Roman Catholic Church

V

History

Until the break with the Eastern church (see Orthodox Church) in 1054 and the break with the Protestant churches in the 16th century, it is impossible to separate the history of the Roman Catholic Church from the history of Christianity in general. The distinct Roman Catholic view of history, however, is its claim to unbroken continuity with the church of the New Testament and its consequent acceptance as legitimate of the major developments in doctrine and structure that it has assimilated since then. The great shifts in culture, theology, and discipline within Christian history are not necessarily viewed, therefore, as deviations from some absolute norm of the apostolic church. They tend to be viewed, rather, as expressions in different and more elaborate ways of impulses that were already present from the beginning.

A

The Early Church

The first great change in Christian history was Christianity’s spread from Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean world in the first few decades after Jesus’ death. Within a short time Christianity had adopted the language and philosophical vocabulary of the Greco-Roman world to express its message, and it also adopted some procedural and organizational practices of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the characteristically Christian figure of the bishop had clearly emerged by the middle of the 2nd century. The recognition of the church by Emperor Constantine the Great in 313 consolidated these developments and gave the church support in the great doctrinal controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries that determined orthodoxy. By the time of 5th-century pope Leo I, the bishop of Rome was claiming and to some extent was exercising a primacy of leadership over the other churches (see Papacy).

B

The Medieval Church

The decline of the Roman Empire in the West and the assimilation of the Germanic peoples into the church had great impact on all aspects of religious life, including a diminution of episcopal (bishops’) authority from the 7th to the 11th century. Under the leadership of a reformed papacy in the late 11th century, however, episcopal rights were restored amid the bitter Investiture Controversy waged by the papacy with various rulers in Europe. As a result, the papacy emerged as the acknowledged leader of the Western church, possessing a centralizing and increasingly efficient Curia. Canon law was revitalized and implemented, with an emphasis on the role of the papacy in governing the church. These developments, plus the Crusades, made reconciliation with the Eastern church more difficult after the Great Schism of 1054.

C

The Modern Period

Partly in reaction to the changes resulting from the Investiture Controversy, the Protestant Reformation broke out in the 16th century. The Catholic Church responded during the era of the Counter Reformation by reaffirming the traditions that had developed through the ages and especially by emphasizing those elements that were most under attack, such as Scholastic theology (see Scholasticism), the efficacy of the sacraments, and the primacy of the pope.

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The attacks against the church inspired by the 18th-century Enlightenment (see Enlightenment, Age of) and the French Revolution (1789-1799) were largely responsible for the defensive postures adopted by Catholicism in the 19th century. The Second Vatican Council reversed this trend. Although the changes introduced by the council did engender confusion for some Catholics, the church has remained fundamentally stable and flourishing in many parts of the world. The ecumenical process of reaching out to other faiths, begun in the 1960s, continued during the remainder of the 20th century through papal visits and dialogues.

Pope John Paul II sought to end the schism that has split the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions for nearly 1,000 years. A series of dialogues were held between the leaders of the two churches in an effort to find common ground. John Paul also reached out to other groups, reaching accord in 1999 with the Lutheran World Federation on the means of salvation—an issue that had led Martin Luther to break from the Catholic Church in the early 1500s. Papal visits to sacred sites in Israel and in Islamic countries were intended to smooth relations with Judaism and Islam. In a further effort to heal relations, in the year 2000 John Paul issued a series of apologies for past errors of Roman Catholics. After one of the longest reigns in the history of the papacy, John Paul died in 2005. He was replaced by Joseph Cardinal A. Ratzinger, who became the first German pope since the 11th century. Ratzinger took the papal name Benedict XVI.

VI

The Church in the United States

The history of Catholicism in the United States began with the Spanish conquest of Central and South America in the 16th century. During the course of this conquest Spain began to colonize regions north of Mexico. Missionaries, mainly Spanish Franciscans and Jesuits, were a central part of these expeditions. From the middle of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century they established settlements in what are now the states of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California. These settlements became the centers for an intense effort to Christianize the Native American population living in those regions. French missionaries during the same time were evangelizing the Native Americans living along the banks of the St. Lawrence River, in areas that are now Maine and northern New York, and even around the Great Lakes and in the Mississippi River valley. Before 1789 Catholics living in the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania were under the jurisdiction of the vicar apostolic of London, but in that year a see was established in Baltimore, and on August 15, 1790, American prelate John Carroll was ordained as its first bishop.

During the 19th century the tide of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and elsewhere swelled the ranks of the Roman Catholic communion, and the Catholic population of the United States, which had been 35,000 in 1790, increased to 195,000 in 1820, about 1.6 million in 1850, and about 12 million in 1900. In the year 2000 the estimated Roman Catholic population of the United States had reached 63.6 million. During the same period, the U.S. Catholic hierarchy was composed of 11 cardinals (increasing to 13 in 2001), 45 archbishops, 373 bishops, and 46,075 priests. The total number of Roman Catholic parishes was 19,544. The church maintained 218 seminaries for the training of the clergy. Other educational institutions under Roman Catholic sponsorship were about 7,000 elementary schools, about 1,600 high schools, and 235 colleges and universities; the total number of students enrolled in these institutions was about 3.5 million.

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