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WHAT’S IN A WORD

What does the word ‘Catholic’ mean?

I have adapted this answer from a feature article by Steve Ray which you can find at Catholic Answers at www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0501fea4.asp and at www.catholicconvert.com, Steve Ray’s own website.  He’s a former Evangelical Protestant involved now in full-time teaching in the Catholic Church as a writer and speaker.

The Word Catholic Defined

Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, the combination of two words, kata (concerning), and holos (whole). The word ‘church’ comes from the Greek ekklesia, which means ‘those called out’, as in those summoned out of the world at large to form a distinct society. So the Catholic Church is made up of those called out and gathered into the universal society founded by Christ.

For roughly its first decade of existence, the Church was made up exclusively of Jews in the area of Jerusalem. But as the Church grew and spread across the Roman Empire, it incorporated Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, Romans, freemen, and even slaves – men and women ‘from every tribe and tongue’. By the third century, one out of ten people in the Roman Empire was a Catholic. So the term ‘catholic’ was appropriated to describe the nature of Christ’s mystical body, the Church.

The first recorded use of the word is found in the writings of St Ignatius of Antioch, the second bishop of Antioch after St Peter. St Ignatius is known and revered as an authentic witness to the traditions and practice of the apostles. On his way to Rome, under military escort to the Coliseum, where he would be devoured by lions for his faith, he wrote, ‘You must all follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles. Wherever the bishop appears, let the people be there; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.’

Another early instance of the word ‘catholic’ is associated with St Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of the St John the Apostle. St Polycarp was martyred in the Coliseum in AD 155. In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written at the time of his death, we read, ‘The Church of God that sojourns in Smyrna, to the Church of God that sojourns in Philomelium, and to all the dioceses of the holy and Catholic Church in every place.’

The same book says, ‘Polycarp had finished his prayer, in which he remembered everyone with whom he had ever been acquainted . . . and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world.’ They then gave him up to wild beasts, fire, and, finally, the sword. The epistle then concludes: ‘Now with the apostles and all the just, [Polycarp] is glorifying God and the Father Almighty, and he is blessing our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of our souls, and the Shepherd of the Catholic Church throughout the world.’

So we see that early in the second century, Christians regularly used the word ‘catholic’ as an established description of the Church. From the second century on, we see the term being used consistently by theologians and writers. One can conclude that ‘catholic’ was a very early description of the Church.

St Augustine, in the fourth century, relying on the tradition of the early Church, minces no words in asserting the importance and widespread use of the term: ‘We must hold to the Christian religion and to communication in her Church, which is Catholic, and is called Catholic not only by her own members but even by all her enemies’.

The early usage and importance of the word also can be seen in both the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed. If you were a Christian in the first millennium, you were a Catholic, and if you were a Catholic you recited the Creeds affirming the ‘one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’.

TOUCH THERAPY

Why is touch important?

In St Mark’s Gospel, 5:21-43, a woman who had been ill for 12 years touched the cloak of Jesus and was healed. Jesus was on his way to the home of Jairus, whose 12-year-old daughter was gravely ill. When they got to the house the people said that she was dead. Jesus took the girl by the hand and said, ‘Talitha koum,’ ‘Little girl, get up.’

These are two among many examples of Jesus touching people and healing them.

Each culture has its own ways of showing respect and affection. For example, the Philippines and East Timor both have the ‘mano po.’ This is a form of touching. So is the handshake, which Westerners, more so than Filipinos, I think, use as a form of greeting and/or respect.

A Filipino priest who worked in Chile told me that he could never get used to the custom there of having to shake hands with everyone before leaving a party. Here we don’t leave without the ‘paalam’ of our host but not necessarily of everybody else.

I have come across Filipino men - and men in other countries too - who rarely, if ever, hug or kiss their children. I think that physical gestures of affection are very important in families. Each family has its own practices. Some persons are more ‘physical’ than others, which doesn’t make them more or less loving. But a baby who never gets cuddled, who is never held by someone loving, can die from lack of affection.

I think that most of us know when touching becomes improper or invasive. There are parts of the body that we instinctively protect and respect because of the place they have in God’s plan for marriage and family.

The area of ‘physicality’ is one are where there are cultural variations. But I do believe that a family where there are no outward signs of affection is missing out on something very important. Fathers or mothers who never hug or touch their children can seem very remote.

One of the characteristics of the late Pope John Paul II was his physical way of showing affection to both young and old, men and women. There are countless photos of this, some of them very moving.

What is very important is how the other person understands our gesture. For example, I’ve seen Western priests rejecting the hand of a child offering the ‘mano po,’ the Westerner reading it as a gesture of subservience, the child as a mark of respect. In this case the Western priest is always wrong. In Philippine culture the gesture is one of respect. Recently a friend, a married man who works with us, greeted me on his birthday with the ‘mano po’. I understood his gesture as partly one of respect to me, a priest and co-worker, but more as respect to God through my priesthood. It certainly wasn’t any form of subservience or ‘sipsip’.

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