"Catholic" but not "Roman Catholic"?

J. Neil Daniels

The objection to the term “Roman Catholic” as a Protestant invention collapses under the weight of the Roman Church’s own usage. Papal encyclicals, conciliar documents, and ecclesiastical publications have long employed the phrase without hesitation. Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis (1950) explicitly states that “the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing.”¹ Such terminology is not the product of polemical Protestantism, but an established form of self-identification within the Roman communion. The term “Roman Catholic” is not a derogatory label imposed from without, but a designation historically and officially used to distinguish that particular ecclesial body from other groups that also lay claim to the name Catholic.

The vocabulary of the Roman Church is saturated with the adjective Roman: Roman Pontiff, Roman Curia, Holy Roman Church, Roman Rite, Sacred Roman Rota, and so forth. Cardinals are styled as members of the Holy Roman Church, and diocesan documents regularly refer to the authority of the Apostolic See of Rome. To take offense at the term Roman Catholic is to object to language employed consistently by the very institution it describes. The insistence on being called simply Catholic often carries with it the implicit polemical claim that no other communion has any legitimate share in catholicity. Obviously, such an assertion is rightly contested by both Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. As such, in the interest of theological clarity, the term Roman Catholic functions as a necessary and historically grounded distinction.

Other official church documents besides Humani Generis have also employed the term Roman Catholic. For example, Pope Pius XI’s Divini Illius Magistri (1929) uses the phrase to refer to the Church as a whole.² Vatican documents and ecclesial correspondences have likewise included the phrase when distinguishing the Church in communion with Rome from other ecclesial bodies, especially in ecumenical or diplomatic contexts. Though the Church ordinarily prefers the title Catholic Church in its formal doctrinal texts, Roman Catholic is used in official discourse when clarity or context demands precision.

It is true that the bishops at the First Vatican Council resisted inserting the phrase Roman Catholic Church as the formal title of the Church into conciliar texts, though this apparently reflected a desire for dogmatic clarity rather than a repudiation of the term itself.³ In sum, Roman Catholic remains a legitimate and officially sanctioned expression, appearing in papal encyclicals, curial communications, and ecclesiastical usage. It is not a Protestant caricature, but a designation the Roman Church has employed freely and without embarrassment. Those who object to its use are, in effect, protesting their own communion’s historical and official language.

¹ Humani Generis, no. 27.

² Divini Illius Magistri, 1929, para. 48.

³ EWTN, “How Did the Catholic Church Get Her Name?” https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/teachings/how-did-the-catholic-church-get-her-name-120