CATHOLIC CHURCH, the universal Church, the whole body of true believers in Christ; but the term is often used as equivalent to the Roman or Western Church.
Like most other words used in ecclesi ology, the term Catholic was borrowed at first from the New Testament. It occurs in some editions of the Greek original, in the titles prefixed to the Epistles of James, I and II Peter, I John, and Jude, and is the word translated "general" in the Authorized Version of the Bible. The first to apply it to the Church was the Apostolic Father Ignatius. When he and his successors used it they meant to in dicate that the Church of which they con stituted a part comprised the main body of believers, and was designed, as it was entitled, to be universal. In this sense the Church was opposed to the sects and separate bodies of heretics who had sep arated themselves from it and were now outside its pale.
When, in the 8th century, the separa tion between the Eastern and Western Churches took place, the latter retained as one of its appellations the term "Cath olic," the Eastern Church being content ed with the word "Orthodox." When the Protestant churches sepa rated from their communion with Rome in the 16th century, those whom they had left naturally regarded them as outside the Catholic pale. They, on the other hand, declined to admit that this was the case, and the term "Catholic Church" is used in the English Liturgy apparently in the sense of all persons making a Christian profession. "More especially we pray Thee for the good estate of the Catholic Church . . . that all who profess and call themselves Christians. . . ." See