- published: 21 Jul 2015
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The term "congregation" can refer to any of three types of administrative structures within the Roman Catholic Church--one within the Roman Curia and two within religious institutes.
The highest-ranking departments of the Roman Curia are called congregations. Lower-ranking are the pontifical councils and pontifical commissions. Others are tribunals and offices.
In origin, the congregations were selected groups of cardinals, not the whole College of Cardinals, commissioned to take care of some field of activity that concerned the Holy See. Today, as a result of a decision of the Second Vatican Council, the membership includes diocesan bishops from diverse parts of the world who are not cardinals. Each congregation also has a permanent staff to assist it in dealing with the business that comes before it.
A group of monasteries or of chapters of canons regular is called a congregation. Each congregation is presided over by a superior with a title such as abbot general, archabbot, abbot president, president, abbot ordinary, provost general or superior general. The generic term for such a superior is "abbot primate".
A congregation is a large gathering of people, often for the purpose of worship:
Congregation may also be:
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole.
For many the term usually refers to Christians and churches, western and eastern, in full communion with the Holy See, known alternatively as the Catholic Church or as the Roman Catholic Church. However, many others use the term to refer to other churches with historical continuity from the first millennium.
In the sense of indicating historical continuity of faith and practice, the term "catholicism" is at times employed to mark a contrast to Protestantism, which tends to look solely to the Bible as interpreted on the principles of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation as its ultimate standard. It was thus used by the Oxford Movement.
According to Richard McBrien, Catholicism is distinguished from other forms of Christianity in its particular understanding and commitment to tradition, the sacraments, the mediation between God, communion, and the See of Rome. According to Orthodox leaders like Bishop Kallistos Ware, the Orthodox Church has these things as well, though the primacy of the See of Rome is only honorific, showing non-jurisdictional respect for the Bishop of Rome as the "first among equals" and "Patriarch of the West". Catholicism, according to McBrien's paradigm, includes a monastic life, religious institutes, a religious appreciation of the arts, a communal understanding of sin and redemption, and missionary activity.