Catholic
Research papers on Catholicism overview the long-standing Christian religion and discuss any aspect of being Catholic. Research Papers on the history, practices and beliefs of Catholics can be explicated when you order a project from Paper Masters.
Cunningham discusses the evolution of the term "catholic". In ancient Greek it meant "pertaining to the whole". The first known use of it with respect to the Church occurred in a letter of Ignatius of Antioch, one of the so called "Apostolic Fathers" of the early 2nd century; in his usage it meant the Christian Church, taken as a whole, as opposed to the individual Christian communities in places like Ephesus, Corinth, etc. By the early 3rd century the meaning of the term had evolved somewhat; it had come to mean, for those who used it, the true, orthodox Church, the Church that was not heretical or schismatic.
History of Catholicism
The above paragraph mentions two elements that are of great importance to the entire history of Catholicism:
- Catholic Bureaucracy
- Catholic Spiritualism
We shall discuss each of them in turn in a Catholic research paper.
One of the concerns of Ignatius of Antioch is organization: throughout his letters we find pleas to his readers like this, "Submit yourselves to the bishop as to the commandment, and likewise to the presbytery." From the very beginnings the Church was concerned with organization and administration. We can see the seeds of this in Acts and in the Pauline letters; in both of these the Apostle Paul is continually exerting himself to keep the various Christian communities both functioning and orthodox. This concern with organization and administration has never been absent from the Catholic Church. It has been one of its great strengths. It has also been the source of many problems. Throughout its history it has had to counter claims that it is too institutional, too slow to change, too conservative, too much an entrenched bureaucracy, too much concerned with institutional matters rather than with a living, vital spirituality.