History & overview · every faith gets one
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.
The founding
The Catholic Church understands itself as continuous with the church of the apostles — its distinct identity sharpened by the schism of 1054 and the Reformation after it.
No single founder — Catholicism accreted rather than began.
What it holds
The divine. One God in three persons.
Death and after. Heaven, hell, and purgatory's purification.
The line
descent is public here — where it came from, what left itBranches:
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.