The Universal Church

In both the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, we profess that we believe in the Holy catholic Church. This creed is also proclaimed by the Orthodox and most main-line Protestant churches. Some of the more anti-Catholic denominations have changed the word catholic to universal to show that they are church but have nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church.

The word catholic comes to us from the Greek καθολικός (katholikos) which means universal. Changing the word catholic in the creeds to universal does not change the meaning of the creed one iota, but it does say something about the denominations who do it. It is oxymoronic to proclaim to be part of the universal church, while at the same time being anti-universal in belief and action. It is akin to me proclaiming that I am French even though I have no French ancestry, do not speak French, and have never stepped foot in France. They are claiming something, that by their beliefs and actions, they are not.

The first recorded time that the Church was referred to as catholic was by St. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, a student of St. John, the beloved Disciple.

“Wherever the Bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of people also be; even as; wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” – St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, AD 107.

What does it mean to be universal to the Church?

“universal /yoo͞″nə-vûr′səl/ - Done, produced, or shared by all members of the class or group under consideration."

When we apply this meaning to the universal Church, we are talking about a church that believes, teaches, and practices the same faith everywhere, for everyone. Using this definition, the only Church that can honestly claim to be the universal Church is the Catholic Church. Notice that I did not say the Roman Catholic Church. That is because the Roman Catholic Church is part of the Catholic Church, not its entirety.

We believe to be part of the Catholic Church a church must be in union with Rome. St. Peter was the head of the Church in Rome, thus establishing the primacy of that Church. Jesus gave Peter primacy among the Disciples which means his sea has primacy among the rest. To reject this primacy is to reject the authority Jesus gave to the early church.

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the sects of the Catholic Church. A sect is not the same thing as a denomination. Denomination means apart from the whole. Protestants have denominations because they are apart from the whole, meaning the catholic Church. None of the denominations believe, teach, or practice the same thing. There is not even unity within the denominations themselves. When such disunity becomes apparent, the churches will usually split and form new denominations.

The Catholic Church has six different liturgical rites and twenty-four different churches under the umbrella of Catholicism. A liturgical rite refers to how a church worships together, in other words how they celebrate Mass together. They all share the same faith, teach the same beliefs, and recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The six rites and twenty-four churches that fall under the catholic umbrella are:

The Latin Rite

1: Roman Catholic Church

The Alexandrian Rite

2: Eritrean Catholic Church

3: Coptic Catholic Church

4: Ethiopian Catholic Church

The Antiochene or West Syrian Rite

5: Maronite Catholic Church

6: Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

7: Syriac Catholic Church

The Armenian Rite

8: Armenian Catholic Church

The East Syrian/ Chaldean Rite

9: Chaldean Catholic Church

10: Syro-Malabar Catholic Church

The Constantinopolitan (or Byzantine) Rite

11: Albanian Catholic Church

12: Melkite-Greek Catholic Church

13: Romanian Catholic Church

14: Byzantine Church of Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia (Križevci Catholic Church)

15: Bulgarian-Greek Catholic Church

16: Macedonian Catholic Church

17: Russian Catholic Church

18: Belarusian Catholic Church

19: Greek-Byzantine Catholic Church

20: Italo-Albanian Catholic Church

21: Hungarian-Greek Catholic Church

22: Ruthenian Catholic Church (Byzantine Catholic Church of America)

23: Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church

24: Slovak Catholic Church

All of these churches believe, teach, and practice the same faith and because they all fall under the primacy of the Bishop of Rome they can be found everywhere, for all people. The Catholic Church is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church professed in the creed.

On the contrary, there are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations that do not believe, teach, or practice that same things. Their beliefs differ mainly on their individual interpretations of the bible. They are anything but universal. Most, but not all, share the same Sacrament of Baptism and therefore are part of the Body of Christ, but then reject the Church Christ established for one a man who disagreed with the Church established. For example:

“The Lutheran church –1517 AD. Founded by a man, Martin Luther, an ex-monk of the Roman Catholic Church, who violated his sacred vows of both obedience and celibacy. Luther created a brand-new protestant bible by throwing out 7 books of the bible he personally didn’t agree with, and added the word “alone” after the word “faith”, in Romans 3:28, in order to make the verse agree with his view of what it should have said (faith alone). This alteration of sacred scripture directly contradicts James 2:24. Luther also called the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon”, and he said that the Pope was the antichrist (someone who denies that Jesus is God).

The Anabaptist church – 1520 AD. Founded by a man, Nicholas Storch, and Thomas Münzer, former Lutherans. The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism and were denounced by Martin Luther. This “reformation of the reformation” is proof positive that the doctrine of “scripture alone” is false. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been more than one interpretation of scripture and no need for an anabaptist church that totally ignores Luke 18:15-17.

The Mennonite church – 1525 AD. Founded by men, Grebel, Mantz, and Blaurock, in Switzerland, as an offshoot of the Anabaptists. It derived its name from Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest.

The Baptist church – 1606 AD. Founded by a man, John Smyth, who launched it in Amsterdam, as an offshoot of the Mennonites. Baptists reject infant baptism as contrary to the Scriptures, and accept immersion as the sole valid mode of baptism.

The Amish church – 1693 AD. Founded by a man, Jacob Amman, a Swiss Bishop. Also, a breakaway from the Mennonite church. His followers were called the “Amish.” While similar to the Mennonites, they differ in language, dress, and interpretation of the Bible.

The Anglican Church – 1534 AD. Founded by a man, King Henry VIII, as a direct result of the Pope not granting him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Many a Catholic priest was tortured and killed as a result of the very aroused Henry trying to find another young maiden for his pleasure. The Queen of England is the current head of the Anglican Church.

