Do you know the difference between the catholic Church and the Catholic Church?
In the context of Early Church history, the word catholic does not originally mean the modern Roman Catholic Church. Rather, it refers to the universal Church — the Church of Jesus Christ for all nations.
The word catholic comes from the Koine Greek καθολικός (katholikos, /ka.θo.liˈkos/). It is formed from two parts: κατά (kata, “according to”) and ὅλος (holos, “the whole”). So the basic meaning is “according to the whole,” or more naturally, “universal” or “pertaining to the whole.”
For this reason, the early Church was called catholic: not because it was Roman, but because the gospel was no longer limited to the covenant people of the Old Testament alone. In Christ, the Church became a people gathered from all nations. In this sense, catholic means the universal Church.
This is also why, in the Apostles’ Creed, the line “I believe in the holy catholic Church” does not mean that the apostles believed in the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church, as a distinct later historical institution, did not yet exist in that form.
In modern English, to avoid confusion between the original creedal meaning of catholic and the later institutional meaning of Catholic, people often use expressions such as:
- the catholic church
- the universal church
- the holy catholic church
- the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church
These expressions refer to the universal Church in its historic and creedal sense.
So, in English, catholic in its original creedal meaning refers to the universal Church — the whole body of Christ across time and space. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church refers specifically to the church that is in communion with Rome and under the authority of the Pope.
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