Usually when I hear the name “Roman Catholic Church” it’s from a Protestant who wants to save me from the Whore of Babylon – the “Roman Catholic Church”. Naturally, I take exception to this.
So when I hear a Catholic or even a Parish assign the moniker “Roman Catholic Church” to him/her/it’s self, it tends to grate on me a little bit.
Hence, this post…
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.