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The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope. There are over 20 million Catholics in India, [1] representing around 1.55% of the total population, [2] and the Catholic Church is the single largest Christian church in India. [1]
Ecclesiastical polity is the government of a church. There are local ( congregational ) forms of organization as well as denominational . A church's polity may describe its ministerial offices or an authority structure between churches.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the state have been constantly evolving with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history, the Church has had to deal with various concepts and systems of governance, from the Roman Empire to the medieval divine right of kings, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of democracy and pluralism to the ...
The Catholic Church takes the position that the Church itself has a proper role in guiding and informing consciences, explaining the natural law, and judging the moral integrity of the state, thereby serving as check to the power of the state. [143] The Church teaches that the right of individuals to religious freedom is an essential dignity.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, a distinction is made between the internal forum, where an act of governance is made without publicity, and the external forum, where the act is public and verifiable. In canon law, internal forum, the realm of conscience, is contrasted with the external or outward forum; thus, a marriage might be null ...
The Book of Common Prayer is a widely used supplement for worship in the two major Anglican Protestant denominations: Church of South India and Church of North India. [194] Today Christians are considered to be one of the most progressive communities in India. [195]
The church has the power to judge sin, in the internal forum, but a sin can be at the same time externally a misdemeanour or a crime (delictum, crimen), when threatened with external ecclesiastical or civil punishment. The Church also judges ecclesiastical crimes in the external forum by infliction of penalties, except when the wrongdoing has ...
As regards India, this meant that the Holy See was free to make appointments to the episcopate in regions such as British Bombay. [ citation needed ] The later isolation of the territory of Goa and Damaon as enclaves in India prior to the invasion of Indian forces in 1961 accounts for the fact that the Archbishop of Goa for a number of decades ...