The Church
Jesus Christ Founded the Catholic Church on AD 33 Mt. 16:18: And I say also unto thee, That thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
(Mt. 28-19) Jesus states – Go ye therefore, and TEACHall nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Mk. 16-15) Jesus states – And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and PREACHthe gospel to every creature.
(Mk 16-20) –And they went forth, and PREACHED everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.
The church is “the light of the world.” He then noted that “a city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt. 5:14). This means his Church is a visible organization. It must have characteristics that clearly identify it and that distinguish it from other churches. Jesus promised, “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return.
Church is a ” city set on a mountain that cannot be hidden” ( Matt. 5:14) Church is not spiritual or invisible. Church in Greek is Ekklesia mentioned in the bible more than hundred times.
Protestants thinks that the church is spiritual and invisible composed of some sort of amorphous collection of true believers form every denomination is completely unbiblical. Jesus established only one church, NOT for a group of squabbling rival denominations.
In Matt 18:17-18, Jesus is clearly telling us that the Church is the final authority on questions of faith or discipline. Jesus says to take the wayward brother to the Church for reproval. Now, God would not command us to do the impossible. This means that God would have provided us with the information necessary to understand what “Church” He was talking about. Since Jesus uses “Church” only one other time (in Matt 16:18), it is obvious that this Church must mean the one He built upon St. Peter.
The Scriptural, patristic and historical records demonstrate that this Church could only be the Catholic Church. There was no other Church around at the time these words were penned. Moreover, only the Catholic Church can demonstrate a continuity and consistency in doctrine and morals which would be necessary if we are to make any sense out of Jesus’ words in Matt 18:17-18.
Where does the Baptist take his Pentecostal brother? Where does the Lutheran take his Methodist sister? Jesus’ words demand that there be one, authoritative institution to resolve the doctrinal or disciplinary issue. If not, then Jesus’ words would mean little. We would never have any consistency on doctrine and morals, the very ingredients that are necessary to our salvation. God is one and His Church is one. A kingdom divided against itself will not stand. That is why the Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years, and the Protestant sects continue to splinter by the thousands each year.
This verse is a tough pill for Protestants to swallow. They want to argue that the Bible is the only and final authority. However, not only does the Bible never say that, the Bible tells us the Church is the final authority. So, if they want to be faithful to the Bible, then they have to follow the Church. Of course, this forces them to determine what “Church” this is. And if they are truly honest with themselves, they know there is no other recourse than joining the Catholic Church.
We need the Church in order to be saved. Jesus Christ gave us the Church as the exclusive means by which we become united to Him through the sacraments, which allow us to grow in holiness, and give us the best chance for salvation. Those outside the Church are, objectively speaking, in a spiritually deficient condition, although they can still be saved by Christ. But the Church gives us the totality of the means of salvation through Christ and His Eucharistic sacrifice, which the Church celebrates from the rising of the sun to its setting.
The Church is the sacrament of salvation. Regularly receiving the sacraments that Christ instituted is the way that Jesus has set the whole thing up. Confession is the normative way that God forgives sins. The Eucharist is the greatest gift God has given to us this side of heaven – because it is Jesus Christ Himself. It is only in the Church where we eat His body and drink His blood as Jesus commanded us.
You cannot receive these sacraments outside the Church where there is no valid priesthood. The Catholic Church is the bride of Christ, and we are adopted sons of the Father in Christ through His bride, the Church. You are right to say this is also a matter of faith. The Church is supernatural, not just a human institution. That is why the Church is an article of faith. Pray to Mary, the Mother of the Church, to give you the wisdom you need to truly comprehend its magnificence and necessity.
Around the year A.D. 107, a bishop, St. Ignatius of Antioch in the Near East, was arrested, brought to Rome by armed guards and eventually martyred there in the arena. In a farewell letter which this early bishop and martyr wrote to his fellow Christians in Smyrna (today Izmir in modern Turkey), he made the first written mention in history of “the Catholic Church.” He wrote, “Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church” (To the Smyrnaeans 8:2). Thus, the second century of Christianity had scarcely begun when the name of the Catholic Church was already in use.
Thereafter, mention of the name became more and more frequent in the written record. It appears in the oldest written account we possess outside the New Testament of the martyrdom of a Christian for his faith, the “Martyrdom of St. Polycarp,” bishop of the same Church of Smyrna to which St. Ignatius of Antioch had written. St. Polycarp was martyred around 155, and the account of his sufferings dates back to that time. The narrator informs us that in his final prayers before giving up his life for Christ, St. Polycarp “remembered all who had met with him at any time, both small and great, both those with and those without renown, and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world.”
