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Catholicism: Past, Present & Future
ABSTRACT: Christianity is the world’s most prevalent religion and Catholicism is its largest denomination. This paper explores the beliefs, traditions and customs of Roman Catholics and compares them with those of Islam, the world’s second largest religion.
Christianity has more followers than any other religion in the world. About one in three people worldwide consider themselves Christian (). In the United States alone, there are 159 million members of the different branches of Christianity. Most Christians live in Europe, North America and South America (Comparison of Islam, table).
Christianity is centered around – and defined by – faith in Jesus Christ as a savior born to a virgin mother and sent here by God to enlighten the world. While followers of many other religions believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, only Christians believe he was the only messiah and prophet sent from God. Their core belief is that he is the son of God and that he was resurrected from the dead after his crucifixion. Christians believe Christ was part of the Holy Trinity “the father, the son and the Holy Ghost,” which are said to be three parts of one divine spiritual being.
The religion began in Palestine and its main holy scripture is the Bible, although some segments of the Christian religion have additional sacred texts such as the Apocrypha.
Fundamental Christians, who take a literal view of the Bible, believe that Christ performed miracles such as walking on water and turning water into wine (), but progressive Christians believe the Bible was written in metaphors, that its translation from Aramaic into other languages is imprecise and that its passages are meant to be interpreted.
There are more than 1,500 different Christian faith groups (). The largest of these denominations are Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. While Christians of all groups generally share the same core beliefs, each denomination has its own unique practices, beliefs and traditions that are distinct from one another.
Because the different segments of Christianity have such diverse belief systems, this paper will focus on a branch called Roman Catholicism, which has more adherents than any other Christian denomination ().
There are a few beliefs unique among Christians to the Catholic denomination. For example, Catholics pray to saints, whom they believe can intercede on their behalf (). They believe that different saints have different realms to oversee. For example, St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things, St. Raphael is the patron saint of the blind and St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers (Personal communication, Mrs. Black, February 8, 2008).
Catholics also believe in purgatory, or a place for purification before the deceased can enter Heaven (). Some Catholics think of it as a middle-ground between heaven and hell (personal communication, Mrs. Black).
A third belief that is fairly unique among Catholics is the doctrine of “transubstantiation” or a belief that the bread used in the Eucharist actually becomes the body of Christ when a priest blesses it (). Catholics partake of the eucharist by taking a wafer of bread during Mass to symbolize their union with Christ and to recognize that he sacrificed his life for them.
The eucharist is one of seven sacraments in the Catholic church. The sacraments are ceremonies that symbolize faith, and are believed to be a means of redemption and of receiving grace. The sacraments are baptism, penance, communion (or holy eucharist), confirmation, marriage and anointing of the sick and holy orders. “Anointing of the sick” used to be called “extreme unction” and was reserved for those near death, but the sacrament now is offered to the sick and the old. Holy orders is a sacrament reserved for those entering the clergy (Catholic Encyclopedia).
The major Roman Catholic holidays are Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter and Christmas.
Ash Wednesday, which was celebrated recently, begins the 40-day period of Lent. During Lent, observant Catholics refrain from eating meat on Fridays. Many also “give up” something else they like, such as chocolate or alcohol, to represent the sacrifices Jesus made (personal communication, Mrs. Black). On Ash Wednesday, the priest blesses ashes made from burnt palms left over from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebration. The priest uses these ashes to mark a cross on parishoners’ heads while reminding them, “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’s entry to the city of Jerusalem, where Jews were celebrating Passover. People welcomed him by spreading palm branches for him to walk on (Luke:19:28-44).
Good Friday is a day on which the most devout Catholics fast and other followers take special care to avoid eating meat. Good Friday commemorates the day Christ was crucified and buried (Luke 23:26-56).
Easter commemorates the resurrection of Christ. On that day, the Bible says, several women set out to anoint Christ’s body but found that the tomb was empty. Angels appeared and told them that Christ has died. The resurrection was taken as proof of Christ’s divinity (John 20, Acts:1:1-12).
