Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

the name usually given to that organization of Christians which recognizes the Roman pope as its visible head and is in ecclesiastical communion with him. The name may be found in a number of Roman Catholic writers, and is generally used in the constitution of those states in which the Roman Catholic Church is designated as one of the recognized or tolerated State churches. It is, however, not the official name used by the authorities of the Church — who rather dislike it, and substitute for it the name "Catholic" or "Holy Catholic" Church. The name "Roman Church" is applied, in the language of the Church, to the Church or diocese of the bishop of Rome. The views which the members of the Roman Catholic Church, on the one hand, and all other Christians, on the other, take of the doctrine and the history of this Church widely and irreconcilably differ. To the former, the Church is the only form of Christianity that was founded by Christ; all other denominations of Christians are looked upon as deviations from genuine Christianity, and the history of the Church is to the Roman Catholic identical with the progress and development of Christianity. All other Christians agree in viewing the doctrinal system of Rome as abounding in erroneous and antichristian admixtures to the Christianity of the Bible, and its history as the gradual growth of a central and absolute power, which is without a scriptural basis, and prefers and enforces claims for which there is no warrant whatever in the teaching of Christ or the words of the Bible.

I. History. — The Catholic historian begins the history of his Church with the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. While living on this earth, he gathered around him those who were to rule the Church after his ascension. He provided for a complete organization of the g Church by designating Peter as its head. The foundation of the Church was externally completed on the day of Pentecost by the effusion of the Holy Spirit. Several Church fathers have called this day the birthday of the Christian Church; accordingly the Catholic historian claims it as the actual beginning of the Catholic Church. Many of the traditions and legends which ( formerly embellished the histories of the early Catholic Church have now been quite generally abandoned by Catholic writers; they continue, however, to insist that the Scriptures in many places attest the supremacy of Peter as the first among the apostles and the head of the Church. While admitting and lamenting the insufficiency of authentic information on the early history of the Church, Catholic writers emphatically defend, in opposition to modern criticism, a Roman episcopate of the apostle Peter, the exercise of suprematial powers by several bishops of Rome in the first three centuries, and the actual acquiescence of the Church in the Roman decisions. The pictures of the early Christian congregations, as they are drawn by Catholic writers, bear but little resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church of the present day; but it is contended that all that was subsequently developed in the Catholic system existed as a germ in the primitive Church, and that modern criticism has been unable to prove any irreconcilable difference between the creed of the early Church and the Roman Catholic Church as it now exists.

The growth of an "Old Catholic Church" with an episcopal constitution in the 2d and following centuries is generally recognized by Church historians. It is also quite generally admitted that the bishops of Rome, the imperial city of the West, successfully claimed a greater and greater influence; but only Roman Catholics defend these claims as the exercise of a divine right, while all other writers look upon them as the gradual development of a usurpation which was attended by the most dangerous results. Christianity, in the meanwhile, spread rapidly through all the parts of the Roman world empire, and, by the conversion of the emperor Constantine, entered into the novel position of the ruling Church. The transfer of the imperial residence to Constantinople led to a rivalry between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, which gradually became fatal to the unity of the Church. The bishops of Rome steadily enlarged their predominant influence in the whole of Western Europe, and rapidly increased their power by the conversion of the Germanic tribes, which gradually grew up to be the most powerful nations of the Christian world. The establishment of the temporal power at the close of the 8th century gave to the popes of Rome both greater influence and greater prestige, and enabled them to gradually convert the episcopal into a papal Church. The pontificate of Hildebrand, who succeeded to the papal throne in 1073 under the name of Gregory VII, completed the papal system and the Roman Catholic Church in their most essential features. Even before his election as pope, he had prevailed upon his immediate predecessors, as their most influential adviser, to make the election of popes in future wholly independent of secular influence, and thus to secure a continuity of pontiffs whose sole aim would be the progress and complete victory of the Church, not only over all other ecclesiastical and religious organizations, but also over all temporal governments. Under his influence, a council held at Rome in 1059 had decreed that the pope was to be only elected by the cardinals. After he had ascended the papal throne himself, he enforced in 1074 the priestly celibacy, and took the final step for emancipating the Church from the State by forbidding bishops and abbots, through a synod held at Rome (1075), to accept the investiture from secular governments. For nearly fifty years this prohibition remained the subject of a violent controversy between the pope and the secular princes, and though it was finally settled by a compromise (1122), it secured to the pope a general recognition of the important right of confirming the election of all the bishops. One of the leading features of the Roman Catholic system — the absolute supremacy of the pope as vicar of Jesus Christ and head of the Church in all ecclesiastical affairs — is largely due to the influences proceeding from Gregory VII and his successors.

