Catholic Catechism; The Teachings of the Catholic Church

[The Church] has received the keys of the Kingdom of heaven so that,in her, sins may be forgiven through Christ's blood and the Holy Spirit's action...

812 - Only faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties from her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that also speak clearly to human reason. As the First Vatican Council noted, the "Church herself, with her marvelous propagation, eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good, her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine mission." ²⁵⁸

816 - "The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it....This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."

The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism explains: "For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God." ²⁶⁸

Toward Unity

820 - "Christ bestowed unity on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time." ²⁷⁷ Christ always gives his Church the gift of unity, but the Church must always pray and work to maintain, reinforce, and perfect the unity that Christ wills for her. This is why Jesus himself prayed at the hour of his Passion, and does not cease praying to his Father, for the unity of his disciples: "That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, . . . so that the world may know that you have sent me." ²⁷⁸ The desire to recover the unity of all Christians is a gift of Christ and a call of the Holy Spirit. ²⁷⁹

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 - How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? ³³⁵ Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it. ³³⁶

847 - This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation. ³³⁷

848 - "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men." ³³⁸

The bishops - successors of the apostles

862 - "Just as the office which the Lord confided to Peter alone, as first of the apostles, destined to be transmitted to his successors, is a permanent one, so also endures the office, which the apostles received, of shepherding the Church, a charge destined to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops."³⁷⁵ Hence the Church teaches that "the bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ. " ³⁷⁶

The apostolate

865 - The Church is ultimately one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in her deepest and ultimate identity, because it is in her that "the Kingdom of heaven," the "Reign of God,"³⁸⁰ already exists and will be fulfilled at the end of time. The kingdom has come in the person of Christ and grows mysteriously in the hearts of those incorporated into him, until its full eschatological manifestation.Then all those he has redeemed and made "holy and blameless before him in love,"³⁸¹ will be gathered together as the one People of God, the "Bride of the Lamb,"³⁸² "the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God."³⁸³ For "the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb."³⁸⁴

Reference:Catholic Catechism;Part i, Section ii, Chapter ii, Article ix,Paragraph iii, 

 Ecclesiastical Courts, tribunals exercising jurisdiction in religious matters. In its broadest sense, the term ecclesiastical court is applied to any former or existing tribunal established by religious authority. In a more restricted sense, it is applied only to the tribunals of the Christian church, which are also sometimes called Courts Christian and are now found in the Roman Catholic church and in many Protestant churches, as well as in the Church of England and other Anglican churches. Included are the bodies established by some United States Protestant denominations to legislate with respect to church policy and administration and to exercise church discipline.

Ecclesiastical courts originated among the early Christians in Rome before the adoption of Christianity by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the 4th century. The Christians, as a persecuted sect, had no access to the Roman courts; Roman courts, moreover, were pagan and were proscribed by Christian leaders on religious and moral grounds. The Christians therefore needed their own courts, which were simple tribunals, the chief function of which was to arbitrate disputes among church members, with bishops acting as the arbitrators.

After Christianity became the state religion of Rome, the ecclesiastical courts were incorporated into the Roman judicial system. The Christian church developed on a pontifical and hierarchical basis, and its powers grew; the simple courts of primitive Christianity underwent a corresponding development. In time they became part of a complex system exercising jurisdiction delegated by the pope in his capacity as the supreme judicial power in the Christian church. Then, as the secular power of Rome declined and its institutions decayed, the ecclesiastical courts began to assume jurisdiction in secular affairs.

In the Middle Ages, the church reached the zenith of its power: It became a world state, the popes became temporal potentates, and canon law and the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts were extended to embrace virtually the entire range of human relationships. Extension of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was facilitated by the dual character of the princes of the church as functioning ecclesiastics—that is, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and popes—and as powerful landowners and temporal rulers. When courts established by secular authority resisted the incursions of the ecclesiastical courts into their jurisdictions, the ecclesiastical courts fought persistently for supremacy. The protracted struggle that ensued shaped much of the legal history of the latter Middle Ages. Beginning in the 13th century, the great judicial power of the church was manifested especially through the tribunal commonly called the Holy Office, created to ferret out and punish heresy (see Inquisition).

     Inquisition, judicial institution, established by the papacy in the Middle Ages, charged with seeking out, trying, and sentencing persons guilty of heresy. In the early church the usual penalty for heresy was excommunication. With the establishment of Christianity as the state religion by the Roman emperors in the 4th century, heretics came to be considered enemies of the state, especially when violence and the disturbance of public order were involved. St. Augustine gave a somewhat reluctant approval to action by the state against heretics, but the church generally disapproved of coercion and physical penalties.

The Holy Office  
Alarmed by the spread of Protestantism and especially by its penetration into Italy, Pope Paul III in 1542 heeded reformers such as Gian Pietro Cardinal Carafa and established in Rome the Congregation of the Inquisition, also known as the Roman Inquisition and the Holy Office. Six cardinals, including Carafa, constituted the original commission, whose powers extended to the whole church. The Holy Office was really a new institution, related to the medieval Inquisition only by vague precedents. Freer from episcopal control than its predecessor, it also conceived of its function differently. Whereas the medieval Inquisition focused on popular misbeliefs that resulted in the disturbance of public order, the Holy Office was generally concerned with orthodoxy of a more academic nature, especially as it appeared in the writings of theologians and high churchmen.

