Roman Catholic Church

Until the break with the Eastern Church in 1054 in the Great Schism and the break with the Protestant Churches in the 16th century, it is impossible to separate the history of the Roman Catholic Church from the history of Christianity in general. The distinct Roman Catholic view of history, however, is its claim to unbroken continuity with the Church of the New Testament and its consequent acceptance of the major developments in doctrine and structure that it has assimilated since then. The great shifts in culture, theology, and discipline within Christian history are not necessarily viewed, therefore, as deviations from some absolute norm of the apostolic Church. They tend to be viewed, rather, as expressions in different and more elaborate ways of impulses that were already present from the beginning.

The first great change in Christian history was its spread from Palestine to the rest of the Mediterranean world in the first few decades after Jesus’ death (see Conversion of Europe). Within a short time Christianity had adopted the language and philosophical vocabulary of the Graeco-Roman world to express its message, and it also adopted some procedural and organizational practices of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the characteristically Christian figure of the bishop had clearly emerged by the middle of the 2nd century. The recognition of the Church by Emperor Constantine in 313 consolidated these developments and gave the Church support in the great doctrinal controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries that determined orthodoxy. By the time of the 5th-century pope Leo I, the Bishop of Rome was claiming and to some extent was exercising a primacy of leadership over the other Churches.

The decline of the Roman Empire in the West and the assimilation of the Germanic peoples into the Church had great impact on all aspects of religious life, including a diminution of episcopal authority from the 7th to the 11th centuries. Under the leadership of a reformed papacy in the late 11th century, episcopal rights were restored amid the bitter Investiture Controversy waged by the papacy with various rulers in Europe. As a result, the papacy emerged as the acknowledged leader of the Western Church, possessing a centralizing and increasingly efficient Curia. Canon law was revitalized and implemented, with an emphasis on the role of the papacy in governing the Church. These developments, and the events of the Crusades, made reconciliation with the Eastern Church more difficult after the Great Schism of 1054.

Partly in reaction to the changes resulting from the Investiture Controversy, the Protestant Reformation broke out in the 16th century. The Catholic Church responded during the era of the Counter-Reformation by reaffirming the traditions that had developed through the ages and especially by emphasizing those elements that were most under attack, such as Scholastic theology, the efficacy of the sacraments, and the primacy of the pope.

The attacks launched against the Church by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution were largely responsible for the defensive postures struck by Catholicism long afterwards. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) tried to reverse this trend. Although the changes introduced by the council engendered considerable confusion for some years, the Church has remained fundamentally stable and flourishing in many parts of the world. Nevertheless, in a symbolic gesture during the Church’s observance of the Great Jubilee, the holy year 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a remarkable sweeping apology for sins of the Church over the past 2,000 years.