to be there. He confronts Saint Peter who guards the main gate into heaven, demanding an explanation, and Peter says: “Don’t blame me. I keep them out, but then they go around to the back door and your mother lets them all in!”7 Jesus is humorously portrayed in this story as a strict policeman trying to keep sinners out of heaven rather than as the loving savior of the world, and God’s deep love for humanity is embodied in Mary’s maternal dispensing of God’s love to everyone.
Structure
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest and most highly organized religious institution in the world. With a global membership of more than one billion, the work of the church is overseen by about 5,400 bishops, 400,000 priests, and almost a million religious men and women (monks and nuns). The Catholic Church owns and operates 125,000 schools worldwide, including approximately 200 full‐fledged universities; it runs more than 100,000 charitable institutions (hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and the needy). It is, additionally, the only religious organization that governs its own country, Vatican City, the smallest nation in the world with a total territory of 108.7 acres, centered on the famous St. Peter’s Basilica (see Figure 2.4).
The Catholic Church is geographically divided into nearly 3,000 separate and distinct ecclesiastical districts. Most of these are called dioceses, though some have other names such as eparchies, vicariates, and prefectures. A bishop or archbishop oversees every diocese, and the bishop of the oldest or most important diocese in a nation will often be called the primate of that country. In the last half century, local councils of bishops (some national and some regional) have become important entities within the global organization of the Catholic Church. The Council of Latin American Bishops (known as CELAM), for example, was instrumental in developing many of the basic ideas that later found systematic expression in Catholic liberation theology, and more recently the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) helped prompt new discussions both of poverty and of the relationship between Catholicism and other religions. In recent years, a variety of Catholic organizations called “new ecclesiastical movements” (NEM) have also arisen in the Church. These organizations or movements, often led by laypeople, are typically dedicated to one specific cause. The NEM Focolare, for example, has the goal of fostering human unity; the NEM Sant’Egidio is dedicated to helping the poor.
Figure 2.4 St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Photo by author.
The Catholic Church is headed by the Pope, who is elected by the College of Cardinals and typically serves for life. The main role of the Pope, as defined by the Catechism, is to serve as “the perpetual and visible source of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.”8 The office of the papacy is also the most important mechanism for preserving and promoting Catholic truth, a role that is often associated with the idea of papal infallibility. The doctrine of papal infallibility does not mean that everything a pope says is binding on all Catholics. What it means is that whenever a pope solemnly declares some particular aspect of Catholic faith or ethics to be a dogmatic teaching of the Church – and this occurs only when the Pope is speaking “ex cathedra” – he is miraculously preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of papal infallibility was formally articulated at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Since that time, it has been invoked only once, in 1950, when the assumption of Mary (her miraculous ascension to heaven) was declared to be an unquestionable article of faith for all Catholics.
Catholic bishops are morally and theologically subject to the authority of the Pope, who appoints them to office, but they have wide‐ranging freedom to conduct business and oversee the teaching and practice of the Catholic faith in their own dioceses. The Catholic Church is not organized like a business in which the Pope acts as a CEO who can fire and hire whomever he wants. Bishops are appointed for life, and it is difficult to remove them from office. Authority is mixed with independence, and hierarchy is mixed with egalitarianism. The Pope has a special and powerful leadership role, but all the bishops of the Catholic Church – including the Pope, who is Bishop of Rome – are spiritual leaders who consult with each other about how best to maintain the Church’s faithfulness to Christ.
Every Catholic diocese is divided into sub‐units called parishes, and these parishes are the heart of religious life for most Catholics. It is in the face‐to‐face context of the local parish that Catholicism becomes a living faith performed in community with everyone else who is a member of that parish. Normally there is only one church building per parish, with one or more priests assigned to each parish to care for the spiritual needs of the local Catholic population. There are currently not enough Catholic priests to staff every parish adequately. This is most notably true in Latin America where there is only one priest for every 6,500 Catholic laypeople, but the numbers in Africa are also challenging, with only one priest for every 5,000 parishioners. This shortage of priests is one of the reasons that some Catholics have suggested that the priesthood should be opened to married men and to women, but so far this suggestion has been vigorously rejected by the Catholic Church hierarchy.
Story
As explained in the last chapter, the histories of Catholicism and Orthodoxy were intertwined for many centuries, and the two only slowly became different and distinct traditions. Initially, these two mega‐traditions drifted apart due to cultural and linguistic differences, but over time their division became intense and bitter. The year 1054 is frequently cited as the date when these two traditions formally split, but it was the violence of the Fourth Crusade, when western Catholic armies attacked Constantinople in the year 1204, that solidified the divide. The following historical survey focuses only on the Catholic side of this story.
Pre‐history: beginnings to 500
The Catholic tradition claims roots back to the earliest followers of Jesus, identifying the apostle Peter, to whom Jesus gave “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:19), as the first Pope. In actuality, the office of the papacy took centuries to develop, but bishops of Rome frequently claimed (and were acknowledged to have) special powers and privileges even during the earliest centuries of the Christian movement. Over the course of these centuries, Catholicism developed its central doctrines of the Trinity and the combined humanity and deity of Christ. This is also when the Latin‐speaking Roman Church codified its particular version of the Bible (which is slightly longer than the Protestant Bible) by accepting Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible (known as the Vulgate) as its official biblical text.
Ancient Catholicism was closely associated with the Roman Empire, which became Christian after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the early 300s. The “fall of the Roman Empire” (which refers only to the “fall” of the western, Latin‐speaking half of the ancient Roman Empire) was therefore devastating. Catholic Christians wondered if God had forgotten them or was punishing them. It was Augustine, bishop of the city of Hippo in north Africa, who was most effective in helping Catholics come to grips with this disaster. He argued that life in this world would always be marked by tragedy and sin and that it was foolish to hope for any kind of earthly utopia. The fall of Rome and the writings of Augustine led the emerging Catholic tradition to embrace a more other‐worldly focus than was the case with Orthodoxy.
Early medieval period: 500 to 1000
During the years 500 to 1000, the geographic center of Catholicism moved
