At Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus leave to diffuse the “good news” with all the nations. Christian communities are born with their passage, in all the Mediterranean basin. They believe in a Jesus-Christ, in which they see the Son of God, died and resurrected for the safety of all the men, and practice the sacraments of the baptism (entered in the community) and of the eucharistie (division of the bread and the wine, body and blood of Christ).  

According to the Gospel, Jesus had indicated itself among his apostles a man, whom it named Pierre: “You are Pierre, and on this stone I will build my Church.” Vis-a-vis the multiplication of the communities, it was necessary to structure the forms of this Church (assembled), which had to preserve the message of Christ by protecting it from erroneous interpretations.  

To assist them in their mission, the Apostles name, in the their imposing hands on the head, of the presbyopes (“old hand”), to which they entrust the task to teach the faith at the communities and to maintain them in fidelity with the Christ, of which they received themselves their mission. Soon, episkopoï (“supervisors”) will be in charge of the responsibility for a college for presbyopes then for a set of communities for the same territory (local Church).  

The martyrdom of Pierre to Rome indicates the episcopal see of the city as that around of which must affirm the unit of the Church and the faith. Thus in the old Church is established, towards Ier century, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, successor of Pierre.  

The lesson of Christ is initially transmitted by oral way. To the first Christian writings, in particular the letters addressed by Paul to the communities which it founded, will succeed the Gospels of Matthieu, Marc, Luc and Jean. There still, in front of the multiplication of these writings, it was necessary to legislate to authenticate those which were faithful to the teaching of Christ. After many confrontations, a corpus was gathered under the name of “New Testament”, at the same time as the Jewish writings (the Torah) were renamed “Old Testament”.  

The schism between the East and Occident
Persecuted I E to the IV E century, then tolerated and finally recognized like official religion by the emperor Constantin, at the dawn of the IV E century, Christianity manages to be established in the Empire Romain, while maintaining his unit connected with the church and doctrinal to X E century. However develop within the Church of many theological, distinct debates at the time of great councils where and essential components of the Christian doctrines fixed are worked out, like the universality of Christianity (Jerusalem, into 49), the Trinity of God (Nicée, in 325, Constantinople, in 381), the nature of Jesus-Christ, true man and true God (Chalcédoine, in 451). After the bursting of the Roman Empire, the divergences between Orientaux and Western are felt more and more.  

Whereas the Eastern Church remains under the supervision of the emperor of Constantinople, the Latin Church must, it, to compensate the political power, which crumbled in Occident with the Roman Empire. Rome gains there in authority either only spiritual, but so temporal. The Church of the East, already opposed to the Latin Church on the formulation of the dogma of the Trinity, reproaches the Latin Church its centralizing authority. In 1054, the rupture is consumed between the pope Leon IX and Michel Cérulaire, patriarch of Constantinople. The Latin Church keeps the old name of “catholic” and that of the East takes that of “Greek Orthodox Church”. Certain Churches will make nevertheless return to the catholic communion, in particular to the XVIII E century, while keeping their rites of Eastern tradition.  

The Reform
Vis-a-vis it increasingly hegemonic temporal power of the Church in Europe, criticisms rise to denounce gravities and compromisings of the clerical apparatus. The theses of Luther (1517) denouncing indulgences mark the beginning of the Reform, which gives rise to the Protestant Churches. This protest movement aspires to a simplification and a personalization of the religion, by in particular recommending the direct reading of the Bible by the believer. Thanks to the development of printing works, he will indeed manage to withdraw with the clerks and the Church the monopoly of the practice of the Holy Scriptures.  

The denunciation of the abuses is transformed into fundamental criticism of the apparatus connected with the church and led to the re-examination of certain theses of the catholic doctrines. It will result from it a plurality from Churches and a theology in phase with the movement of the Lights, which privileges the free and individual step of the man. In its will to find the purity of the origins, the Reform tends to minimize the teaching of the Church to the profit of that of the Bible.  

In Protestantism, there is no sacramental episcopate, but a priesthood common to all. The baptism and the Holy Communion (division of the bread and the wine) are the only sacraments selected, and very practical of devotion or any step aiming at making sure of the hello is rejected: safety is not bought, it is obtained by the grace of God and not by works.  

The Roman Catholic Church tries to answer these sharp attacks by the Counter-Reformation by in particular reaffirming the authority of the pope like his attachment with the Tradition, with its magister, the sacraments and the hello by works.  
 

The Revelation
According to the Catholic religion, God appeared with the men through the history of the Jewish people, to which he proposed his alliance, before appearing fully through his/her Son (Jesus-Christ dead and resurrected person), in which he was incarnated.  

God revealed by Christ is single God but in three hypostases: the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. He is creator of any thing and any life. Filled up kindness towards its creation, it renews through the sacrifice of his Son on the cross his alliance with the Jewish people then with all the men. The Christians, indeed, believe not only in the resurrection of Christ, but also in the resurrection of deaths and the eternal life: safety.  

The teaching of Christ can be summarized by this sentence of the Gospel of Luc (Luc X, 27): “You will love the Lord your God of all your heart, of all your heart, all your forces, and all your spirit. And you will like your next like yourself.” The word “alliance” represents a bond of reciprocity between God and the man, and it expresses the “solidarity” of God with any man. Also any adhesion of faith comprises requirements of engagement of human solidarity and social.  

The Revelation very whole is contained in the life, the death and the resurrection of Christ. The biblical texts preserved by the Tradition transmit the accounts which were made by it by the early Christians.  

The Roman Catholic Church
Agent and interprets authorized Christian truths, the Church takes care of the maintenance of the unit of the faith. In Catholicism, it is with it, at the congregation, that the Writings are transmitted, and not with each one of its members, in an individual way.  

The Roman Catholic Church cannot admit without difficulty the existence of several Christian Churches. According to it, the will of the Christ, reaffirmed in the Creed of Nicée, is that its Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”, and this not only from one theological point of view, like orthodoxe and Protestant agree to believe it, but also in its concrete realization.  

The conviction with which the Roman Catholic Church asserts as legitimate the right to gather all the Christians rests on three basic elements:  

• Apostolic succession. The bishops continue with the pope the mission entrusted by Jesus to the Apostles. Their ordination in the Church (by and sacrament laying on of hands of the order) invests them powers to control, teach and give the sacraments in the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit;  
• The preaching of the Word. Just as the first disciples received from Jesus the Holy Spirit, in the same way the college of the bishops and the pope are assisted by the Spirit when they must state the truths of faith;  
• Sacraments. The presence of Christ in the Church appears by the Church itself and the sacraments - crowned signs carrying graces and legatees by Christ -, through which the Spirit operates the gift of God. The Roman Catholic Church exempts seven sacraments: baptism and the eucharistie (common to all the Christian Churches), the confirmation, the marriage, the order, the reconciliation (forgiveness) and the oiling of the patients (extreme unction) also practiced in the orthodoxe Churches. By the sacrament of the order (ordination), the clerks - deacons, priests, bishops - receive the power to transmit the grace of God by the sacraments.  

The Tradition
The Church ensures the presence of Christ through the ages as an agent of the Writings, but also of the Tradition. In Catholicism, the Tradition includes the whole of the lesson, the dogmas and the pertaining to worship practices that the Church adopted throughout its history.  

Far from thinking that its thickness is likely to make opaque the truth of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church considers that the Tradition guarantees the faithful and integral transmission of the Revelation.  

By its action theological, dogmatic, liturgical and even social, the Church unceasingly endeavors to look further into the Christian mystery. The new dogmas which it works out are not supposed to bring of new truths, but to clarify an aspect of the truth already revealed in its plenitude by Christ. Thus, the truth distinguished at one time given by the Church of faithful is not repudiated by the following generations, but it is preserved in the Tradition, while being reinterpreted.  

There exists a modern manner to adopt dogmas which tends to move away from a “doctrinary” design of the Tradition and which takes into account the historical dimension of the doctrinal word of the Church. In the words testify to the pope Jean XXIII with the council the Vatican II (1962): “Another thing is the deposit even or the truths of the faith, another thing is the way according to which the truths are expressed, in condition however of safeguarding the direction and the significance of it.”  

All the times and in the various cultural contexts, the Roman Catholic Church always professes its faith in the assistance by the Holy Spirit to interpret and bring up to date the evangelic message, by preserving it of subjective interpretations and by preserving its authenticity and its unit to him.  
 

The government of the Church
With its two thousand many years of history and its faithful distributed in the world, the Roman Catholic Church proves to be an institution whose government is extremely complex: it counts 2 500 districts and 1 800 dioceses, divided into 37 ' 000 parishes or centers, 3 900 bishops, 250 ' 000 priests diocesans, as much from monk and 1 10 ' 000 permanent deacon, nun million and approximately 260 000 catechist missionaries.  

The Vatican
The territorial support of the Roman Catholic Church is the State of the Vatican City, whose statute was established by the agreements of Lateran, in 1929. This vestige of the Papal States, instituted in VIIIe century to guarantee to the pope an independence with respect to the political powers, covers a territory of 44 ha. The Vatican City enjoys a statute of neutrality and inviolability. This State particular to many regards is equipped with a clean government. Its population rises with approximately 900 people, mainly occupied in the Roman curia.  