The fundamental idea of Gregory VII, however, was never fully carried out. He had clearly conceived the plan of converting the Roman Catholic Church into a universal theocracy, with the pope at its head as sole sovereign in temporal affairs as well as spiritual. According to this view, all states of the Christian name were to be bound together in the unity of the papal theocracy as members of one body. The princes receive their consecration and divine sanction through the ecclesiastical power; they are appointed "by the grace of God;" but the Church mediates between them and God. Royalty sustains to the papacy the same relation as the moon to the sun, receiving from it its light and its heat. The divine authority with which secular powers are clothed by the Church can therefore be again withdrawn by the Church when the secular powers misuse it. With the withdrawal of this authority ceases also the liability of the subjects to obedience. The gigantic efforts made by the medieval popes, from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII, to enforce these views fill some of the most interesting pages of the history of the Middle Ages. By the semi-military organization of the religious orders, the popes had a well disciplined and trustworthy corps of officers at their disposal, who frequently fought their battles even when bishops ceased to side with them. The Crusades, though in the first place aiming at the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, repeatedly supplied the popes with a willing army for coercing hostile princes. None of the successors of Gregory attained so great a power and came so near realizing the establishment of the papal theocracy as Innocent III. In the struggle against his successors, the noble house of Hohenstaufen perished; but soon the kings of France checked the theocratic aspirations of the popes, and the imprisonment of Boniface VIII by the French made a breach in the theocratic edifice reared by Gregory VII and his successors which has never been repaired. The right to depose princes and release their subjects from the oath of allegiance was not expressly disowned by the popes, but it ceased to involve any practical danger, and was clearly repudiated by the Church. The transfer of the papal residence, which made the popes disgracefully dependent upon the French kings, and, still more, the papal schism, during which two, or at times three, popes hurled against each other the most terrible anathemas, undermined to a large extent the respect which Catholic countries had thus far had for the papal authority, and rapidly diffused the belief that the Church was pervaded by corruption, and that it needed a thorough reformation in its head and members. Such a reformation was sincerely attempted by the great councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which not only endeavored to eradicate many flagrant abuses in the practical life of the Church, but to reduce the constitution of the Church from a papal absolutism to an episcopal constitutionalism by expressly declaring the superiority of a general council over the pope. The success of this scheme would have shaped the subsequent development of the Roman Catholic Church very different from what it has been; but the astuteness of the popes knew how to thwart the manifest reformatory desires of the majority of the bishops, to stifle the cries for a Church reformation, and to reimpose upon a reluctant Church the papal authority, at least in matters of an ecclesiastical nature.

While Western Europe became politically reorganized under Teutonic leadership, and ecclesiastically centralized as the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the bishops of Rome, the Eastern churches retained substantially the constitution of the Old Catholic Church of the early centuries. The Council of Nice recognized the higher authority of the metropolitan bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. This higher authority was subsequently expressed in the title "patriarch." Later, the bishops of Constantinople and Jerusalem were added to the number of patriarchs, and the growing importance of the city of Constantinople gradually made the bishop of the city the first among the Eastern patriarchs, a distinction which was expressly sanctioned by the Concilium Quinisextum of 692. The Church of those times was greatly agitated by controversies relating to the Person and Work of Christ. East and West united in the wish to preserve the doctrinal unity of the Church on those important subjects; and oecumenical councils, in which both sections were represented, defined the creed of the Church and expelled the dissenters from her communion. Whether at these councils any prerogative, honorary or otherwise, was conceded to the patriarchs of Rome continues to be a subject of theological controversy; but even Roman Catholic writers do not claim that the bishops of Rome can be proved to have asserted any superior jurisdiction in any of the other patriarchal dioceses. Gradually some different views sprang up between the East and West relating to questions of constitution, doctrine, and worship. The most important of these controversies was that relating to the procession of the Holy Ghost. (See Filioque). In the course of the 9th century the controversy grew into a serious dissension, and in the course of the 11th it led to a formal and permanent schism. Many attempts at reconciliation and reunion have since been made, but they were either unsuccessful, or, if successful for a time, without duration. (See Greek Church).

In Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church retained her unity until the 16th century. The leaders of that reformatory party which controlled the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle were anxious not to disturb the unity of the Church, and cooperated in the condemnation of men like Wycliffe and Huss, who wanted first of all a scriptural reformation of the doctrine, and who showed no concern about external unity if it stood in the way of a doctrinal reformation. At the beginning of the 16th century, the stifled clamors for a radical revision of the doctrine of the corrupt Church and the restoration of a pure scriptural doctrine burst irresistibly forth in the German and Swiss reformation. (See Reformation).

The whole of England, Scotland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and large portions of Germany and Switzerland, permanently severed their connection with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church rallied, from a sense of self preservation, for extraordinary conservative, and recuperative efforts. Although the Council of Trent (1545-63) did not succeed in bringing back the seceders, it exerted an important normative influence upon the subsequent history of the Roman Church. While it reasserted, in opposition to the Protestants, those doctrines which had been developed by the mediaeval theologians, and promulgated them as parts of the Church doctrine, and thus made a return of those who regarded many Roman Catholic doctrines as an apostasy from pure Biblical Christianity impossible, it issued, on the other hand, decrees for the reformation of the constitution and discipline of the Church, which retained within its pale large numbers who, though favoring a purification of the Church, laid also great stress upon the preservation of its unity and its unbroken historical connection with the apostolic age.

