flexibility.

The Decree on the Church, instead of identifying the Roman Catholic Church with the Church of Christ, stated that the Church of Christ “subsisted” in the Roman Catholic Church. Papal infallibility was to some extent weakened by the introduction of the concept of collegiality—that is, the pope and bishops shared responsibility for the church. Even more revolutionary were the decrees on religious freedom, Jews, and relations with the other Christian churches. The Decree on Religious Liberty stated that every person “has a right to religious liberty.” The Decree on Other Religions asserted that Christ’s passion (the suffering culminating in the Crucifixion) could not be “blamed on all Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today.” It deplored “the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and from any source.” The Decree on Ecumenism called for dialogue with the Protestant churches to achieve agreement on theological differences. In this decree, the focus is not on a “return” to the Catholic Church, but on the spirit of Christ at work in the churches and communities beyond the visible borders of the Roman Catholic Church.

The air of optimism that pervaded Vatican II soon dissipated in the post-Vatican years. The dialogue with Protestant churches made little progress with respect to such issues as papal primacy and infallibility, the nature of ordination, the relationship between Scripture and tradition, the nature of the Eucharist (a memorial service or transubstantiation) and the role of Mary in the Divine Plan. The “silence” of Pope Pius XII regarding the Holocaust was an irritant in many Jewish circles, despite the repeated apologies by Pope John Paul II (1978–2005) for the sins of the church against Jews.

Within the Roman Catholic Church there was increasing polarization, some Catholics believing that Vatican II had gone too far and others countering that it had not gone far enough. The positions of Pope John Paul II were generally conservative. Traditional morality in such matters as divorce, premarital sex, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and genetic engineering was affirmed. The role of women in the church and clerical celibacy occasioned fierce controversy.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as traditional religious orders declined and the number of priests declined dramatically, women assumed liturgical and administrative positions in the church, serving as chaplains, seminary professors, and spiritual directors. Inevitably the question of the ordination of women came up. In an effort to end the discussion, John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotatis unequivocally stated that the church did not have the authority to ordain women.

A revival of the issue of clerical celibacy was provoked by the priest sex scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church, especially its American branch. It became evident at the turn of the century that for decades bishops had moved priests who sexually abused children from one parish to another in an effort to avoid scandal. In 2002 the Vatican and the American hierarchy adopted stringent measures to purge the clerical ranks of offenders and to ensure the protection of children, but the extent of priest sexual abuse raised the question of clerical celibacy as the possible cause of such offenses. But the Vatican denied a link between celibacy and pedophilia and/or homosexuality, and reaffirmed the validity of a ban on marriage for priests. The priest sex scandal, no longer confined mostly to the United States, resurfaced on Vatican soil some five years after the German-born Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected as Pope Benedict XVI on 19 April 2005. Amid a papacy already beset with controversies that had offended Muslims, Jews, Anglicans, and many Roman Catholics, Benedict XVI and his direct subordinates were accused in early 2010 of neglecting to alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he was archbishop in Germany.

As the twenty-first century unfolded, discord and polarization seemed to foretell a new crisis for the church, paralleling that of the Reformation era. Yet most Catholics refused to abandon the church and sought instead a new identity, respectful of the past but adapted to the needs of society.

Roman Catholicism in the Non-European World

Until the sixteenth century Roman Catholicism was co-extensive only with western and central Europe. During the Age of Discovery, religious orders, always the church’s pioneers in evangelization, reached out to the far corners of the world. The first missionaries to the Americas, Africa, and Asia were the Franciscans and Jesuits, soon joined by Augustinians, Dominicans, Carmelites and others. As early as 1622 the papacy set up the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. In the nineteenth century the older orders were augmented with new ones, such as the Missionaries of Africa and the Missionaries of the Divine Word, orders formed specifically for work in the non-Western world. Consciously or unconsciously, these missionaries were conduits for the expansion of important elements of the Western world.

Catholicism achieved its greatest success in Latin America (Spanish and Portuguese America). From its earliest settlements in the Americas, the Spanish crown had a papal mandate to Christianize the lands it colonized. Beginning in 1573 Spain established la mision, whereby the native Indians were placed under the direct care of missionaries, protected by Spanish troops. Most missions flourished, notably the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay and the Franciscan missions of California and the U.S. Southwest. The native peoples adopted not only the religion of the Spanish but also their language, culture, and occupations. As a result, native culture was all but obliterated, and inhumane treatment of the Indians occurred, despite government regulations to the contrary and the strong defense of the Indians vocalized by such missionaries as the Franciscan Junipero Serra and the Jesuit Pedro Claver.

Spanish rule ended early in the nineteenth century, but the church and especially the hierarchy retained its dominant role in society. As the masses gradually became estranged from the church because of its wealth, anticlerical legislation was enacted in many of the Latin American states. The church-state quarrels ended in separation of church and state, although restrictive legislation if not persecution persisted in many countries, notably Mexico.

Catholicism had to contend with internal dissension as well as external hostility. From the 1960s to the end of the century, liberation theology divided the church. According to this theology the church’s primary obligation was to improve the socioeconomic status of the masses. Liberation theology encountered the opposition of both Latin American and Vatican prelates, who contended that it was too sympathetic to Marxist models and that its base communities (“the popular church”) were anti-institutional.

