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The Catholic Church, or Roman Catholic Church, is composed of 24 autonomous sui iuris particular churches: the Latin Church and the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches. It considers itself the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, [ 63 ] and which Saint Peter initiated along with the missionary work of Saint Paul and others.
The church was called "Catholic" meaning "universal" from very early in the second century, a tacit acknowledgement of the many different cultures it encompassed. Early Christianity suffered great, although intermittent, persecution from the state until Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, legalizing Christianity ...
The term ecumenical [12] can refer to efforts by Christians of different church traditions to develop closer relationships and better understandings. The term is also often used to refer to efforts towards the visible and organic unity of different Christian churches in some form.
Churches provide more than a path to religious fulfillment; for many, they are an important part of social life, and many a happy couple first met during worship. This begs the question, which ...
Indulgences (i.e., remissions by the Church of some penalties for sin); Mary (Mary as Theotokos [i.e., in Greek, "God-bearer" or "Mother of God"]; as perpetually virgin; the Assumption of Mary); The Pope (i.e., belief that the Pope is the successor of St. Peter, the "rock" on which the Church is built, and therefore the infallible head of ...
While the word religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion used in religious studies courses defines it as [a] system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations ...
Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica.. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of Western civilization, in particular, the Catholic Church and Protestantism. [5] [50] Western culture, throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, and much of the population of the Western hemisphere could broadly be described as cultural Christians.
Catholics use images, such as the crucifix, the cross, in religious life and pray using depictions of saints. They also venerate images and liturgical objects by kissing, bowing, and making the sign of the cross. They point to the Old Testament patterns of worship followed by the Hebrew people as examples of how certain places and things used ...