Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time.. According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, it started from the day of Pentecost at the upper room of Jerusalem; [1] the Catholic tradition considers that the Church is a continuation of the early Christian community established by the Disciples of Jesus.
The History of the Catholic Church, From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium James Hitchcock, Ph.D. Ignatius Press, 2012 ISBN 978-1-58617-664-8; Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church. Crocker, H.W. Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Revised and expanded ed. New York: Image Books Doubleday, 2005.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.28 to 1.39 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2024. [4] [5] [9] It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.
Beginning with fewer than 1000 adherents, Christianity grew to around one hundred small household churches consisting of an average of seventy members each by the year 100. [24] It spread through the dispersed peoples [ 25 ] [ 26 ] along the trade and travel routes followed by merchants, soldiers, and migrating tribes.
The Catholic faith also became integrated in the industrial and post-industrial middle class as it developed, in particular through the lay movements created following the 1891 Rerum novarum encyclical enacted by Pope Leo XIII, and which insisted on the social role of the Roman Catholic Church. [45]
The Catholic population exceeds 1.3 billion as of 2016, [23] making up the majority of Western Christianity. Stemming from the one Roman Catholic institution, there exists several Independent Catholic churches which have expanded the Catholic denominational family, becoming Old and Old Roman Catholicism, and Liberal Catholics.
The 630 Catholic hospitals in the U.S. have a combined budget of $101.7 billion, and employ 641,030 full-time equivalent staff. [88] The 6,525 Catholic primary and secondary schools in the U.S. employ 151,101 full-time equivalent staff, 97.2% of whom are lay and 2.3% are consecrated, and 0.5% are ordained. [89]
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Catholic Church: . Catholicism – largest denomination of Christianity.Catholicism encompasses the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole.