Ecclesial Apologetics
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Ecclesial Apologetics
In the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, an ecclesial community () is a Christian religious group that does not meet the Roman Catholic definition of a "Church". Although the word "ecclesial" itself means "church" or "gathering" in a political sense in Koine Greek, the Roman Catholic Church applies the term "Church" in the proper sense only to Christian communities that, according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, "have true sacraments and above all – because of the apostolic succession – the priesthood and the Eucharist". Definition The Roman Catholic Church formally recognizes and defines as a "Church" of a nature similar to its own particular Churches (dioceses and autonomous or Churches) the Eastern Christian Churches separated from full communion with it, namely those of Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Church of the East. It has not denied the claim of some communities of Western Christianity to meet its definition of "Church" (an example is the Polish ...
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Canon Law Of The Catholic Church
The canon law of the Catholic Church () is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". It is the system of religious laws and canon law, ecclesiastical legal principles made and enforced by the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church, hierarchical authorities of the Catholic Church to regulate its external organization and government and to order and direct the activities of Catholics toward the mission of the Church. It was the first modern Western world, Western legal system and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West, while the unique traditions of Eastern Catholic canon law govern the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, Eastern Catholic particular churches '. Positive ecclesiastical laws, based directly or indirectly upon immutable divine law or natural law, derive formal authority in the case of universal laws from Promulgation (Catholic canon law), promulgation by the supreme legislator—the supreme pontiff, who possesses the totality of legislative, executi ...
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Eastern Christianity
Eastern Christianity comprises Christianity, Christian traditions and Christian denomination, church families that originally developed during Classical antiquity, classical and late antiquity in the Eastern Mediterranean region or locations further east, south or north. The term does not describe a single Communion (Christian), communion or religious denomination. Eastern Christianity is a category distinguished from Western Christianity, which is composed of those Christian traditions and churches that originally developed further west. Major Eastern Christian bodies include the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, along with those groups descended from the historic Church of the East (also called the Assyrian Church (other), Assyrian Church), as well as the Eastern Catholic Churches (which are in communion with Holy See, Rome while maintaining Eastern Catholic liturgy, Eastern liturgies), and the Eastern Protestant Christianity, Eastern Protest ...
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Anglican Ministry
The Anglican ministry is both the leadership and agency of Christian service in the Anglican Communion. ''Ministry'' commonly refers to the office of ordination, ordained clergy: the ''threefold order'' of bishops, priests and deacons. Anglican ministry includes many laity, laypeople who devote themselves to the ministry of the church, either individually or in lower/assisting offices such as lector, acolyte, sub-deacon, Eucharistic minister, cantor, musicians, parish secretary or assistant, warden, vestry member, etc. Ultimately, all baptism, baptized members of the church are considered to partake in the ministry of the Body of Christ. Each of the ecclesiastical province, provinces of the Anglican Communion has a high degree of independence from the other provinces, and each of them have slightly different structures for ministry, mission and governance. However, personal leadership is always vested in a member of the clergy (a bishop at provincial and diocese, diocesan levels), ...
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Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII (; born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2March 181020July 1903) was head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 until his death in July 1903. He had the fourth-longest reign of any pope, behind those of Peter the Apostle, Pius IX (his immediate predecessor), and Pope John Paul II, John Paul II. Born in Carpineto Romano, near Rome, Leo XIII is well known for his intellectualism and his attempts to define the position of the Catholic Church with regard to modern thinking. In his 1891 Papal encyclical, encyclical ''Rerum novarum'', Pope Leo outlined the Workers rights, rights of workers to a fair wage, Occupational safety and health, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights to property and Market economy, free enterprise, opposing both Atheism, atheistic socialism and ''laissez-faire'' capitalism. With that encyclical, he became popularly called the "Social Pope" and the "Pope of the Workers", also having cr ...
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Apostolicae Curae
''Apostolicae curae'' is the title of an apostolic letter, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The Anglican Communion made no official reply, but the archbishops of Canterbury and York of the Church of England published a response known by its Latin title '' Saepius officio'' in 1897. Leo XIII deemed Anglican ordinations to be invalid because he found the Anglican Edwardine Ordinals deficient in intention and form. He declared that the rites expressed an intention to create a priesthood different from the sacrificing priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church and to reduce ordination to a mere ecclesiastical institution instead of a sacramental conferral of actual grace by the action itself, thereby invalidating any sacramental holy orders. He raised similar objection to the Anglican rite for the consecration of bishops, thus dismissing the entire subject of the apostolic succession of Anglican prie ...