We know that St. Polycarp, at the time of his death in 155, had been a Christian for 86 years. He could not, therefore, have been born much later than 69 or 70. Yet it appears to have been a normal part of the vocabulary of a man of this era to be able to speak of “the whole Catholic Church throughout the world.”
The name had caught on, and no doubt for good reasons.
The term “catholic” simply means “universal,” and when employing it in those early days, St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna were referring to the Church that was already “everywhere,” as distinguished from whatever sects, schisms or splinter groups might have grown up here and there, in opposition to the Catholic Church.
The term was already understood even then to be an especially fitting name because the Catholic Church was for everyone, not just for adepts, enthusiasts or the specially initiated who might have been attracted to her.
Again, it was already understood that the Church was “catholic” because — to adopt a modern expression — she possessed the fullness of the means of salvation. She also was destined to be “universal” in time as well as in space, and it was to her that applied the promise of Christ to Peter and the other apostles that “the powers of death shall not prevail” against her (Mt 16:18).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church in our own day has concisely summed up all the reasons why the name of the Church of Christ has been the Catholic Church: “The Church is catholic,” the Catechism teaches, “[because] she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation. She is sent out to all peoples. She speaks to all men. She encompasses all times. She is ‘missionary of her very nature'” (no. 868).
So the name became attached to her for good. By the time of the first ecumenical council of the Church, held at Nicaea in Asia Minor in the year 325 A.D., the bishops of that council were legislating quite naturally in the name of the universal body they called in the Council of Nicaea’s official documents “the Catholic Church.” As most people know, it was that same council which formulated the basic Creed in which the term “catholic” was retained as one of the four marks of the true Church of Christ. And it is the same name which is to be found in all 16 documents of the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Church, Vatican Council II.
It was still back in the fourth century that St. Cyril of Jerusalem aptly wrote, “Inquire not simply where the Lord’s house is, for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call their own dens the houses of the Lord; nor inquire merely where the church is, but where the Catholic Church is. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy Body, the Mother of all, which is the Spouse of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (Catecheses, xviii, 26).
The same inquiry needs to be made in exactly the same way today, for the name of the true Church of Christ has in no way been changed. It was inevitable that the Catechism of the Catholic Church would adopt the same name today that the Church has had throughout the whole of her very long history.
https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/churb3.htm
When did the term “Roman Catholic Church” first come into being?
It is not possible to give an exact year when the Catholic Church began to be called the “Roman Catholic Church,” but it is possible to approximate it. The term originates as an insult created by Anglicans who wished to refer to themselves as Catholic. They thus coined the term “Roman Catholic” to distinguish those in union with Rome from themselves and to create a sense in which they could refer to themselves as Catholics (by attempting to deprive actual Catholics to the right to the term).
Different variants of the “Roman” insult appeared at different times. The earliest form was the noun “Romanist” (one belonging to the Catholic Church), which appeared in England about 1515-1525. The next to develop was the adjective “Romish” (similar to something done or believed in the Catholic Church), which appeared around 1525-1535. Next came the noun “Roman Catholic” (one belonging to the Catholic Church), which was coined around 1595-1605. Shortly thereafter came the verb “to Romanize” (to make someone a Catholic or to become a Catholic), which appeared around 1600-10. Between 1665 and 1675 we got the noun “Romanism” (the system of Catholic beliefs and practices), and finally we got a latecomer term about 1815-1825, the noun “Roman Catholicism,” a synonym for the earlier “Romanism.”
A similar complex of insults arose around “pope.” About 1515-25 the Anglicans coined the term “papist” and later its derivative “papism.” A quick follow-up, in 1520-1530, was the adjective “popish.” Next came “popery” (1525-1535), then “papistry” (1540-1550), with its later derivatives, “papistical” and “papistic.” (Source: Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, 1995 ed.)
This complex of insults is revealing as it shows the depths of animosity English Protestants had toward the Church. No other religious body (perhaps no other group at all, even national or racial) has such a complex of insults against it woven into the English language as does the Catholic Church. Even today many Protestants who have no idea what the origin of the term is cannot bring themselves to say “Catholic” without qualifying it or replacing it with an insult.
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/when-did-the-term-roman-catholic-church-first-come-into-being
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