For the vast territories lost in Europe, the Church received some compensation in the New World, where the monastic orders, conjointly with the Spanish government, subjected the larger portion of the native population to the Church, and filly secured the permanent ascendency of Roman Catholicism. The desire to concentrate the energy of the ablest men within the Church for an effectual arrest of a further advance of Protestantism led to the peculiar organization of the Order of the Jesuits, which plays a prominent part in the subsequent history of the Church. By dint of its extraordinary efforts, it not only checked the further progress of Protestantism in a number of countries, but recovered some that already appeared to be lost. Within the Church its influence was no less remarkable, and it succeeded, like no other community of men before, in strengthening and enlarging, in opposition to the adherents of the episcopalian system, and especially to the Gallicans, the absolute authority of the popes. The rejection by the popes of doctrinal opinions designated as heretical repeatedly called forth very exciting dogmatical controversies, which in one case led to the organization of a separate ecclesiastical community, the so called Jansenists, or Old Catholics of Holland, who recognized the authority of the pope as the head of the Church, but denied the infallibility of his dogmatical decisions, and consequently their obligation to yield to them an unconditional submission. In the second half of the 18th century, extraordinary tempests came down upon the Church. In France and other countries of Southern Europe, an antichristian literature undermined, in the educated classes of the population, not only the attachment to the Church, but a belief in Christianity. The Bourbons of Spain, Portugal, and France, under the influence of freethinking statesmen, forced a pliant pope who had been elected by their influence to abolish the Order of the Jesuits, in their opinion the strongest bulwark of the Church against the advance of a new, freethinking sera. In Germany, the episcopal electors of the empire united with the emperor Joseph II on a plan to establish a National German Catholic Church, which was to be almost independent of Rome. The French Revolution took from the pope his temporal possessions, confiscated the property of the Church, and for a time decreed the abolition of Christianity. Napoleon desired to secure the cooperation of the Church for the execution of his ambitious schemes and the confirmation of his power and his dynasty. He concluded in 1801 with the pope a concordat, which was to restore to the pope his temporal possessions and his ecclesiastical powers; but as a complete agreement was not arrived at, Napoleon once more (1808) occupied the States of the Church, and declared the "donation of his predecessor Charlemagne" revoked. When he was thereupon excommunicated, he imprisoned the pope, and for several years deprived the Church of her head. In 1814 the allied princes of Europe restored the temporal power of the pope, and Pius VII was enabled to resume the full functions of the papacy as they were exercised before the French Revolution.

An agreement, however, between the pope and the princes assembled at the Congress of Vienna was not attained, and the pope entered through his legate a protest against the work of the congress. In 1816 the Order of the Jesuits was restored for the whole Church, and soon displayed again, as in former times, an extraordinary activity for strengthening and enlarging the papal authority in opposition to episcopal and liberal tendencies still manifesting themselves within the Church, as well as to the legislation of the secular governments. The growth of the liberal and revolutionary party in most of the European countries, which aimed at either curtailing or wholly abolishing the power of the princes, was not only very distasteful to the Roman Catholic Church, but led in most countries to vehement conflicts, especially in regard to the public schools. In Italy, the national tendencies for a political union led to the establishment of a united kingdom of Italy, to which the larger portion of the States of the Church was annexed in 1860, and the remainder, including the city of Rome, in 1870. Though not a few Catholics, including even some of the most prominent members of the Order of the Jesuits, were inclined to look upon the destruction of the temporal power of the popes as favorable to the spiritual interests of the Church, the pope (Pius IX) pronounced an excommunication against the king of Italy and all I statesmen who had aided in the conquest of the Papal States. The successor of Pius (Leo XIII), though believed to be more mildly disposed, has not yet receded from the standpoint of his predecessor. The pontificate of Pius IX became of exceeding importance in the inner history of the Catholic Church. The promulgation of the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and of a syllabus which characterized a number of doctrines and views commonly held in civilized countries as heretical or erroneous, indicated a determination on the part of the pope and his advisers to lorce a belief in, and submission to, the extreme theories concerning the papal authority upon the entire Catholic Church. This victory of the extremest papal party within the Catholic Church became complete when, in 1870, the Vatican Council proclaimed the infallibility of the doctrinal decisions of the pope as a tenet of the Catholic Church. A considerable number of bishops, chiefly from Germany, Austria, and France, made a determined opposition to the adoption of the new doctrine, chiefly on the ground of its being inopportune.

After its adoption by the council, however, the opposing bishops gradually submitted to the demand of the pope to have the doctrine promulgated in their dioceses. Several did so with undisguised reluctance; some (as bishop Beckmann of Osnabriick) were said by their intimate friends to have secretly remained opponents of the innovation even on their death bed; but externally all yielded, and not one of the bishops separated from the Church in consequence of the great change which had been made by the Vatican Council. The lower clergy quite generally followed the example of the bishops. A number of professors of Catholic theology at the German universities continued, however, to refuse their submission, and were therefore excommunicated. As many thousands of laymen sympathized with them, the necessity of providing for their religious wants gradually led to the organization of "Old Catholic" congregations in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and even the election of Old Catholic bishops in Germany and Switzerland. In France, a distinguished pulpit orator, father Hyacinthe, has been active in the interest of Old Catholicism, but thus far (1879) without effecting any organization. In Italy, the friends of an Old Catholic reformation have a secret organization, with a bishop elect at its head. The numerical strength which the Old Catholic Church had attained after eight years of hard and incessant labors was far from meeting the expectations of its founders. The total number of the population which expressly and formally severed their connection with what was called, by the Old Catholics, the Vatican Church did not exceed 200,000 persons, an insignificant number if compared with the 200,000,000 who remain nominally connected with Rome. But the reluctance of the bulk of the Catholic population to sever their nominal connection with the Church of their ancestors cannot be taken as a proof that the Catholic Church retains its control over the nations which refused to separate from her in the 16th century. The history of the Catholic nations during the last century furnishes, on the contrary, ample proof that the influence of the national Church in all these countries has to a very large extent been undermined. — In Spain the Cortes frequently defied the authority of the Church. In 1835 nearly all the convents were abolished, and only a few of them have ever been restored. In 1837 the Cortes abolished tithes and confiscated the entire property of the Church. In 1840, during the provisional regency of Espartero, the papal nuncio was expelled from the country; and in 1841 the union of the Spanish Church with Rome was declared to have ceased. Repeatedly the Cortes decided in favor of religious toleration, especially during the short time when Spain was a republic. King Amadeo I, and still more Alphonso XII (since 1874), deemed it expedient to seek a reconciliation with the pope; but even they have been unable to grant all the demands of the Church. — Portugal has been, almost without interruption, at variance with the claims of the popes. All the religious orders of men, and nearly all those for women, have been suppressed. In the Cortes a liberal, anti-Roman party is invariably in the ascendency; even the majority of the priests and bishops sympathize more with the government than with the pope, and up to the end of 1878 the government had forbidden and prevented the promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility. — In France the revolution of 1830 not only expelled the Bourbons from the throne, but stripped, to a large extent, the Church of its political power. According to the new constitution, the Roman Catholic Church was no longer the religion of the State, but only of the majority of Frenchmen. The affairs of the nation were for many years conducted by a Protestant prime minister, Guizot.