The Presbyterian church – 1560 AD. Founded by a man, John Knox, in Scotland. Based on the personal beliefs of a man, John Calvin, which include predestination, no free will in humans, and total depravity in mankind.

The Congregationalist church (The Puritans) – 1583 AD. Founded by a man, Robert Brown, in Holland. Broke away from the Church of England. Brown rejected, among other things, the authority of bishops. One Puritan, named Oliver Cromwell, got involved in the English Civil War, and overthrew Charles I in 1646. Cromwell and the British government were also responsible for the subjugation and killing of hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics, who were also forbidden to say Mass, wear green, and sing patriotic songs.

The Unitarian church – 1568 AD. Started in Poland, but died out. It was soon replaced by a man, John Biddle, in 1645 AD. The Unitarians do not believe in the Trinitarian God.

The Episcopalian church – 1784 AD. Founded by a man, Samuel Seabury in the American Colonies & is an offshoot of the Church of England. They believe in women priests and bishops, artificial birth control, and they accept homosexuality as being normal and good in spite of Romans 1:26-27. The Episcopalian Church is currently undergoing a 21rst Century reformation of itself, with individual congregations breaking away from their own hierarchy over the question of scriptural inerrancy concerning homosexuality. Another proof that the doctrine of “scripture alone” without an infallible Magisterium to interpret it based on sacred Tradition is false. It seems that the Episcopal Church is more concerned with going along with the current trend of society than it is in being true to what scripture actually says about homosexuality.

The Quakers – 1647 AD. Founded by a man, George Fox, in England. Also called The Society of Friends, although they originally called themselves “Children of Light”. They acknowledge absolutely no authority higher than what Fox called the “inner light” of personal revelation.

The Methodist church – 1739 AD. Founded by men, John and Charles Wesley, in England. The Wesley brothers were originally Anglican ministers who started a revival movement that eventually became Methodism. Yet another reformation of the reformation.

The Evangelical church – 1803 AD. Founded by a man, Jacob Albright, originally a Methodist, who broke away and founded his own church.

The Mormon church – 1829 AD. Also call themselves “Latter Day Saints”, was founded by a man, Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, in 1829. They are polytheists who someday hope to become a god of their own planet. after death. They believe that God the Father was a good Mormon on another planet and was so great that he became the god of our planet. They also believe that Jesus and lucifer were brothers on that former planet.

The Seventh Day Adventists – 1831 AD. Founded by a man, William Miller in New York. Based on his study of the prophecy of Daniel 8:14, Miller calculated that Jesus would return to earth sometime between 1843 and 1844. This prediction is in spite of the fact that the bible says that no one will be able to predict when the Second Coming of Jesus will be (Matthew 24:36).

Jehovah’s Witnesses – 1872 AD. Founded by a man, Charles Taze Russell, as the “Millennial Dawnists.” In 1931, Judge Rutherford, his successor, decided that henceforth they would be called, Witnesses of Jehovah, or Jehovah’s Witness. The JWs deny the divinity of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and refuse to take blood transfusions.

The Christian Scientists – 1879 AD. Founded by a woman, Mary Baker Eddy in Massachusetts. They also refuse blood transfusions and medical care, in spite of the fact that the gospel writer Luke was a physician.

Assemblies of God – 1901 AD. Founded by a man, Charles Parham, in Topeka Kansas. They believe in the Baptism of the Spirit, miracle healings, and speaking in tongues.” - Richy@houstonitd.com. “Who Started Your Church? - Catholic Bible 101: Your Guide to Catholic Faith and Scriptures.” Catholic Bible 101 | Your Guide to Catholic Faith and Scriptures, 10 Oct. 2024, catholicbible101.com/who-started-your-church/.

In reading about these mainstream Protestant churches, two things are blatantly obvious. The first is that none of them believe, teach, or practice the same thing. Second is that they all were created by someone other than Jesus when they didn’t agree with the Church Jesus instituted. By definition, none of these churches can consider themselves part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Pope Benedict XVI once said that all Christian groups, which do not recognize a properly ordained bishop in their ecclesiastical outlook, cannot claim the status of a church, but can be defined as “ecclesial communities”, i.e. gatherings of Christians enjoying ecclesiality to some degree, but lacking the fullness of the blessings of being a church.

And that leads us to the Eastern Orthodox, with whom we share the faith. The Orthodox were originally under the catholic umbrella, but separated from it in the great schism of 1054 over a series of ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes. There were many reasons for the split, but the two predominant reasons were over the primacy of the Pope and the fact that he added the Filioque clause to the Nicene Creed by his own authority to combat the growing Arian heresy.

The Eastern Orthodox Church consists of several self-governing churches, namely, the four ancient Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the four Patriarchates of more recent origin, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Catholicosate of Georgia, and the churches of Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia. It also includes the autonomous Orthodox churches of Finland and Estonia. The Eastern Orthodox diaspora consists of churches in the Americas, Asia, Australia, Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

Self-governing or autonomous means that each of these churches has its own head, called a Patriarch, which is equivalent of the Pope. The Patriarch of Constantinople is called the Ecumenical Patriarch, and has a position as "first among equals". They consider themselves part of the Church established by Jesus but are not in unity with what we refer to as the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox further separate themselves mostly by ethnicity. We have Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, etc. To be accepted into those churches you have to be adopted into their religion, i.e. you have to be baptized Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc. Someone who is Greek Orthodox wouldn’t view someone who is Russian Orthodox as being part of the same church in the same way that a Roman Catholic sees a Coptic Catholic.

In this way, the Eastern Orthodox fail to be universal because they do not believe, teach, or practices the same faith everywhere, for everyone. There have been great strides to reunite the east and the west and there is real hope that we will see it happen. One thing is for sure. If we do not reunite ourselves in this world we all will be reunited in the next.

Then the Universal Church will all be catholic again.