The history of Catholicism in Brazil, originally a Portuguese possession, does not differ radically from that of Catholicism in Spanish America, although the Brazilian brand of Catholicism had a greater admixture of ancient heathen elements. From the first Portuguese settlements in the sixteenth century, Franciscans and Jesuits preached the Gospel, at the same time building churches and establishing schools and charitable institutions. Catholicism prospered especially between 1680 and 1750. Decline followed when the anticlerical ministry of the Marquis of Pombal expelled the religious orders. The missionaries were readmitted in the nineteenth century, but the emergence of an independent Brazil and the subsequent disestablishment of the church under the Republican constitution of 1889 prevented attempts to recoup previous losses. In the twentieth century recurring economic crises and military governments further hampered advances in the Catholic Church. Liberation theology was embraced by many churchmen as a way to end the socioeconomic injustices that plagued Brazilian society, but, as elsewhere, this theology had to be jettisoned. In the early years of the twenty-first century, some 75 percent of Brazilians continued to call themselves Roman Catholics, giving Brazil the largest Catholic population in the world. Latin America as a whole had the largest block of Roman Catholics in the world: 473 million. The monopoly held by the church in this part of the world, however, has been threatened by the inroads of Protestanism, especially evangelical Protestantism from the United States, as well as urbanization, consumerism, and globalization.

In North America, New France (Canada) became Catholic owing in large measure to the zeal of the Franciscans and Jesuits who accompanied the French colonizers and established a real bond with the natives. When France surrendered Canada to England in 1763, it was with the assurance that the rights of the Roman Catholics would be protected. The church continued to flourish; by 2000, about 45 percent of the population was Roman Catholic.

In the United States Roman Catholicism was first introduced by the Spanish missionaries in the areas controlled by Spain, such as California in the West and Florida in the East. In English colonial America Catholicism grew from a small group of English Catholics who settled in Maryland in 1634. The American Catholic Church was strongly committed to separation of church and state. Annual episcopal conferences dealt with problems peculiar to the American environment, such as the assimilation of immigrants, trusteeism, and the threat presented by nativism. Lay Catholic generosity and the labors of religious orders, especially female orders, contributed to the success of the church. By 2000 it was the largest religious body in the United States.

Roman Catholicism can be said to have achieved only moderate success in Africa. North Africa was solidly Muslim when the Europeans first sought settlements in Africa. Missionary activity in central and southern Africa was initiated by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. The advent of the slave trade and intertribal warfare were serious obstacles to the evangelization of the Portuguese outposts. By the mid-nineteenth century, as European imperialistic rivalry heated up, most of the natives who had been converted had reverted to paganism. Another wave of evangelization began with the White Fathers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Large areas of the Congos (French and Belgian) were converted, as well Uganda. Military coups, tribal warfare, in which Catholics of one tribe slaughtered Catholics of another tribe, and Cold War politics all had devastating results for Catholic churches. Vatican II was a mixed blessing for the African churches. On the one hand it led to a hierarchy that was almost entirely African and it also provided Mass in the vernacular, with the addition of traditional singing and dancing. On the other, the prelates who replaced the Europeans tended to be more conservative, and the downplaying of sacramentals, such as medals and holy water, eliminated a previous point of contact with traditional religions. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholics comprised about 16 percent of the total African population. These Catholics were to be found mostly in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Belgian Congo), the Republic of the Congo (former French Congo) and Uganda. Noteworthy in the history of African Catholicism is the general lack of acculturation as well as deviation from Roman Catholic norms in various areas, such as priestly celibacy, monogamy, and mixed marriages.

In Asia the greatest success of Roman Catholicism was achieved in the Philippines, where Catholicism was introduced by Governor Miguel de Legazpi and the Augustinians in 1565. Through the friars (Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans) and the Jesuits, Spanish culture was easily transplanted to the Philippines, encountering resistance only in the southern islands, where Islam had been established since the fourteenth century. The Spanish missionaries taught the natives better agricultural and horticultural techniques, introduced arts and crafts, and strongly influence architecture. Respectful of Philippine traditions, they produced some excellent studies of Philippine history and culture. No attempt was made to suppress Tagalog, one of the major languages of the islands. Despite difficult times brought on by decades of foreign occupation (American and Japanese), dire poverty, and terrorist organizations, Catholicism was the religion of 83 percent of the population as of 2008.

Little headway was made by Roman Catholicism in the rest of Asia: Roman Catholics numbered less than 3 percent of the total Asian population as the twenty-first century opened. The main reason for the failure of Roman Catholicism to make inroads in countries such as China, Japan, and India was that missionaries encountered ancient and proud civilizations that made the missionaries seem culturally inferior as well as possible political threats. A contributory factor was the failure of papal authorities to allow the missionaries sufficient flexibility in dealing with Asian religions until it was too late.

A survey of Roman Catholicism in the non-European worlds indicates that it was very successful in Latin America, moderately successful in Africa, and except in the Philippines, a failure in Asia. The degree of implantation of Western culture varies with time and place.

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