A CONCISE HISTORY

OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE CHURCH IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
 The Church was born out of the Father’s plan, foreshadowed by the call of Abraham.
 The Church began to take shape when Jesus chose the 12 Apostles. The mission of the 12
Apostles is to continue Jesus own mission of teaching and healing(Luke 9:1-6)
 Jesus gathering of the 12 disciples around Him was in preparation for a community of
faith that would outlast His own earthly life.
 He envisioned His little flock as the beginning of a permanent and stable religious
community that would continue his mission of preaching the kingdom of God, surpassing
the religion of Israel.
 Jesus apostles were the ones who linked the first community in Jerusalem with earthly
Jesus after his Resurrection and Ascension.
 They proclaimed Jesus as Risen and Lord by forming a small communities of love and
sharing.
 The first early Christian community in Jerusalem was the Genesis of the Church. It is in
this context that the foundation of the Church is attributed to Christ.
THE MISSION TO THE JEWS AND GENTILES
 Before Christ’s ascension, Jesus instructed His Apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they
would receive the power of the Holy Spirit which would enable them to become His
witnesses not only in Judea and Samaria, but to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
 The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of the Risen Christ was the first gift to the Church after Jesus
Resurrection. Immediately after receiving the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of
Pentecost, the Apostles descended from the upper room and began preaching to the great
crowds of Jews who gathered in the Holy City of Jerusalem for the celebration of the
Feast of Pentecost.
 The effect of the first sermons of Peter and the miracles wrought among the people by the
Apostles that in a short time there were many thousands of converts. As the number of
converts continued to grow, the first deacons, seven in number were appointed to assist
the Apostles in caring for the needs of the community. One of them was Stephen.
 In 39 AD, Peter baptized Cornelius. This event marked the beginning of the missionizing
to the Gentiles.
THE GROWTH OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
 The ever presence of the Spirit of the Risen Christ is seen in the growth and development
of the early Christian community. The first Jewish Christians proclaimed the Christ event
in the beginning within and to the whole people of Israel even beyond Jerusalem (Acts
9:32).
 This is the period of Jewish Christianity centered in Jerusalem. Is was only thereafter that
they carried the Gospel to the Gentiles (Mt. 8:11)
  The first Apostolic council in Jerusalem resolved the conflict: “To become a Christian
does not require circumcision and keeping of the law”. It decided that the Jewish was not
to be obligatory for the Gentile converts as the Judaizers(Jewish Christians who asserted
that observance of the Jewish Law was necessary for salvation) had insisted.
THE ROMAN PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH
 In the first centuries, the infant church experienced a continuous series of local
persecutions at the hands of the Roman ruling authorities.
 The Romans regarded their emperor as Divine and their laws as very sacred. Thus
Christianity became an object of hatred to the Romans because the so called Divine status
of the emperor and reserved its worship in the trinity.
 The first general persecution of Christians by the Romans took place under the emperor
Nero who was responsible for the fire that destroyed a good part of Rome in the year 64,
placed the blame for the fire on the Christians.
THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY THROUGHOUT THE ANCIENT WORLD
 Christianity spread incredibly throughout the ancient world in the first three centuries and
the number of believers increased so that by the 3rd Century the “Christian Church” began
to take shape.
 A religious belief opposed to the doctrines of a Church is called a Heresy. A Church
member who holds belief opposed to the official church teachings or doctrines sa called a
Heretic.
THE CONVERSIONOF EMPEROR CONSTANTINE
 The Edict of Milan, issued by Emperor Constantine in year 313, effectively ended Roman
persecution of the Church by granting freedom of religion to Christians within the
boundaries of the Roman Empire.
 Emperor Constantine who succeeded Diocletian became a convert to Christianity, and
was baptized shortly before his death in 337. While Constantine was still a pagan, he had
a vision in battle which led him to believe that he would be victorious under the sign of
the Cross.

