World distribution of Christianity, c. 2000.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Each major division of Christianity—Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism—is treated in a separate article where its history, tenets, and practices receive a fuller exposition than this article can give them and where a bibliography on the denominations of the division is supplied. The purpose here is to provide an overview of the principal divisions and thus to set the articles about the individual traditions into their proper context. Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholics in the world outnumber all other Christians combined. They are organized in an intricate system that spans the structure of the church from the local parish to the papacy. Under the central authority of the papacy, the church is divided into dioceses, whose bishops act in the name and by the authority of the pope but retain administrative freedom within their individual jurisdictions. Similarly, the parish priest stands as the executor of papal and diocesan directives. Alongside the diocesan organization and interacting with it is a chain of orders, congregations, and societies; all of them are, of course, subject to the pope, but they are not directly responsible to the bishop as are the local parishes. It would, however, be a mistake to interpret the polity of the Roman Catholic Church in so purely an organizational manner as this, for Roman Catholic polity rests upon a mandate that is traced to the action of Jesus Christ himself, when he invested St. Peter and, through Peter, his successors with the power of the keys in the church. Christ is the invisible head of his church, and by his authority the pope is the visible head.
This interpretation of the origin and authority of the church determines both the attitude of Roman Catholicism to the rest of Christendom and its relation to the social order. Believing itself to be the true church of Jesus Christ on earth, it cannot deal with other Christian traditions as equals without betraying its very identity. This does not mean, however, that anyone outside the visible fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church cannot be saved, nor does it preclude the presence of “vestiges of the church” in the other Christian bodies. At the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church strongly affirmed its ties with its “separated brethren” both in Eastern Orthodoxy and in the several Protestant churches. As the true church of Christ on earth, the Roman Catholic Church also believes itself responsible for the proclamation of the will of God to organized society and to the state. The church asserts its fundamental obligation, as the “light of the world” to which the revelation of God has been entrusted, to address the meaning of that revelation and of the moral law to the nations and to work for a social and political order in which both revelation and the moral law can function.
The understanding that Roman Catholicism has of itself, its interpretation of the proper relation between the church and the state, and its attitude toward other Christian traditions are all based upon Roman Catholic doctrine. In great measure this doctrine is identical to that confessed by orthodox Christians of every label and consists of the Bible, the dogmatic heritage of the ancient church as laid down in the historic creeds and in the decrees of the ecumenical councils, and the theological work of the great doctors of the faith in the East and West. If, therefore, the presentation of the other Christian traditions in this article compares them with Roman Catholicism, this comparison has a descriptive rather than a normative function, for, to a considerable degree, Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy have often defined themselves in relation to Roman Catholicism. In addition, most Christians past and present do have a shared body of beliefs about God, Christ, and the way of salvation.
Roman Catholic doctrine is more than this shared body of beliefs, as is the doctrine of each of the Christian groups. It is necessary here to mention only the three distinctive Roman Catholic doctrines that achieved definitive formulation during the 19th and 20th centuries: the infallibility of the pope, the Immaculate Conception, and the bodily Assumption of the Virgin Mary. On most other major issues of Christian doctrine, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are largely in agreement, while Protestantism differs from both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism on several issues. For example, Roman Catholic theology defines and numbers the sacraments differently from Orthodox theology, but, over against Protestantism, Roman Catholic doctrine insists, as does Eastern Orthodoxy, upon the centrality of the seven sacraments—baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, anointing of the sick, penance, matrimony, and holy orders—as channels of divine grace. The Eastern churches
Separated from the West, the Orthodox churches of the East have developed their own way for more than half of Christian history. Orthodoxy here refers to the two great bodies of Christianity that use the term to characterize their theologies and liturgies: the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy and the churches that constitute the so-called Oriental Orthodox communion. Eastern Orthodoxy
Each of the national churches of Eastern Orthodoxy is autonomous. The “ecumenical patriarch” of Constantinople is not the Eastern pope but merely the first in honour among equals in jurisdiction. Eastern Orthodoxy interprets the primacy of St. Peter and therefore that of the pope similarly, denying the right of the pope to speak and act for the entire church by himself, without a church council and without his episcopal colleagues. Because of this polity, Eastern Orthodoxy has identified itself more intimately with national cultures and with national regimes than has Roman Catholicism. Therefore, the history of church-state relations in the East has been very different from the Western development, because the church in the East has sometimes tended toward the extreme of becoming a mere instrument of national policy while the church in the West has sometimes tended toward the extreme of attempting to dominate the state. The history of ecumenical relations between Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism during the 20th century was also different from the history of Protestant–Roman Catholic relations. While keeping alive their prayer for an eventual healing of the schism with the Latin church, some of the Orthodox churches have established communion with Anglicanism and with the Old Catholic Church and have participated in the conferences and organizations of the World Council of Churches.
Doctrinal authority for Eastern Orthodoxy resides in the Scriptures, the ancient creeds, the decrees of the first seven ecumenical councils, and the traditions of the church. In addition to the issues mentioned in the discussion of Roman Catholicism above, the chief dogmatic difference between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought is on the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son, or the Filioque.
But “Orthodoxy,” in the Eastern use of the term, means primarily not a species of doctrine but a species of worship. The Feast of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Lent celebrates the end of the Iconoclastic Controversy and the restoration to the churches of the icons, which are basic to Orthodox piety. In Eastern Orthodox churches (as well as in the Eastern rite churches, which have reestablished communion with Rome), the most obvious points of divergence from general Western practice are the Byzantine liturgy, the right of the clergy to marry before ordination—though bishops may not be married—and the administration to the laity of both bread and wine in the Eucharist at the same time by the method of intinction. Oriental Orthodoxy