Napoleon III endeavored to strengthen his dynasty by making extensive concessions to the hierarchy; and even after the establishment of the republic in 1871, the majority of the Legislative Assembly and one of the presidents of the republic (MacMahon) favored the Catholic restoration in order to check the confirmation and advance of republican principles; but in 1879 the success of the Republican party at the general election, in spite of its denunciation by all the bishops, placed the government of the country in the hands of statesmen who are fully determined to annihilate the influence of the Catholic priesthood upon the government of France and upon the education of the rising generation. — In the little kingdom of Belgium, which, in 1830, established its independence of Holland, the Catholic Church has, on the whole, exercised a greater influence upon legislation than in any other country of Europe; but, notwithstanding the immense power of the Church, the liberal party, which is in open and bitter enmity to the Church, secured at the general election in 1878 a majority in both chambers, and has since prepared a law on public education which will exclude the influence of the Church. — In Austria the close alliance between the absolute government and the popes for the suppression of all liberal tendencies was terminated by the introduction of a constitutional form of government in 1848. An attempt which was made in 1855 to re- establish this alliance by a new Austrian concordat, which gave to the Catholic bishops a far reaching influence upon public affairs, was of short duration. The reestablishment of a parliamentary government has shown that the majority of both houses are adverse to the continuance of Church influence upon public affairs, and that they uphold the principles of religious toleration and of State education. Italy has, like Spain and Portugal, expelled the religious orders and confiscated the property of the Church; it has fully secularized public instruction, and, more than any other government of the world, it is impelled to reject the claims of the Church, because these claims involve the destruction of Italian unity. Among the states of Spanish and Portuguese America there is not one which has not had, from time to time, its conflicts with pope and bishops. The progress of religious toleration and of a secular school system, after the Protestant models of Germany and the United States, and in opposition to the bishops, proves that the Church has ceased to have a firm hold on any of these states. (See Old Catholics).

In the Protestant countries of Europe the Roman Catholic Church has been greatly benefited since the beginning of the 19th century by the progress of religious toleration. The laws impeding the free exercise of the Roman Catholic form of worship, or its self-government, were quite generally repealed, or fell, at least, into disuse. Thus congregations were reorganized in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, where the Church had been almost extinct since the 16th century, and vicars apostolic were appointed as an initial step towards the reconstruction of dioceses. — In Holland, where the Church had been for two hundred years without a hierarchical organization, although it had not ceased to have a considerable Catholic population, the constitution of 1848 proclaimed the principle of religious liberty. Thus even the Jesuits were allowed to return, and in 1853 the Catholic hierarchy was re-established by the erection of one archbishopric and four bishoprics. In Great Britain the government had to yield, in 1829, to the agitation of the Irish Catholics for equal political rights, and to open both houses of Parliament to its Catholic subjects. This was followed by the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, in which year pope Pius IX divided the kingdom into one archbishopric and twelve bishoprics. The ancient hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church had become extinct in 1585, by the death of bishop Goldwell of St. Asaph. In Scotland, when the ancient hierarchy had become extinct by the death of archbishop Betoun of Glasgow, in 1601, the hierarchy was established by pope Leo XIII, who in 1878 established two archbishoprics and four bishoprics. As Ireland at the time of the Catholic emancipation numbered alone seven millions of Roman Catholics, and a tide of Irish emigration filled the cities of England and Scotland with a large Catholic population, the Catholic Church appeared at home and abroad as a great power; and the number of churches, of priests, and Catholic institutions rapidly increased.