Christmas, of course, marks the birth of Christ. Many Catholics begin the celebration the night before, with elaborate feasts, often consisting of seven different kinds of fish. They then go to midnight Mass. Christmas Day is a day for celebration and the exchange of gifts.
The official head of the Catholic Church is the Pope. St. Peter was considered the first leader of the church, however the idea of “pope” had no yet arrived during his lifetime so he never had the formal title (). Historians consider the Roman bishop Leo I the first pope. He led the church from 440-461 A.D. (). The current pope is Benedict XVI. He succeeded Pope John Paul II who died in 2005. The election of the former German cardinal, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was met with mixed reaction among Catholics worldwide (Mickens, para. 6).
Cardinals make up the next level of church leadership. One of their jobs is to elect the pope from among their own ranks in a highly secretive meeting that can last for weeks.
Below cardinals are archbishops, who each head a diocese. A diocese is a geographic group of churches. Next comes bishops, priests and deacons. Deacons are ordained into service to the church, but are not priests (Faulk, para. 1-3). They assist in the mass, helps distribute the eucharist, preaches and reads to the parish passages of the Gospel, which comprises the first four books of the Bible.
Site Visit
St. Mary Magdalen Church
For this report I visited St. Mary Magdalen Church in Oakville, Conn. It is a small Catholic parish that is affiliated with a grammar school that shares its name. The school is about a quarter mile away from the church and many congregants send their children there. The church and school are named after a female disciple of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that Mary Magdalen was there when Christ was crucified and that she was the first person to see him when he rose from the dead.
Both the parish and school are run under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Hartford. The church sanctuary is in a yellowed brick building with stained glass windows in the center of the small town. It has about 40 worn pews and a medium-sized altar with a crucifix and two podiums. There were two confessionals along one of the sanctuary’s side walls. On the opposite side there are more than 100 red votive candles and a money box with a slot in the top. Parishioners can make a donation in the box and then light a candle.
There is a choir loft, but there is no singing group. Instead, there is one singer, who I was told has been singing in the church for more than 30 years. The songs were not very upbeat and most people in the church hummed along or mouthed the words, but no one really sang like they do in other churches I have been to, such as Baptist churches.
The church service followed a set order and included prayers such as the Our Father, which everyone recited together. At one point, congregants were told to offer each other “a sign of peace,” and everyone turned to the people next to them and hugged them or shook their hand. It was the only time people in the church interacted with each other. The priest broke from his script at one point after portions of the Gospel were read. This part of the service is called the “homily” () and it is when the priest addresses the congregation, delivering comments on the scripture or on timely issues, such as, in this case, a sudden and severe illness that struck a popular parishioner.
Parishoner Interview
Maryann Black
One of the members of St. Mary Magdalen Church is Maryann Black. She has been going to this church for almost 50 years and said she finds comfort in the traditions of the Catholic Mass and in seeing familiar faces. She was baptized, confirmed and married in the church, and had her daughter confirmed there, too.
Mrs. Black describes herself as more of a “cafeteria Catholic.” She doesn’t subscribe to all of the Catholic beliefs and rules and she often misses Sunday services, but she takes the parts of the religion that are meaningful to her and makes them her own. For example, Mrs. Black doesn’t believe that Catholics who get divorced and then remarry should be excommunicated. She also believes that priests should be allowed get married, even though the church doesn’t allow it. Even though she disagrees with these aspects of the religion, she shares the core faith of Catholicism.
Mrs. Black said communion is the most meaningful part of the service. This is when Catholics receive a wafer or bread that has been blessed by the priest. It is supposed to represent the body of Christ and some believe that when the priest blesses the bread, he transforms it literally into the body of Christ. The tradition – which is one of the seven sacraments of the religion – is meaningful to Mrs. Black because people who share the same beliefs as she does have been partaking in communion for thousands of years. “It makes me feel connected to the past. It makes me feel connected to people who were from Christ’s era and that makes me feel part of something bigger than I am,” she said. “Catholics all over the world do the same thing every Sunday. Even if their services are in Italian or Polish or some other language, communion is the one thing that is the same.”
