Catholic Church

As the largest of the three primary branches of Christianity (the other two being Protestantism and the Orthodox Church), the Catholic Church has had a substantial hand in shaping Western civilization. Originating from the teachings of Jesus Christ, over the course of centuries, the Catholic Church not only evolved into the source of Christian dogma and practice but also played a major role in the political and cultural development of Europe. The church is governed by the Papacy, a hierarchical organizational structure overseen by the pope. In the modern world, the influence of the Catholic Church has spread to African, Asian, and Latin American countries, which account for its most rapidly growing factions.

Background

The Catholic Church is a worldwide organization promoting the religious tradition of Roman Catholicism. Originating with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, a preacher who lived in the ancient province of Judea during approximately the first thirty years CE (at the time of the occupation by the Roman Empire), Catholicism eventually developed into an intricately structured system. The sacred texts of the Roman Catholic Church include the Old Testament, the New Testament (shared by all Christians), and several canonical books that are rejected by Protestant denominations.

As set forth in the Bible, after the death by crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, his disciples, regarded as the first bishops of the church, dispersed around the known world to preach a universal religion. According to Catholic tradition, the apostle Peter was the first bishop of Rome and the head of the church. All popes following Peter are considered his successors.

Christianity began as a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine three hundred years later, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. In the year 325, Constantine formed the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Christian communities, to establish a consensus on a core Christian belief system. The church leaders issued a statement of belief, known as the Nicene Creed, which was to be accepted universally and is used by Christian churches worldwide.

During the chaos that followed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Catholic Church assumed spiritual and political authority in the Western world. In the mid-400s, Pope Leo I claimed universal jurisdiction of the Papacy over the church, a move that served as a catalyst for the rise of the papal institution. As the most powerful state and spiritual institution of the medieval era, the church exerted a strong influence on the development of the art, music, literature, education, and culture of the Western world.

Overview

The Catholic Church has a complex history, and many branches have become separated from the central church. Convened in 451 CE, the Council of Chalcedon signaled the first institutional division within Christianity and dealt with differing opinions about the nature of Jesus (primarily whether he was both man and god). The branches of the Catholic Church that refused to abide by the conclusions of the council separated, creating profound differences between the Oriental Orthodox Church, as it was known then, and the Roman Catholic Church. By 1054, the Eastern and Western branches of the Catholic Church, which had long been divided over many issues, including theology and dogma, formalized their separation in an event known as the Great Schism, creating the first large-scale separation in the Christian world.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church sponsored and promoted the Crusades (1095–1291), a series of military campaigns waged against Islam and Islamic-held territories. The Catholic Church justified the Crusades on the grounds of recovering territories lost by the Byzantine Empire, gaining access to Eastern sites sacred to Christendom, expanding the Western Catholic Church, defending against the expansion of Islam, and converting non-Christians and heretics. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over western Europe joined the Crusades. The efforts were often notoriously mismanaged. The Fourth Crusade ended with the Roman Catholic forces’ sack of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1204. The Byzantine Empire continued to decline and eventually fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, effectively ending Christian dominance in the region of modern-day Turkey and its surrounding countries. The year 1291, when Latin Christians lost their kingdom in Syria, is often given as the end of the Crusades, though fighting continued for centuries.

From 1378 to 1417 the Catholic Church experienced internal turmoil during the Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism. The schism was a result of political upheaval. After the death of Pope Gregory XI in 1378 the conclave met to determine the next pope. The conclave elected Bartolomeo Prignano, who took the name Urban VI. The new pope was hostile toward the cardinals, who had amassed a great amount of power during the years when the papacy had been in Avignon. The discord came to a head when the cardinals left for Anagni and chose to elect a new pope, Clement VII, and claimed that Urban VI’s election was invalid. Clement VII took up residency in Avignon. With two popes, factions formed in the church as each pope had their own followers and backers. Solutions were proposed to try to end the schism, including a mutual resignation of both popes or a new decision by an independent tribunal or a general council. Both popes refused, however cardinals under both popes arranged for a council to try to end the schism. The Council of Pisa met in 1409 and elected a third pope, Alexander V, deposing the other two popes. Less than a year after his election, Alexander V died and was succeeded by John XXIII. At that time, Clement VII and Urban VI had both died and been succeeded by Benedict XIII in Avignon and Gregory XII in Rome.

In 1410, three men claimed to be pope. The schism began to be resolved in 1414, when the Council of Constance met and deposed John XXIII. The same council accepted the resignation of Gregory XII, and once again denied the legitimacy of Benedict XIII, who died alone in 1423 locked away in a fortress. In 1417, the Council elected Martin V as pope and the Catholic church was reunited under one Pope ruling from Rome.

The Council of Trent (1545–63) was formed as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation, which had begun in 1517. The event reified and cemented the authority of Rome, as it sought to stem corruption and address the implications of the Reformation. The Catholic Church responded with the Counter-Reformation, which led to great missionary efforts in the newly discovered continents settled and colonized by the great European powers, most notably the Americas. During this time, the church continued to have a great effect on the arts and culture of Eurocentric society; however, it also began to adopt a more conservative ideology, which led to abuses such as the Roman Inquisition.

In the twentieth century, the church faced increasing criticism and saw its traditional demographics abandon organized religion. Furthermore, the church was embroiled in several scandals. The Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals emerged in the mid-1980s when accounts of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest in Louisiana were first published in the media. The scandal gained much greater attention in 2002, when the Boston Globe published an exposé alleging widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. That report resulted in an investigation that revealed a further 11,000 allegations of sexual abuse against thousands of priests during the second half of the twentieth century, and such accusations continued against Catholic priests worldwide into the twenty-first century. Another major scandal that rocked the church was related to its role in Indigenous residential schools in Canada. The Catholic Church ran dozens of schools across Canada for over a century—from the 1870s to the late 1990s—to which many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit were forced to attend. The system of forced assimilation of Indigenous children through these schools was later equated to cultural genocide. The scandals have been considered a contributing factor in the ongoing decline in church attendance among Catholics.

The Second Vatican Council (1962–65), also known as Vatican II, sought to reform the Catholic Church along more progressive lines. In the modern world, in an era of increased secularism, the Catholic Church of the third millennium has moved toward an evangelical Catholicism seemingly more attuned to its theological beginnings. The Synod on Synodality was an initiative created by Pope Francis for the Catholic Church to collectively gather and analyze its path in the modern era. The largest gathering since Vatican II, the first assembly of 365 delegates to the Synod on Synodality took place at the Vatican in October 2023, with the second assembly occuring in October of 2024 and over 400 clergymen in attendence. While the gathering resulted in calls to further research several issues affecting the church, including the role of women in the ministry and the church's handling of sexual abuse cases, critics noted that the path forward for the church remained unclear following the first assembly.

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