CATHOLIC CHURCH, a phrase signify ing universal Church, the whole body of true believers in Christ; but the term is commonly used as equivalent to the Roman or Western Church. Like most other words used in ecclesiology, the term Catholic was borrowed at first from the New Testament. It occurs in some editions of the Greek original — including that issued in connection with the last revision — in the titles prefixed to the Epistles of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1 John and Jude, and is the word translated °general° in the King James Bible. The first to apply it to the Church was the Apostolic Father Ignatius. When he and his successors used it they meant to indicate that the Church of which they constituted 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 separated themselves from it and were now outside its pale. When, in the 9th century,
the separation between the Eastern and West ern churches took place, the latter retained as one of its appellations the term °Catholic,° the Eastern Church being contented with the word °Orthodox° still used by the Russian emperors in their politico-ecclesiastical manifestos. When the Protestant churches separated 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 pro fession.