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To: SeekAndFind; MarkBsnr

“Note: HE DID TAG THE WORD — ROMAN in front of it.”

This is true,dear friend,perhaps you have never read the following?

How Did the Catholic Church Get Her Name?
Excerpts..

http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/churb3.htm

The Creed which we recite on Sundays and holy days speaks of one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. As everybody knows, however, the Church referred to in this Creed is more commonly called just the Catholic Church. It is not, by the way, properly called the Roman Catholic Church, but simply the Catholic Church.

The term Roman Catholic is not used by the Church herself; it is a relatively modern term, and one, moreover, that is confined largely to the English language. The English-speaking bishops at the First Vatican Council in 1870, in fact, conducted a vigorous and successful campaign to insure that the term Roman Catholic was nowhere included in any of the Council’s official documents about the Church herself, and the term was not included.

Similarly, nowhere in the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council will you find the term Roman Catholic. Pope Paul VI signed all the documents of the Second Vatican Council as “I, Paul. Bishop of the Catholic Church.” Simply that — Catholic Church. There are references to the Roman curia, the Roman missal, the Roman rite, etc., but when the adjective Roman is applied to the Church herself, it refers to the Diocese of Rome!

Cardinals, for example, are called cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, but that designation means that when they are named to be cardinals they have thereby become honorary clergy of the Holy Father’s home diocese, the Diocese of Rome. Each cardinal is given a titular church in Rome, and when the cardinals participate in the election of a new pope. they are participating in a process that in ancient times was carried out by the clergy of the Diocese of Rome.

Although the Diocese of Rome is central to the Catholic Church, this does not mean that the Roman rite, or, as is sometimes said, the Latin rite, is co-terminus with the Church as a whole; that would mean neglecting the Byzantine, Chaldean, Maronite or other Oriental rites which are all very much part of the Catholic Church today, as in the past.

In our day, much greater emphasis has been given to these “non-Roman” rites of the Catholic Church. The Second Vatican Council devoted a special document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches), to the Eastern rites which belong to the Catholic Church, and the new Catechism of the Catholic Church similarly gives considerable attention to the distinctive traditions and spirituality of these Eastern rites.

So the proper name for the universal Church is not the Roman Catholic Church. Far from it. That term caught on mostly in English-speaking countries; it was promoted mostly by Anglicans, supporters of the “branch theory” of the Church, namely, that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the creed was supposed to consist of three major branches, the Anglican, the Orthodox and the so-called Roman Catholic. It was to avoid that kind of interpretation that the English-speaking bishops at Vatican I succeeded in warning the Church away from ever using the term officially herself: It too easily could be misunderstood.


206 posted on 05/12/2012 2:42:06 PM PDT by stfassisi ((The greatest gift God gives us is that of overcoming self"-St Francis Assisi)))
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To: stfassisi

Excellent reply, my friend.

I could not have put it any better.


209 posted on 05/12/2012 5:25:46 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: stfassisi

Since we are into cutting and pasting articles, I might as well cut and paste one I agree with too (one that conforms to scripture).

http://www.gotquestions.org/universal-local-church.html

To understand the difference between the local church and the universal church, one must get a basic definition of each. The local church is a group of believers in Jesus Christ who meet in some particular location on a regular basis. The universal church is made up of all believers in Jesus Christ worldwide. The term church comes from at least 2 words. One of the words has to do with the meeting together or “assembly” (1 Thessalonians 2:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:1).

This word is one that pertains to the work of God in saving and sanctifying believers as “called-out ones.” When the word church is found in the English Bible, the word used is this one. The second word is one that speaks of ownership and literally means “belonging to the Lord.” This is the word that is transliterated into the actual word church. This Greek word is only used twice in the New Testament and is never used directly naming the church (1 Corinthians 11:20; Revelation 1:10).

A local church is normally defined as a local assembly of all who profess faith and allegiance to Christ. Most often the Greek word ekklesia is used in reference to the local assembly (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 4:17; 2 Corinthians 11:8). There is not just one specified local church in any one area necessarily. There are many local churches in larger cities.

The universal church is the name given to the church worldwide. In this case the idea of the church is not so much in the assembly itself but rather in those constituting it. The church is the church even when it is not holding an official meeting.

In Acts chapter 8 and verse 3, one can see that the church is the church even when they at home. When examining the actual text of Acts 9:31; one can observe that the King James rendering of the word churches should actually be the singular church which describes the universal church not just the local churches. Some may try to describe the universal church as the invisible church. Be careful not to do this. The universal church is never described in scripture as invisible, and surely it was not meant to be invisible. Here are more verses that talk about the universal church: 1 Corinthians 12:28; 15:9; Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18.


213 posted on 05/12/2012 6:29:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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