The question is a legitimate one and not an irksome word game. The different uses of the adjective, Roman — whether in reference to a City, an Empire, a Rite, an ecclesiastical Province, or to the fifth note of the Christian Church — make the answer to the question perhaps less self-evident than one might think.
An anecdote will help to begin our considerations. A good twenty-five years ago or so, I met a very friendly Jordanian gentleman in my travels doing our apostolic work, who excitedly informed me that he, too, was a Christian. Naturally, I was interested in discovering whether he was a Catholic; but, sad to say, our conversation was limited by his not-so-great English and my completely absent Arabic. I asked him if he were a Melkite Catholic, a term he seemed not to recognize at all. Eventually, after I fumbled around with different formulations of my question, he got an idea of what I was asking. “Rûm Orthodox,” he answered, which left me quite confused. The first word sounded more like our English word, room than it did Rome, but I reasoned that, whatever the precise meaning, it must have had reference to Christian Rome. Still, the term made little sense to me. In my ignorance, I assumed that the combination of the words Rome and Orthodox must have implied an Orthodox Christian under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, i.e., a Catholic, though probably one belonging to an eastern rite. Upon returning home, I could, thankfully, ask a native Arabic speaker, in the person of Brother Francis, what this meant. Brother explained that the word Rûm here did not refer to the City, but to the Empire — specifically, the eastern part thereof, seated historically in the “New Rome” called Constantinople — so that the nearest English translation of “Rûm Orthodox” for modern Americans would be “Greek Orthodox.” (I am apparently not the only native English speaker to have been confused by this. By the way, this does not imply that the “Rûm Orthodox” are ethnic Greeks.)
This anecdote came to mind, along with the larger question of the meaning and fittingness of the term “Roman Catholic,” when I was reading Dr. Alan Fimister’s excellent book, The Iron Scepter of the Son of Man, especially chapter two of the book, entitled, “Which Rome?”
The first of three meanings Dr. Fimister gives to the term “Roman Catholic,” the one he says is “most appropriate,” is, believe it or not, the one I have just recounted, if only indirectly. You see, it would help to know that the correlative Arabic term to Rûm Orthodox is Rûm Kāthūlīk (Roman Catholic), which is what the Melkites call themselves in Arabic. As for the word, Melkite, it comes from the Syriac word melkā, meaning king or, by extension, emperor. The orthodox faithful who accepted the Christological definitions of the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) used this label to distinguish themselves from the Monophysites who rejected that council’s doctrine. In doing so, they were identifying themselves with the orthodoxy of Emperor (Melkā) Marcian. As Dr. Fimister goes on to explain,
After 1729, when Patriarch Cyril VI of Antioch restored communion with Pope Benedict XIII, the term Melkite or Roman Catholic [Rûm Kāthūlīk] became the name for those Chalcedonian Christians using the liturgy of Constantinople and in communion with the bishop of Rome. The celebrated [English] orientalist and liturgical scholar Adrian Fortesque (who sought unsuccessfully to be transferred to the Melkite jurisdiction) observed that Melkite ought to be the term for all Catholics who observe the liturgy of Constantinople. (p. 29)
Again, it has to be emphasized in this particular context that Rome is identified with Constantinople, the New Rome, and the Roman Empire of which it was the capital. During the oddly named “Crimean War” (which was fought on other fronts besides in Crimea!), the political agenda of French and English diplomats, who found themselves allied with the Ottoman Turks against the Russian Empire in that conflict, led them to christen the ancient eastern part of the Roman Empire with the misleading neologism, “Byzantine Empire,” which Dr. Fimister explains is problematic on historical grounds because,
The “Byzantine Empire” never existed. It is an idea that no one would have recognized at the time [of the Eastern Roman Empire’s existence before its tragic fall in 1453], invented by hostile (or at least contemptuous) Western historians long after the Empire [centered] in Constantinople came to an end in 1453. The Byzantine empire is the Roman empire. That is what its people called it; that is was it was. (pp. 32-33; emphasis mine)
The nomenclature was further confused when Empress Maria Theresa invented the term “Greek Catholic” to describe Catholics in her Empire who belonged to the Eastern Rite, distinguishing them from (Latin Rite) “Roman Catholics.” The big problem here is that — if we take certain magisterial texts seriously — the term Roman is a proper designation of all Catholics because it is a note of the entire Church. (This is the crux of the issue; the subtitle of Dr. Fimister’s book is Romanitas as a Note of the Church.) The magisterial texts I say we should “take seriously” are the Creed of Pope Paul IV, issued at the end of the Council of Trent; the Florentine decree, Cantate Domino, and the first Dogmatic Constitution of Vatican I, Dei Filius; the last of which especially applies the adjective Roman to the entire Church.
