ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, the community of Christians throughout the world who recognize the spiritual supremacy of the pope or bishop of Rome. and are united together by the profession of the same faith. and the participation of the same sacra ments. The subject will be most conveniently treated by considering under separaK •heads the history of this great Christian community; its doctrinal and disciplinary system; and finally, its organization and constitutional forms, especially as affected by the decrees of the late council of the Vatican, and by other doctrinal constitutions of _recent years.
Although a few other points of doctrinal difference separate the Roman church from the Greek, Russian, and oriental communions, yet the most palpable ground of division lies in the claim of supremacy in spiritual jurisdiction on the part of the Roman bishop. The history of the Roman church, therefore, in relation to the ancient oriental churches, is, in fact, the history of this claim to supremacy. In the minds of Roman Catholics, the claim of supremacy on the part of the bishop of Rome rests on the belief that Christ conferred on Peter a "primacy of jurisdiction"; that Peter fixed his see and died at Rome (a position which some Protestant historians have called in question altogether); and thus, that the bishops of Rome, as successors of Peter, have succeeded to his pre rogatives of supremacy. In this light Catholic historians read the facts of the early history of the church—and they trace to this acknowledgment of the superiority of that see, the numerous references to Rome on matters of doctrine or discipline; the appeals from other churches, even those of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople; the depo sitions or nominations of bishops, examination and condemnation of heresies, of which the first five centuries, especially the 4th and 5th, present examples, but in which Protest ant historians only recognize the natural result of the political and social superiority of Rome as the capital of the Roman empire. The letters of pope Leo the great show beyond question that the bishops of Rome, in the commencement of the 5th c., claimed to speak and act with supreme authority; and the first direct challenge to this claim was made by the patriarch of Constantinople, Acacius, and led to a schism of many years, which, however, terminated in the humiliation of the younger see. In all the contro versies upon the incarnation—the Arian, the Nestorian, the Entychian, the Monotliclite not only was the orthodoxy of Rome never impeached, but she even supplied at every crisis a rallying point for the orthodox of every church. It was so, again, in the Icono clast controversy; and although Constantinople, in the time of Gregory the great and .again of Nicholas I., renewed the struggle for supremacy, or even equality, the superior position of Rome continued to be recognized. The separation of the Greek church and her dependencies, under the patriarch Michael Cerularius in the year 1054, was but a narrowing of the territorial jurisdiction of Rome; and within that portion of the church remained faithful, it even enhanced the dignity of Rome, and widened her pre rogatives. The abandonment of Italy by the emperors to its fate under the invasion of
the barbarians, led to the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the popes; and the social disorganization of Europe combined with the spiritual authority of the Roman bishop to bring about the general recognition of his authority throughout the kingdoms of Europe as an arbiter in the temporal relations of sovereigns with their subjects, and of sovereigns toward each other. This extraordinary temporal authority was at once the consequence and the support of his acknowledged spiritual power; and even Protest ants have recognized the Roman church of the mediaeval period as absorbing in itself .almost the whole of European Christendom, and as the only public (even though they believe it degenerate and corrupt) representative of the church in the west. The tem porary withdrawal of the papal residence from Rome to Avignon brought with it a notable diminution, at least, of the tempt ral power of the popes, which was still further weakened by the long western schism, by the conflicts of the rival pontiffs, and the scan dals which arose therefrom. The modern political institutions which then began to break upon the world so modified the public relations of church and state as by degrees to undo the condition of society in which the temporal power of the popes had its foundation. The great revolution of the 16th c. completed the process.
Nor was the revolution with which the popes thus found themselves face to face without its influence in the external history of the Roman church. The defections con sequent on the reformation, and at first numerous and formidable, received a. check. The great council of Trent did more to systematize, to define, and to present in popular form the doctrinal belief of Rome than had been accomplished by the united efforts of the schoolmen of the three centuries which preceded the reformation; while the decrees of reformation which it enacted, and still more the schemes of local and individual reform which it originated, and to which it gave the impulse as well as the example, tended to bring about an active internal reform. The latter half of the 16th c. was a period of new life in the Roman church. The celebration of local synods, the establish ment of episcopal seminaries, the organization of schools, and other provision for reliaious instruction—above all, the foundation of active relin-ious orders of both sexes— had theeffect of arresting the progress of Protestantism, which in many countries had been at first rapid and.41eCisive; and lord Macaulay has traced out with curious minute ness the line which marks in the several kingdoms the origin and the progress of this religious reaction.
From the end of the 16th c., therefore, the position of the Roman Catholic church, •mpecially in her external relations, may be regarded as settled. The local distribution of the rival churches in the world has hardly been altered, except by migration, since that time. But in her relations to the state, the Roman church has since passed through .a long and critical struggle, which is detailed under the heads GALLICAN CHURCII,