THE CHURCH IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE ANCIENT

AND MEDIEVAL ERAS
THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
 As Emperor Theodosius the Great convoked the Council of Constantinopole, the Council
put Arianism to an end.
 The power of the Roman Empire gradually began to erode and that was the beginning of
the tribal migrations. Those migrations were to last for six hundred years. As the Roman
Empire declined the West was effectively without an Emperor.
POPE LEO WINS A GREAT VICTORY FOR PAPAL PRIMACY AT CHALCEDON
  Leo was one of the greatest of ecclesiastical statesmen and deservedly surnamed “the
great”
 He stood forth as a Pope of commanding character and genius who successfully asserted
authority of papacy.
 Through him, a much more centralized idea of the Church structure was developed in
Rome. The Church was seen as a pyramid.
 He left a papacy that was fully conscious of its prerogatives, a papacy that was ready,
when the empire totally collapsed to embark on one of its greatest historic missions-to
convert the barbarians and incorporate them into a peaceful Christian Society.
THE POPES AND THE CONVERTED FRANKS JOIN FORCES TO CREATE A NEW
UNITY: CHRISTENDOM
 Their new mission was to convert the barbarians and incorporate them into a peaceful
Christian society. Slowly their efforts bore fruits for out of the wreckage of the Roman
Empire in the west a new social order came into being: Christendom.
 Clovis, the king of the Franks (a pagan tribe) was baptized together with his three
thousands of soldiers. As an intelligent ruler, he realized the advantages of having the
same religion as his newly conquered subjects.
 Clovis used the Church to help him bring stability to his subjects; it gave them a
common moral code and a unifying set of religious rituals.
THE CHURCH IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
 The papal and imperial authority, however, faded away as both empire and papacy began
to disintegrate. Constant division and quarrelling among the heirs of Charlemagne was a
major factor in the breakdown of the empire.
 This new empire was considered a continuation of Charlemagne’s thought. It was Otto
the great who consciously revived the tradition of Charlemagne by seeking the crown
from the Pope.
THE CHURCH AND FEUDALISM
 Feudalism is considered as a product of political instability aggravated by the common
peoples feeling of helplessness in the face of savage incursions by warring neighboring
barbarians.
 During this attacks, the poor and powerless people would seek refuge in the castle of a
local landlord – and in the process- make them subservient to this landlord who in turn is
subject to more powerful lords, and who are all under the supreme authority of the king.
BISHOPS AS FEUDAL LORDS
 Bishops became feudal lords and became active participants in the complicated web of
power-play, intrigues and abuses.
 This wealth had given the bishops and abbots an increase of temporal authority which
together with their spiritual authority, they had exercised since the fall of the Roman
Empire. They now had the status of feudal lords.
THE BEGINNINGS OF MONASTIC REFORM
 In Europe’s darkest hour, the monastery of Cluny was founded in the province of
Burgundy in France in the year 909, which had as its goal the revival of the monastic
spirit of St. Benedict of Nursia.
 There was monastic reform for the monasteries of the early Middle Ages for they had not
been immune to the dangers of riches, powers and positions.
 The monastery was one of the two sources of a spiritual renewal which revitalized church
life in less than 150 years; and tis same monastery was a major factor in the creation of
the High Middle Ages ,which ran from shortly after 1150 almost to the end of the 13th
century.
POPE GREOGORY VII’S REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH MAKES THE POPE
SUPREME IN CHRISTENDOM
 Gregory VII also intended to reform the Church’s abuses by issuing a decree prohibiting
lay investiture under the penalty of excommunications.
 Lay investiture was the practice by which a layman would endow a member of the clergy
with political office and power.
 Gregory’s main goal was the elimination of lay investiture and the real power over the
Church in Western Europe would be put back in the hands of the Pope.
 The Gregorian reform also intended to eliminate simony (the practice of buying and
selling church offices) and on enforcing clerical celibacy.
INQUISITIONS
 It was the general tribunal that was started by Innocent III to punish a group of heretics.
 When Innocent III was elected Pope in 1198, he intended to be both the spiritual leader of
Christendom, and its political master as well.
 The inquisition was empowered to call on the civil authorities to help detect and torture
heretical movement.
 Inquisition originated, not with emperors who wanted to use the power of the Church to
crush revolution, but with Churchmen who wanted to use the power of the state in its
most brutal form in order to crush those whose picture of Jesus differed from their own.