The indignation felt among Protestants at this revival of the Church of Rome induced Parliament, in 1851, to adopt a resolution declaring all papal edicts, and all jurisdictions, ranks, or titles created by them, null and void; and fining every person who, without legal authority, accepted any ecclesiastical title derived from the name of any place in the kingdom. But the new Catholic bishops knew how to evade the laws; and the liberal tendency of English legislation gave to the Roman Catholics a position which even Roman Catholic writers have often praised as the most favorable in Europe. The hopes awakened by this restoration for the future of Roman Catholicism in England were greatly strengthened by a movement within the Established Church of England, which aimed at a revival of the Catholic elements of this Church. Under the leadership of Pusey and Newman, this movement — sometimes called the Oxford movement because it had its chief center in Oxford — gradually developed tendencies to Roman Catholicism and led a considerable number of graduates of English universities over to the Church of Rome, Among the new Catholics were many men of great reputation, influence, and wealth. The most prominent were, Dr. Henry Newman, one of the leaders of the movement, who, as superior of the religious order of the Oratorians (consisting almost wholly of former members of the Anglican Church), as rector of the Catholic University of Dublin, and by a number of literary works, displayed a great activity for the Roman Catholic Church, and, as a reward for his services, was raised, in 1879, to the cardinalate; archbishop Manning of Westminster, created cardinal in 1875; the marquis of Bute, one of the richest noblemen of the United Kingdom; the marquis of Ripon, a prominent English statesman and member of the Privy Council. The number of Anglican clergymen, members of the nobility, and literary persons who, since the beginning of the Oxford movement, have joined the Roman Catholic Church exceeds one thousand. By these accessions the Church has received a higher social standing and a greater influence upon English society than it had before. This is especially apparent in the colonies, where the government recognizes the power of the Catholic bishops and missionaries to cooperate for the confirmation of the English rule, and is willing to secure this cooperation by favors and concessions. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that, in spite of all the accessions to the Church from the higher ranks of English society, the total Catholic population shows not only no notable progress, but the estimates by the most careful statisticians give even lower figures for it than were assumed some ten years ago.

This would indicate that the losses sustained by the Church, especially among the lower classes of the population, must, at least, equal in number the gains.

On the other hand, the territorial rearrangement of Germany by the Congress of Vienna placed nearly all the German Catholics, except those of Austria and Bavaria, under Protestant governments. The great wars of 1866 and 1870 severed the connection between Catholic Austria and the German Catholics, and placed Protestant Prussia and a Protestant emperor at the head of the German nationality. The laws of all the German states place the Roman Catholics on a level with Protestants; but divergent opinions on the limits of the ecclesiastical and the secular powers have repeatedly led to fierce conflicts between the Church and the German governments, especially Prussia. The two Prussian archbishops of Cologne and Posen were imprisoned in 1837, and kept prisoners until 1840, for refusing obedience to royal ordinances concerning mixed marriages. A new conflict began in 1872, which occupies a prominent place in the modern history of Roman Catholicism, under the name Kulturkampf and was not yet ended at the beginning of 1879. The Prussian government, alarmed at the increase of power which the Vatican Council had placed in the hands of the pope, deemed it necessary to divest the bishops of the influence which they had thus far exerted upon the national schools; to check the absolute control of the lower clergy by the bishops; and to extend the jurisdiction of the State over both bishops and lower clergy. The bishops regarded some of the laws adopted in Prussia for this purpose as inconsistent with their duties towards the Church, and refused to submit to them. In consequence of the conflicts which were caused by this attitude of the bishops, a number of the Prussian bishops were deposed from their sees; and several other sees which became vacant by the death of their occupants could not be filled on account of the insuperable disagreement between the Prussian government and the pope. At the beginning of 1879, of the twelve archbishoprics and bishoprics of Prussia, only two were actually filled. During the progress of this conflict, the bulk of the Catholic population of Germany showed a marked sympathy with the bishops; and the universal suffrage which has been adopted in Germany for the elections to the Reichstag yielded in no country of the world so compact a host of ultramontane deputies as in Germany.

Thus the Catholic districts of Germany came to be looked upon as a bulwark of the Roman Catholic Church in general. Previously the German Church had won within the Catholic Church a great prestige for superiority in the province of literature; and not a few of its literary productions had been translated into the languages of most of the other Catholic nations. The elevation of Dr. Hergenrother, a university professor, to the cardinalate by pope Leo XIII, in April, 1879, was regarded as an encouraging tribute to the science of Catholic Germany by the head of the Church. The Roman Catholic Church has suffered the greatest numerical losses in Russia. At the second partition of Poland, in 1793, nearly all the dioceses of the United Greeks in the former Polish empire were incorporated with Russia. The empress Catharine II made incessant efforts to reunite the United Greeks (who, during the Polish rule, had been induced to recognize the supremacy of the pope) with the Orthodox Greek Church; and it is said that, during her reign, no no less than seven millions of United Greeks separated from Rome. No exertions to this end were made by the emperors Paul I and Alexander I; but Nicholas I and Alexander II followed in the footsteps of Catharine. In 1839, 3 bishops and 1305 priests, representing a population of more than 2,000,000, declared, at a synod held at Plock, in favor of reunion with the Russian State Church. After this only one United Greek diocese remained (Chelm), with a population of 250,000, nearly all of whom, in the years 1877 and 1878, likewise joined the Russian Church. As the Russian government forbids secession from the State Church to any other religious denomination, a return of the United Greeks to the communion of Rome is for the present impossible. Roman Catholic writers unanimously assert that measures of the utmost severity and cruelty have been resorted to to bring about this separation from Rome; and their statements are fully confirmed by nearly all writers who are not Russians. — In the United States of America the Roman Catholic Church enjoys a degree of independence which it has hardly ever possessed in any other country. Owing to the rapid increase of the population in general, and to the large influx of immigrants, it has already attained a high rank among the national divisions of the Roman Catholic Church. (See Roman Catholic Church In The United States).