Catholic vs. Islamic Faiths
With 1.5 billion followers, Islam is the worlds second largest religion. Its beliefs, customs and traditions are very different from those of Catholicism.
Followers of both faiths believe in the existence of Jesus Christ. However, unlike Catholics, Muslims don’t believe in him as the savior and son of God and they do not believe he was crucified and they do not believe his sacrifice provides assurance of salvation. Muslims believe he was one of many prophets sent by their god, Allah. For Muslims, Muhammed is the most important and most revered of those prophets.
Another difference between the faiths is their use of holy tests. For Catholics, the major holy text is the Bible (both New Testament and Old Testament). Muslims’ primary holy text is the Qu’ran, although they also follow early versions of the New Testament as the authority on the life of Christ, although they believe Catholics corrupted the text over time. (Islam vs. Christianity, para. 4).
There are a number of other differences in the religions. For example, Friday is the Muslim holy day, while Sunday is the holy day for Catholics and other Christians.
There are similarities, too. For example, in each faith followers believe in a single god, both believe Jesus was born to a virgin, both believe in angels and demons and both believe in predestination (Comparison of, chart).
Conclusion
Catholicism is continually evolving as its values and core beliefs are constantly being reinterpreted by the pope, who has discretion to issue papal decrees.
For example, the doctrine of the sacraments wasn’t instituted until the year 1439. The Apocrypha was not considered a holy scripture until 1546. The Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception was first proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854. None of those practices and doctrines were in effect at the time of Christ (Silva, para. 5).
Changing technology now calls for new interpretation of the church’s rules. The Bible offers no guidance in how to handle modern issues such as cloning, stem-cell research and other contemporary issues
Already, the church faces a challenge in maintaining its ranks. The number of priests, parishes and parishioners has been declining since 1990. Some suggest that the decline might be attributed to the clergy sexual-abuse scandal that plagued the diocese but others point to other reasons such as bishops’ lack of managerial skills and a tendency of younger generations to be less religiously observant (Grossman & DeBarros).
If history is any indication, the resilient Catholic church will respond by reinterpreting its fundamental beliefs to make them applicable in modern times. Catholic beliefs, customs, traditions and practices of Catholics will continue to evolve under Pope Benedict. The denomination will likely evolve in response to social and technological advances in order for the church to remain relevant in the future.
References
Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2008 from New Advent Web site: .
Catholicism – Sacraments, Contender Ministries (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2008 from Contender Ministries Web site: .
Comparison of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Religion facts: just the fasts on world religions (n.d.). Retrieved February 5, 2008 from Religion Facts Web site: .
Faulk, E., Who is the deacon? Retrieved February 5, 2008 from the World Wide Web at .
Grossman, C.L. and DeBarros, A. (2004, November 11). Church struggles with change, USA Today, p. B1.
Islam vs. Christianity, All About Religion (n.d.). Retrieved February 5, 2008 from .
Major religions of the world ranked by number of adherents (n.d.). Retrieved February 5, 2008 from .
Mickens, R., Pope Benedict IVI’s emerging papacy: A service to joy; St. Anthony Messenger (February, 2006). Retrieved February 6, 2008 from American Catholic Web site: Messenger/Feb2006/Feature1.asp.
Silva, K., The evolving church of Rome, Apprising ministries: Awakening to the light of scripture (2006), retrieved February 6, 2008 from the World Wide Web at archives/2006/the_evolving_ch.html.
Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry
I have taken on more at work (not by choice) and have this assignment due in two week and do not think I will have time to research and find visit a place of worship, can anyone help???
Submit your World Religions Report. For this project you will choose a religion that is not your own and then visit a place of worship and interview a person of that faith. You will report your findings in an informative 2000-2500 word paper. In addition to the site visit
and interview you will compare and contrast this religion with at least one other religion you are familiar with through this class.
• Your World Religions Report should be 2000-2500 words in length, formatted according to APA guidelines, and contain the following elements:
1. Introduction of the religion
2. Name, location and review of the site.
3. Interview summary
4. Comparing and contrasting with another religion
5. Conclusion
6. References
• Post as an attachment.
Feb 27-March 5 – Panama City, Florida
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