In the first dozen years or so, the activities of the Roman Inquisition were relatively modest, restricted almost exclusively to Italy. When Carafa became Pope Paul IV in 1555, he urged a vigorous pursuit of suspects, not sparing bishops or even cardinals (such as the English prelate Reginald Pole). He meanwhile charged the Congregation to draw up a list of books that offended faith or morals, and as a result he approved and published the first Index of Forbidden Books in 1559. Although later popes tempered the zeal of the Roman Inquisition, they began to see it as the customary instrument of papal government for regulating church order and doctrinal orthodoxy; for example, it tried and condemned Galileo in 1633. In 1965 Pope Paul VI, responding to many complaints, reorganized the Holy Office and renamed it the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Reformation was a basic cause of the decline of the ecclesiastical courts. Other causes included the rise of representative government, the separation of judicial from executive and legislative powers of government, and the separation of church and state. Gradually the power and jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts were reduced to their present limits.

A remnant of the former extensive jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts survives in the three papal tribunals—the Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary, Apostolic Signatura, and Sacred Roman Rota—which constitute the judicial branch of the Roman Curia. In the United Kingdom, which has an established church, the ecclesiastical courts derive their authority nominally from the Crown; the principal tribunals are called Archdeacon's Court, Bishop's or Consistory Court, Chancery Court of York, Court of Arches, and Final Appeal Court, the last named comprising the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In the Protestant sections of Germany and in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other countries where Protestantism is nonepiscopal, ecclesiastical courts have virtually ceased to exist.

Consistory (Latin consistere,"to stand together"), term applied in the ancient Roman Empire to the meeting place of the emperor's council. After the 3rd century AD the term was applied to the council itself, which became the supreme judicial tribunal of the later Roman Empire. Until the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor frequently exercised in person supreme judicial authority, which covered matters brought directly before him for decision, as well as appeals from the judgments of the provincial praetors in all parts of the empire. The emperor's judicial power was subsequently transferred to a council composed largely of jurists, who acted in his name and whose judgments were of equal authority with his statutes. The judgments of the consistory were known as decrees (decreta) and were an important part of the imperial legislation (constitutiones) of the later Roman Empire.

The form of the imperial consistory was taken over and adapted by the early Christian church. Consistories were established by bishops, although the church specifically applied the term to the assemblies of Roman clergy and bishops of the suburban sees from which the College of Cardinals developed. The Roman Catholic church in modern times holds public consistories in the Vatican for formal functions, such as the giving of the hat to a cardinal, the final pleadings on the question of canonization, and the reception of an ambassador. Secret, or ordinary, consistories, to which only cardinals have access, are convened to discuss administrative matters. Semipublic, or extraordinary, consistories include bishops as well as cardinals, who meet to take a final vote on proposed canonization.

Revelation 13:3 And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.

Revelation 13:9 He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

Pius VI (1717-99), pope (1775-99), whose reign, ending in captivity by the French, marked the low point of the modern papacy. Born Giovanni Angelo Braschi in Cesena, Italy, he became secretary to Pope Benedict XIV and later, under Pope Clement XIII, treasurer of the apostolic chamber and cardinal; he succeeded Pope Clement XIV. His reign was marked by struggles with the rulers of Naples, Tuscany (Toscana), Austria, and France over their efforts to restrict papal jurisdiction over church administration. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, all church property in France was confiscated and when the revolutionary regime demanded an oath of fidelity from the clergy, Pius denounced (1791) the revolution as unholy. He supported the antirevolutionary coalition of European powers, and, in 1797, after the invasion of Italy by Napoleon, Pius was forced to surrender papal territories to the newly created Cisalpine Republic. In 1798 French armies under General Louis Alexandre Berthier marched on Rome, which had been declared a republic by Roman revolutionaries in league with the French, and demanded that Pius renounce his temporal sovereignty. At his refusal the pope was taken prisoner and held first at Siena and ultimately at Valence, France, where he died.

 

1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters,

9  "Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.

10 there are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time.

11 The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.

            15 Then he said to me, "The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.

18 And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth."

For centuries, Rome has been called the Eternal City, a title earned through its importance as one of the great cities of Western civilization, as the capital of the Roman Empire, and as the world center of the Roman Catholic church. Since 1871 it has been the capital of united Italy.

According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC on one of the Seven Hills-a term used for centuries to describe the Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Aventine, and Palatine hills surrounding the old community. Archaeological evidence indicates, however, that human settlement here dates from at least 1000 BC. The Capitoline Hill (Monte Capitoline) was long the seat of Rome's government, and the Palatine Hill was the site of such great structures as the Palace of the Flavians, built by the Roman emperor Domitian. As a result of construction through the centuries, most of the Seven Hills are now hardly distinguishable from the adjacent plain. Other hills of Rome include the Pincian (Pincio) and the Janiculum.
Rome today is easily divided into two regions: the inner city, within the Aurelian Wall, built in the late 3rd century AD to enclose the area around the Seven Hills; and the sprawling outer city, with its suburbs.

In 1797 Napoleon Bonaparte took Rome and appropriated many art treasures. Ultimately, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Rome became papal again. Napoleon's occupation of Italy, however, had stimulated a nationalist reaction, and in 1861 Italy was unified under the house of Savoy. Because of Rome's position as papal headquarters it had to be forcibly taken by the kingdom of Italy in 1870. The pope then made himself a "prisoner of the Vatican."

Pope, in Latin, papa, from the Greek pappas, meaning "father," an ecclesiastical title expressing affection and respect and, since the 8th century, recognized in the West as belonging exclusively to the bishop of Rome, head of the Roman Catholic church. During the 4th and 5th centuries bishops were sometimes called pope. The title is still accorded the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt. Priests of the Orthodox churches may also be called pappa, reflecting the sense of the original Greek word.

Besides the designation pope, the head of the Roman Catholic church also holds these titles: vicar of Christ; successor of Saint Peter; supreme pontiff of the universal church; patriarch of the West; primate of Italy; archbishop and metropolitan of the Roman province; sovereign of the State of Vatican City; and servant of the servants of God. 

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