The missionary labors of the Catholic Church in non-Christian countries received a great impulse by the foundation of the Order of the Jesuits. The latter sent out a larger number of missionaries than any other religious order has done before or after its foundation. In some countries of Eastern Asia the Catholic missions appeared, at times, to become a complete success. — In Japan the Church embraced, at one time, more than 200,000 Christians, and counted among her adherents several princes. — In China the Jesuits obtained a great influence at the courts of several emperors, and the permission to establish missions throughout the empire. — In Hindostan, Corea, Anam, and other countries, numerous congregations were collected, and many natives became priests and members of religious orders. Many of these missions have had to suffer bloody persecutions; but most of them have survived, though in a crippled form and with reduced numbers, to the present day. Pope Gregory XV established for the chief and central direction of the Catholic missions, in all parts of the world, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, which consisted of 15 cardinals, 3 prelates, and 1 secretary. Pope Urban VIII connected with this institution, in 1627, a seminary for the training of foreign missionaries (Collegium Urbanum de Propaganda Fide), which still exists, and has always been famous for the large number of nationalities represented among its pupils. Besides the seminary of the Propaganda, the Roman Catholic Church has seminaries specially devoted to the education of foreign missionaries at Paris, Lyons, and in several other places; and at present most of the religious orders educate some of their members in their own institutions for the missionary service. For the financial support of the Catholic missions, a central Society for the Propagation of the Faith was established in 1822 at Lyons, which has of late had an annual income of about 5,000,000 francs. This society has branches in nearly all countries of the world; only Austria and Bavaria have preferred to establish their own societies for the support of foreign missions. A children's missionary society, called the "Society of the Holy Childhood of Jesus," devotes its revenue chiefly to the efforts for the baptism and Catholic education of pagan children. It has branches in all countries. It is admitted by all Catholic writers that the sums annually contributed for the support of the Catholic missionaries fall far below the aggregate annual income of the Protestant missionary societies.

II. Doctrines . — As the Roman Catholic Church agrees with the Greek and the Protestant churches in regarding the Holy Scriptures as divinely inspired, and as an authority in matters of faith and morals, she holds many points of Christian belief in common with these large divisions of the Christian Church. Conjointly with them, she believes in the unity of divine essence, the Trinity of the divine persons (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), and the creation of the world by the will of God out of nothing for his glory and the happiness of his creatures. Among other points of belief which are common to the Roman Catholic, Greek, and Evangelical Protestant churches are the following: the original innocence of man; his fall in Adam, and redemption by Christ; the incarnation of the Eternal Logos and Second Person in the Holy Trinity; the divine human constitution of the Person Christ. In regard to the procession of the Holy Ghost, the Roman Catholic Church has added to the Nicene Creed the "Filioque" ("and from the Son"), and accordingly believes that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son; while the Greek Church believes, in strict accordance with the original Nicene Creed, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only. The Roman Catholic Church holds, in common with the Greek, but in opposition to evangelical Protestants, the following doctrines: The authority of ecclesiastical tradition as a joint rule of faith with the Scriptures; the veneration of the Virgin Mary, the saints, their pictures and relics; the infallibility of the Church; justification by faith and works as joint conditions; the seven sacraments or mysteries; baptismal regeneration, and the necessity of water baptism for salvation; priestly absolution by divine authority; transubstantiation and the adoration of the consecrated elements; the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead; prayers for the departed. The infallibility of the Church was formerly lodged by the Roman Catholic Church in the general councils conjointly with the pope, but since 1870 also in all the doctrinal decisions of the popes; by the Greek Church it is attributed to the seven ecumenical councils, and the patriarchal oligarchy as a whole.

The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, which was proclaimed as a dogma by the pope in 1854, is rejected by the Greek Church as blasphemous, although it practices the veneration of the Virgin no less than the Roman Catholic. In regard to the Holy Scriptures, the Roman Catholic Church includes in its canon the Apocrypha of the Old Test., which are excluded from the Protestant canon. The Latin (Vulgate) translation of the Bible is placed on a par with the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, while Protestantism claims divine authority only for the original Scriptures of the inspired authors. As regards the popular use and circulation of the Bible, the Roman Catholic Church has generally discouraged the reading of unannotated Bibles in the native tongues, and commanded her members to seek on this subject the previous advice of their pastors and spiritual guides. With regard to the unity of the Church, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that Christ founded one, and only one, infallible visible Church which was to represent him on earth as the teacher of religious truth, and to which, therefore, all men ought to submit. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be this communion, and therefore asserts that outside of her there is no salvation ("extra ecclesiam nulla salus"). She does not admit the Protestant distinction between a visible and invisible Church, but demands that all should belong to the visible Church. She admits, however, that there may be cases when insurmountable difficulties prevent persons from joining her communion, and when God will save them though they have not been formally received into her pale. As there is, in the opinion of the Church, only one Church and one baptism, all persons, children or adult, to whom the ordinance of baptism is administered in due form are thereby received into the Catholic Church. The children of Protestants and other non-Catholics are therefore regarded as belonging to the Catholic Church until they cut themselves loose from it by their own erroneous belief.

In regard to the future life, the Roman Catholic Church admits a temporary middle place and state (lasting until the final judgment) between heaven and hell, for the purification of imperfect Christians, which may be advanced by prayers and masses in their behalf. The center of Catholic worship is the mass, which the Church holds to be an actual, though unbloody, repetition of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, by the priests, for the sins of the living and the dead. It is offered, as a rule, daily by every priest. To the laity the eucharist is now administered in only one kind, the bread, the Church believing that Christ is wholly present in the consecrated bread as well as in the wine, and that therefore the reception of one kind is fully sufficient.