This properly universal application of the note Roman to the whole Church and to all Catholics rules out using the term to distinguish Catholics of the Roman Rite (i.e., the rite of the original City of Rome, the one on the Italian peninsula) from Catholics of any other rite, eastern or western. This is why a learned Eastern-Rite friend of mine insists on being called an “Eastern Roman of the Kievan Church,” rather than a “Ukrainian Catholic.” In spite of the unwieldiness and obscurity of his preferred identifier (no Madison Avenue marketing consultant would approve, I’m sure!), my friend’s construction is theologically and historically accurate — far more so than the term, “Ukrainian Catholic,” or the still more confusing, “Ukrainian Greek Catholic.”
It is an aside, but not an inconsequential one: I assume that longtime readers of Catholicism.org know that Cantate Domino teaches us infallibly that “The sacrosanct Roman Church…”
…firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
Similarly, the Creed of Paul IV, which begins,
I, N., with a firm faith believe and profess each and everything which is contained in the Creed which the Holy Roman Church maketh use of. To wit…,
…concludes with this:
This true Catholic faith, outside of which no one can be saved, which I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, I do so profess and swear to maintain inviolate and with firm constancy with the help of God until the last breath of life. And I shall strive, as far as possible, that this same faith shall be held, taught, and professed by all those over whom I have charge. I N. do so pledge, promise, and swear, so help me God and these Holy Gospels of God.
Lastly, and to bring us closer to the main line of Dr. Fimister’s book, before Vatican I’s Dei Filius was approved in April of 1870, there was a concern expressed by the English Bishops about the wording of the following section (particularly, what I have emphasized):
The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding, and every perfection.
The issue that the English Bishops had with the original wording was that reference was made to the “Roman Catholic church.” To accommodate this concern, the word Roman was deliberately moved from before the word Catholic to where it is now forever fixed, thus avoiding a problem to which Albion’s episcopacy were particularly sensitive (see below, for the “least acceptable” use of the term, Roman Catholic). In the archived discussions of the Council Fathers, it is made clear that the note Roman here is used to describe not simply the Church of the City of Rome as head of all the local churches, but to the Catholic Church as a whole; that is to say, the note Roman is proper to Christ’s whole Mystical Body.
This, by the way, is exactly how Pope Pius XII used the term “Roman Catholic” in two definitive encyclicals of his pontificate: Mystici Corporis and Humani Generis. The 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis, both quoting and footnoting Vatican I’s Dei Verbum, says this:
13. If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church 12 — we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression “the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ” – an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers.
What I have emboldened in this passage are the four “notes” of the Church as given by Vatican I’s Dei Filius. The Holy Father preceded them with the note, One, thus listing five notes of the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman. Footnote 12 is a direct reference to that document, so Pope Pius XII is here confirming the sense in which the Fathers of that Council used the term Roman, namely, that they applied it to the One Church of Christ.
In his 1950 encyclical, Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII refers back to Mystici Corporis, affirming that its doctrine is binding on the faithful, and using the term “Roman Catholic” as a name for the Universal Church:
27. Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the sources of revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing [quae quidem docet corpus Christi mysticum et Ecclesiam Catholicam Romanam unum idemque esse]. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. …
It could not be more clear; for a pope as sensitive as was Pope Pius XII to the churches of the East that enjoy communion with the Holy See, there was no question of confusing his using the word Roman here to refer to the Roman Rite or to the Holy See itself, as if the particular Church of the City of Rome were somehow the full extent of the Mystical Body of Christ. No, he is applying the note Roman to the whole Mysitical Body, i.e., to the Universal Church.
