Catholicism: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

One, holy, catholic, apostolic — with Peter's successor at the center.

The largest Christian communion: continuity from the apostles through the bishops, grace mediated through seven sacraments, and the Bishop of Rome as the visible head of a global church.

DeitiesOne God in three persons

EmergedRome

AfterlifeHeaven, hell, and purgatory's purification

TextsBible · Catechism

The map

Catholicism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1596 CE The Eastern Catholic Churches 1870 CE The Old Catholic Church 1970 CE Traditionalist Catholicism

Core Tenets

3 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

The Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Continuity from the apostles through the bishops, with Peter's successor at the center. Go deeper — context →

Grace comes through the sacraments. Seven of them, baptism to anointing — God working through matter. Go deeper — context →

Faith and works cooperate. Salvation is grace lived out in love — precisely the point Luther pressed against. Go deeper — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The Mass. The Eucharist in its full Catholic form — the sacrifice made present, daily, on every altar on earth. When daily; obligatory on SundaysWho priest and congregation Go deeper — context →

Confession. Sins spoken aloud to a priest and absolved — mercy with a procedure. When periodic — the confessionalWho penitent and priest Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Protestantism — Scripture alone. Faith alone. Every believer a priest. The Eastern Catholic Churches — Eastern rites, Roman communion — a bridge, not a schism. The Old Catholic Church — Catholic — without the infallible pope. Traditionalist Catholicism — The Latin Mass, kept against the current. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God — A Ugandan Marian movement that kept the commandments by keeping silent. The Armenian Apostolic Church — 4 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 3 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 3 shared ideas, a different faith Eastern Orthodoxy — 3 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Catholicism — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Catholicism shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been