An important difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant ethics exists in the doctrine of good works, the Roman Catholic Church believing that works of supererogation, which are not commanded, but recommended (consilia evangelica), with corresponding extra merits, constitute a treasury at the disposal of the pope for the dispensation of indulgences. These indulgences are transferable to the souls in purgatory.

As the Church is the plenipotentiary and infallible representative of Christ, her commandments are no less binding upon the faithful than the divine commandments recorded in the Scriptures. Among the commandments given by the Church are the duty of the faithful to go once a year to confession, to receive once a year the eucharist, and to attend mass on every Sunday and holiday. Upon her clergy the Church has imposed the duty of celibacy; as this, however, is not a part of Church doctrine, the priests of those of the Eastern churches which recognize the supremacy of the pope are allowed to marry.

Paintings and images are quite commonly used in Catholic churches as fitting ornaments, and as objects calculated to excite and keep alive feelings of devotion. The crucifix may be mentioned as the principal among them. A number of ceremonies and vestments are used in the celebration of divine worship. They are intended to give a peculiar dignity to the sacred mysteries of religion; to raise the mind of the beholder to heavenly things by their various and appropriate import; to instruct the ignorant and keep alive attention; to give to the ministers of religion a respect for themselves and for the awful rites in which they officiate.

In the celebration of the mass and other services of the Church, the Latin language is used. The Church cherishes it as a bond of union which connects the churches of the present with each other, as well as with the primitive apostolic Church of Rome. For the use of the people, translations into the vernacular languages are made, and are in common use. The Eastern churches which have entered into a corporate union with Rome are allowed to retain at divine service the use of their old liturgical languages. Latin is also the language of the Breviary, which contains the prayers and religious readings prescribed by the Church for the daily devotional exercises of the priests.

III. Constitution . — The Roman Catholic Church believes in a special priesthood in which all the offices of the Church are vested. The powers conferred upon the priesthood are twofold — the priestly power, Potestas Ordinis , and the governing power, Potestas Jurisdictionis. The former is vested in its fulness in the bishops, who alone have the right to provide for the continuation of the hierarchy by means of ordination. Subordinate to the bishop are the orders of priest and deacon. These two orders, together with that of bishop, constitute the Ordines Majores , and form the keystone of the entire hierarchy. Several minor orders, Ordines Minores , the number of which has varied, are preparatory steps for the entrance into the hierarchy, and are no longer of any practical significance. The governing power is possessed in its fulness by the pope, who alone has apostolic authority, and may exercise it in any part of the Church. The bishop has governing power only over one diocese, and, according to the present Church law, can practically exercise it only with the sanction of the pope. A number of episcopal dioceses are commonly united in an ecclesiastical province, the head bishop of which bears the title of archbishop, presides at the provincial councils, but otherwise interferes but rarely and only in special cases in the administration of the suffragan dioceses. If a country has more than one ecclesiastical province, one of the archbishops has frequently the title of primate, and as such ranks the other archbishops and presides at national councils. As all the Eastern patriarchates have severed their connection with Rome, the name patriarch has totally lost the signification it had in the early Church. It is an honorary title which confers no degree of jurisdiction superior to that of archbishop or primate. The Church has at present, besides the pope, twelve patriarchs — namely, four of Antioch (for the Latin, Greek, Syrian, and Maronite rites respectively), and one each of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Babylon (of the Chaldaean rite), Cilicia (of the Armenian rite), the East Indies, Lisbon, and Venice. Those fragments of Eastern churches which in course of time had entered into a corporate union, with the privilege of retaining the use of their ancient liturgical languages, the marriage of priests, and other ancient customs, are technically designated as the Eastern or Oriental rite, in opposition to the Latin rite.

For the purpose of deliberating and legislating on ecclesiastical affairs, a system of councils or synods has gradually been developed, consisting of ecumenical, national, provincial, and diocesan synods. Ecumenical councils are such as represent the entire Church, and to which now all the ordained bishops of the Church are invited. The Church now numbers twenty of these councils, the latest of which — the Vatican Council — was held from Dec. 8, 1869, to Oct. 20, 1870. (For a list of the first nineteen, (See Councils).) Up to the Vatican Council, large portions of the Church, including many bishops and provincial synods, have asserted the superiority of an ecumenical council over the pope. After the proclamation of the infallibility of the pope, it is no longer possible for any Roman Catholic to claim for an cecumenical council any kind of superiority. A national council is one consisting of all the archbishops and bishops of a country, under the presidency of the primate. The Church law makes no provision for their regular periodicity, and they have generally been convoked for some special reason. Provincial synods are meetings of the bishops of an ecclesiastical province under the presidency of the metropolitan or archbishop. Diocesan synods are meetings of the clergy of a diocese under the presidency of the bishop. The Ecumenical Council of Trent desired to introduce these two classes of synods to a larger extent than had been the case before into the regular organism of the Church, and therefore provided that a provincial synod was to be held every third year in each ecclesiastical province, and a diocesan synod annually in each diocese. This provision, however, has been carried out but very imperfectly, and in the 18th century the diocesan synods fell into disuse in every country of Europe except Italy.

