Have you ever noticed during our blog posts, in response to Catholicism, we regard the religion by saying "The Church?" The Church has become the subject: "The Church has done this, the Church has done that." However, it is not the Church that has done these specific things; it is the people (the pope, priests, bishops, deacons, etc.) that make it up. The rules of the Church (oops, I mean Catholicism) set the foundation for the doings and the image of the religion. Next time you mention Catholicism, see how often you quote it by saying "The Church." You'll probably be surprised.
This is quite the interesting post.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think of lip balm, adhesive strips, tissues, slow cookers, and cotton swabs, you likely think of, respectively, chapstick, band-aids, kleenex, crockpot, and Q-tips. These companies who own the brand names that we associate with products are incredibly talented and maybe slightly lucky. My point here is that sometimes it is the work of organisations to replace a general product with a brand name. The catholic church, actually, is one of those organisations. They do not object to the association of the word church with Catholicism. In fact, they often do it themselves; I would not doubt if this were completely intentionally done. You can look at the Catechism on the Vatican website and see examples of that all over the place . This part, here (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P29.HTM), mentions the Church often.
Like Brandon said, 'the church' is sort of a generic name for whatever ideological product the christian community is engaged with. Also, it strikes me that Christians have a vague concept of a church that stretches to every christian and ignores denominational lines. Even the Catholic church (sort of) recognizes other denominations of Christianity as christian.
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