Catholicism

The word "Christian" is a New Testament term (Acts 11:26) that predates the use of "Catholic" (circa 110 AD). In that sense, "Christianity" came before "Catholicism."

"Catholic" is an adjective from the Greek, kata, "according to," and holon, "the whole." It developed in controversies among Christians about how to interpret the Christian tradition. Catholic Christians judged according to the mind of the whole Church while heretics selected just part of the tradition at the expense of the rest.

Catholic Encyclopedia, "Catholic"

The combination "the Catholic Church" (he katholike ekklesia) is found for the first time in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written about the year 110. The words run: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church." However, in view of the context, some difference of opinion prevails as to the precise connotation of the italicized word, and Kattenbusch, the Protestant professor of theology at Giessen, is prepared to interpret this earliest appearance of the phrase in the sense of mia mone, the "one and only" Church [Das apostolische Symbolum (1900), II, 922]. From this time forward the technical signification of the word Catholic meets us with increasing frequency both East and West, until by the beginning of the fourth century it seems to have almost entirely supplanted the primitive and more general meaning."

There never was a primitive Churchless Christianity. From the beginning, Jesus organized His Body under the authority of the apostles; the apostles appointed presbyters (turned into our word "priest") and deacons.

Both Catholics and heretics came from the same earlier tradition. Catholics preserved the whole revelation made by Jesus (the Deposit of Faith) while the heretics splintered into small groups that died out.

None of those splinter groups gave birth to our modern "denominations." Most are from the 16th century. A few trace their roots to Jan Hus in the 14th century. All separated from the Catholic Church, taking some things from the Tradition, abandoning other elements, and adding novelties to produce their own form of Christianity. The modern heretics rely on the Catholic tradition to connect themselves to the origins of Christianity. So, for example, it was the Catholic Church, so named and containing all of the elements found in the Church today (pope, bishops, priests, deacons, councils, sacraments, theology, creeds, liturgy, etc.) that collected and certified that the 27 books of the New Testament are the Word of God.

When Jesus ascended in Heaven, He left a Body, not a "book" (the Bible is really a library, not "a" book). The Body grew through oral tradition, first generating the writings, then collecting, preserving, and certifying them as sacred scripture. It is the combination of the 27 books of the New Testament plus the books of the Old Testament that gives us "the Bible." So the Bible was produced by the Catholic Church. Whoever relies on the Bible is relying on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

DeLubac, Catholicism, 48-49.

The Church is not Catholic because she is spread abroad over the whole of the earth and can reckon on a large number of members. She was already Catholic on the morning of Pentecost, when all her members could be contained in a small room, as she was when the Arian waves seemed on the point of swamping her; she would still be Catholic if tomorrow apostasy on a vast scale deprived her of almost all the faithful. For fundamentally Catholicity has nothing to do with geography or statistics. If it is true that it should be displayed over all the earth and be manifest to all, yet its nature is not material but spiritual. Like sanctity, Catholicity is primarily an intrinsic feature of the Church.

Links

• A partial map of Christian Schisms]].
• Development of the Canon of the New Testament by the Catholic Church.