The pope is assisted in the government of the universal Church by the college of cardinals, which is divided into cardinal bishops, cardinal priests, and cardinal deacons. The bishops of every grade are, in a similar manner, aided in the government of their dioceses by a chapter, and frequently by an assistant bishop. The diocese is divided into parishes, a number of which is generally united into a deanery, at the head of which is a dean. The papal almanac (La Gerarchia Cattolica) for 1878 publishes the following summary of the Catholic hierarchy: The full number of the members of the college of cardinals is 73; namely, 6 cardinal bishops, 51 cardinal priests, and 16 cardinal deacons. Of patriarchal sees there are 12, 7 of which belong to the Latin and 5 to the Oriental rite. The number of archiepiscopal sees in December, 1877, was 172, of which 151 belonged to the Latin and the remainder to several Oriental rites. Of the Latin archbishops, 13 were immediately subject to the Holy See, and 138 were connected with ecclesiastical provinces. Of the Oriental archbishoprics, 1 Armenian, 1 Graeco-Roumanian, and 1 Graeco-Ruthenian are at the head of ecclesiastical provinces; 4 Graeco-Melchite, 4 Syrian, 5 Syro-Chaldean, 5 Syro-Maronite are subject to the patriarchs of the several rites. Of episcopal dioceses there were 719, of which 664 belonged to the Latin and 55 to several Oriental rites. If we add the six suburban sees of the cardinal bishops, the total number of episcopal sees would be 725, of which 670 belong to the Latin rite. Immediately subject to the Holy See are 87 Latin and 4 Eastern (3 Graeco-Ruthenian, 1 Graeco-Bulgarian) bishops; 577 Latin sees and 8 Oriental (1 Armenian, 3 Graeco-Roumanian, and 4 Graeco-Ruthenian) were suffragans in ecclesiastical provinces; 43 Oriental bishops (16 Armenian, 9 Graeco-Melchite, 8 Syrian, 7 Syro-Chaldeean, and 3 Syro-Maronite) were subjects to the patriarchs of the several rites. There were also 18 sees not connected with a diocese (nullius dioeceseos); their occupants are 12 abbots, 1 archabbot, 1 archimandrite, 1 archpriest, 1 provost, and 2 prelates.

Where it is found impracticable to establish dioceses in accordance with the provisions of the canonical law, vicars apostolic are appointed in place of bishops. They are placed under the immediate supervision of the Congregation of Propaganda, which is charged with a general superintendence of missionary districts. Besides vicars apostolic, the pope appoints for the superintendence of churches in non-Catholic countries apostolic delegates and apostolical praefects, both of whom are likewise placed under the Congregation of Propaganda. The aggregate of delegates, vicars, and praefects was (in 1878) 154, making a total of 1148 hierarchical titles. The total number of dignitaries composing the Catholic hierarchy, inclusive of the assistant bishops, was 1198. The Catholic hierarchy received a very large increase during the pontificate of Pius IX. The number of bishoprics raised to the rank of archbishoprics was 24; number of archbishoprics created, 5; number of bishoprics created, 132; of sees, nullius dieoseos, 3; of apostolic delegations, 3; of vicariates apostolic, 33; of praefects apostolic, 15; total. 215 hierarchical titles.

A large proportion of the new episcopal and archiepisaopal sees belong to English-speaking countries. The hierarchy of England and Wales, as restored Sept. 29, 1850, by letters apostolic of Pius IX, comprises the province of Westminster, consisting of the archiepiscopal see of Westminster and twelve suffragans. In the United States 34 new episcopal sees were established during the pontificate of Pius, and 10 sees raised to archbishoprics. The first addition made by pope Leo XIII to the Catholic hierarchy was the restoration of the hierarchy of Scotland on March 4, 1878. It comprises the archiepiscopal see of Glasgow, which is without suffragan sees, and the province of St. Andrew's and Edinburgh, which consists of the archiepiscopal see of St. Andrew's and Edinburgh, with four suffragan sees. At the beginning of 1879 the British empire had 14 archbishops, 76 bishops, 33 vicars apostolic, and 7 prefects apositolic. Of the archbishoprics, 1 was in England, 2 in Scotland, 4 in Ireland, 4 in British North America, 1 in the West Indies, 2 in Australia; of the bishoprics, 12 in England, 4 in Scotland, 24 in Ireland, 2 in the European colonies, 1 in Africa, 18 in North America, 1 in the West Indies, 11 in Australia, 3 in New Zealand; of the vicariates apostolic, two thirds are in the Asiatic possessions. Most of these vicariates are at present held by archbishops and bishops who take their title from their see in partibus Infidelum. Including eight coadjutors or auxiliary bishops, the total number of archbishops and bishops holding office in the British empire at the beginning of 1879 was 123, a larger number than is at present found in any other country except only Italy. Adding to this the 63 archbishops and bishops holding office in the United States, the total number of episcopal dignitaries in the English-speaking world at the beginning of 1879 was 189, being about one sixth of the entire Catholic hierarchy of the world. The steady advance of British dominion in all parts of the world, and the rapid development of the United States, Australia, British North America, and other English-speaking territories, cannot fail to increase rapidly the numerical strength of the English-speaking bishops in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

	Population	Rom. Cath.	Prot.	East Chur
N.Amer.	59000000	23000000	35000000
S. Amer	27000000	25000000	400000
Europe	312500000	149000000	74600000	75000000
Asia	831000000	9400000	600000	9500000
Africa	205000000	2200000	1100000	3500000
Austr.	4500000	600000	2000000
Total	1439000000	209200000	113700000	88000000

An important element in the Catholic hierarchy is the religious associations, orders of men and women whose members live together in