This aside brings us at last to the final use of the term “Roman Catholic,” the least acceptable of them all. This is the term as it was employed — and, indeed, when it entered into the English religious lexicon — by English Protestants of the Elizabethan era, “when they were trying not to be too aggressive in their references to the Faithful but were nevertheless unwilling to concede the unqualified use of the term Catholic to them” (p. 30). Certain Anglicans of the nineteenth century included the term as part of their “Branch Theory,” which posited that there are three distinct branches of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed: (1) the Roman, meaning all those under the Pope; (2) the Anglican or Anglo-Catholic, being that body of Christians centered in the schismatic see of Canterbury; and (3) the Greek, under the schismatic Patriarch of Constantinople and the various national “Orthodox” churches more-or-less in communion with Constantinople. This heterodox theory was something of a “Big Tent” ecclesiology that allowed many Anglicans to delude themselves into thinking that they were part of the historical Catholic Church founded by Our Lord, and could, therefore, call themselves “Catholic” just as rightly as any Papist could.
Dr. Fimister cites Herbert Thurston’s relevant 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article, which says that the term Roman Catholic is,
A qualification of the name Catholic commonly used in English-speaking countries by those unwilling to recognize the claims of the One True Church.
Because of its origin in heterodoxy, many English Catholics did not want to use the term Roman Catholic. They were simply Catholic, as in members of the Church Universal, and the other “branches” included in the heterodox theory were simply cut off, with all the dire implications built into Our Lord’s beautiful Allegory of the Vine and the Branches (cf. John 15:6).
But something changed in 1901, when the English Catholic hierarchy were informed that they could not address King Edward VII on his accession to the throne unless they were willing to accept the contested label. Cardinal Vaughan agreed to it but insisted that he would clarify the meaning of the term as he used it. This he did in a speech at Newcastle upon Tyne in September of that year, saying,
I would now say to you all, use the term “Roman Catholic.” Claim it: defend it: be proud of it; but in the true and Catholic sense. As the African Fathers wrote some fourteen centuries ago, “To be Roman is to be Catholic and to be Catholic is to be Roman.” But I would also say, like your English forefathers and your brethren on the Continent, call yourselves habitually and especially when the word “Roman” is misunderstood simply Catholics, members of the Catholic Church.” (p. 31)
Incidentally, Newcastle upon Tyne, besides being Alan Fimister’s birthplace and where he was baptized, was at the northernmost frontier of the Empire in Roman Britain, some two thousand fragments of Hadrian’s wall being still visible there. It was, therefore, an appropriate locale for the Cardinal’s address about the Romanitas of the Church.
While I can certainly appreciate the delicate situation Cardinal Vaughan was in, I am not in it myself, and will not resort to his clever expedient — its excellence as a specimen of rhetoric notwithstanding. While I am certainly a Roman and a Catholic, I do not call myself a “Roman Catholic” because I wish to avoid the various errors that are implied by the use of the term. First, I am not a Melkite (though Brother Francis, my dear mentor, was), nor do I share the name Catholic with schismatics, nor do I deny the glorious label, Roman, to my Eastern-Rite brothers and sisters because, “To be Roman is to be Catholic and to be Catholic is to be Roman.”
“But what,” you may ask, “is so important about being Roman?” The answer to that question is the burden of Alan Fimister’s whole book, but I can provide a quick summary from the blurb on the back cover, which will hopefully whet your appetite:
Three days before His Passion, Our Lord warned the High Priests: “the Kingdom of God is taken from you and given to a nation that will bear the fruit thereof.” What is this nation? Who are the people of the Messiah? What is the Kingdom inherited by the saints of the Most High, and why does the Messiah rule the nations “with an iron sceptre”? The Church Fathers, East and West, are clear in their answer: the people of the Messiah are the Romans. Although in its pagan form it is Babylon and the Beast, the Roman Empire is translated by the power of the Cross from the temporal to the spiritual order and becomes what the Apostle calls “the restrainer” [ὁ κατέχων, “the one holding”; 2 Thess. 2:7]: the power that holds back the coming of the Antichrist. The removal of this restrainer signals the commencement of the final persecution of the Church and the end of all mortal things.
If you would like to learn about Romanitas as the fifth note of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, there is a lot to learn from Dr. Alan Fimister’s wonderful and meticulously researched book.