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Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion is a Christian Full communion, communion consisting of the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The archbishop of Canterbury in England acts as a focus of unity, recognised as ' ("first among equals"), but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. Most, but not all, member churches of the communion are the historic national or regional Anglican churches. With approximately 85 -110 million members, it is the third-largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox churches globally. The Anglican Communion was officially and formally organised and recognised as such at the Lambeth Conference in 1867 in London under the leadership of Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury. The churches of the Anglican Communion consider themselves to be part of the Four Marks of the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic ...
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Church Of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, tradition, with foundational doctrines being contained in the ''Thirty-nine Articles'' and ''The Books of Homilies''. The Church traces its history to the Christian hierarchy recorded as existing in the Roman Britain, Roman province of Britain by the 3rd century and to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kingdom of Kent, Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury. Its members are called ''Anglicans''. In 1534, the Church of England renounced the authority of the Papacy under the direction of Henry VIII, beginning the English Reformation. The guiding theologian that shaped Anglican doctrine was the Reformer Thomas Cranmer, who developed the Church of England's liturgical text, the ''Book of Common Prayer''. Papal authority was Second Statute of ...
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Protestant Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe. The Reformation is usually dated from Martin Luther's publication of the '' Ninety-five Theses'' in 1517, which gave birth to Lutheranism. Prior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars. In general, the Reformers argued that justification was based on faith in Jesus alone and not both faith and good works, as in the Catholic view. In the ...
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Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for sessions of 8 and 12 weeks. Pope John XXIII convened the council because he felt the Church needed "updating" (in Italian: '' aggiornamento''). He believed that to better connect with people in an increasingly secularized world, some of the Church's practices needed to be improved and presented in a more understandable and relevant way. Support for ''aggiornamento'' won out over resistance to change, and as a result 16 magisterial documents were produced by the council, including four "constitutions": * '' Dei verbum'', the ''Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation'' emphasized the study of scripture as "the soul of theology". * '' Gaudium et spes'', the ''Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World'', concerned the promotion ...
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Polish National Catholic Church
The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC; , PNKK) is an independent Old Catholic church based in the United States and founded by Polish Americans that is part of the Union of Scranton. The PNCC is not in communion the Roman Catholic Church. Since 2004, the PNCC is no longer in communion with the Union of Utrecht. The church has around 30,000 members in five dioceses in the United States and Canada with 119 congregations in the US. The church is part of Polish Old Catholicism. History During the late 19th century, many Polish immigrants to the U.S. became dismayed with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. The U.S. church had no Polish bishops and few Polish priests, and would not allow the Polish language to be taught in parish schools. The mainly ethnic Irish and German bishops helped establish hundreds of parishes for Poles, but priests were usually unable to speak Polish, and the new immigrants had poor or limited English. There were also disputes over who own ...
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Western Christianity
Western Christianity is one of two subdivisions of Christianity (Eastern Christianity being the other). Western Christianity is composed of the Latin Church and Protestantism, Western Protestantism, together with their offshoots such as the Old Catholic Church, Independent Catholicism and Restorationism. The large majority of the world's 2.3 billion Christians are Western Christians (about 2 billion: 1.2 billion Latin Catholic and 1.17 billion Protestant). One major component, the Latin Church, developed under the bishop of Rome. Out of the Latin Church emerged a wide variety of independent Protestant denominations, including Lutheranism and Anglicanism, starting from the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, as did Independent Catholicism in the 19th century. Thus, the term "Western Christianity" does not describe a single Communion (Christian), communion or religious denomination but is applied to distinguish all these denominations collectively from Eas ...
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Church Of The East
The Church of the East ( ) or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church, the Chaldean Church or the Nestorian Church, is one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity, Eastern Nicene Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies in the Christianity in the 5th century, 5th century and the Christianity in the 6th century, 6th century, alongside that of Miaphysitism (which came to be known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches) and Chalcedonian Christianity (from which Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism would arise). Having its origins in Mesopotamia during the time of the Parthian Empire, the Church of the East developed its own unique form of Christian theology and East Syriac Rite, liturgy. During the early modern period, a series of Schism#Christianity, schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three. In the latter half of the 20 ...
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