The pope
At the top of the hierarchy, the pope is guaranteeing apostolic continuity. Occupying the episcopal see of the Pierre apostle, he is bishop of Rome. He names the bishops. Elected by the Sacred College of the cardinals and chosen among them, it is also the visible sign of the unit of the Church. For this reason, it represents the supreme authority, arbitrating all the decisions relating to the life of the Church, the expression of the faith and the great asked questions by the evolutions of company. All its decisions and declarations do not engage the catholic faith with the same degree: a papal encyclical does not have the value of a dogma, which is the stating of an article of faith.  

At the defensive periods of its history, the Roman Catholic Church was centred around the authority of the pope, in particular after the schism of the East (at the time when the Greek Orthodox Church preserved pluralist traditions in its center), but also at the time of the Reform, then at the beginning of modernity resulting from the Lights and the French revolution. In 1870, to the first council of the Vatican, the Church attempted to redefine the primacy and the infallibility of its chief. Nearly one century later, the council the Vatican II rebalanced the papal authority by rehabilitating in its primitive functions the collegial structure of the bishops.  

Councils and synods
The episcopal collegial structure confers a responsibility all to the bishops, who exert their powers under the authority of the pope. It is to the supreme leader of the Church that falls, indeed, the right to join together them all in ecumenical council (whose last was that of the Vatican II) or in synod, i.e. as an regional assembly or local (which gathers, for example, the African bishops). However, since the last council, of the national or local Episcopal conferences (for example, Celam, the Conference of the bishops of Latin America) are held regularly with their own initiative.  

The Sacred College
Parliament of the cardinals - bishops raised with this row by the pope -, it plays a part of particular council near the supreme leader of the Church. The role of this assembly primarily consists in electing the new pope, but, according to the rule enacted by Paul VI in 1970, in the vote only the cardinals take part who have less than 80 years. The Sacred College, which counted 70 cardinals of Quint Sixth in Jean XXIII, gathers some today more than 150.  

The local Church
Circumscribed by a territory - the diocese - more or less vast according to the areas of the world, the Church diocésaine constitutes the basic unit of the Church, in which apostolic continuity is ensured by the bishop.  

The bishop
Named by the pope, it selected among the priests and is ordered by bishops. The Church currently counts 3 ' 900 of them. Most between them are in charge of a diocese, which is organized in parishes that the bishop entrusts to priests. The bishop, who has to be able of jurisdiction, is responsible in particular for pastoral (teaching and mission) and for the priests of his diocese.  

Priests
Ordered by the bishop, they enter to the service of the Church diocésaine. They are exclusively men making vow of celibacy (except in the Catholic churches of Eastern rite where married men can be ordered). They receive from the bishop the power to exempt all the sacraments except the ordination of the new priests (reserved to the bishops), chair the liturgical celebrations, organize the many activities of catechism, mutual aid, reflection at the parochial level and diocesan.  

Deacons
They constitute, within the Church, the first degree of the hierarchy and the sacrament of the order. Drawing its origin from an old tradition, the diaconate was recently given in honor by the council the Vatican II like specific service of the community believing opened in the married men. One speaks then about permanent deacons.  

The laic ones
They are the most members of the Church, who are neither clerks nor monk. The laic ones see their participation in the evangelic mission of the Church recognized better in the laicized companies of the end of the XX E century.  

The liturgy
Together official celebrations of the returned worship with God, the liturgy is usually organized at parochial Community level. These public celebrations, which take place usually Sunday or the Saturday evening, gather with the church the established catholics in the vicinity. A liturgical calendar distributes over one year the celebration of the great stages of the life of Christ (its birth is celebrated with Christmas, its resurrection at Easter, etc).  

The principal liturgy is the mass, which understands two great parts, the first being devoted to the reading and the comments of the Word (sermon or homily), the second with the eucharistie and the thanksgiving. As Christ taught it with the Apostles the day before her death, the catholics divide the bread and the wine in the eucharistie, a sacrament which, more than one act dedicated in memory of Christ, is, in catholic theology, its transsubstantiation. By the communion, the believers take part in the life of Christ, receive her body and its blood as a spiritual food which sanctifies them.  

The catholics, just as the orthodoxe ones, request the Virgin and the saints, intercessors near God.  

Orders and movements
Apart from the activities organized around the parishes and, more generally, within the framework of the ecclesiastical structure, there exist other forms of life nun, more stripped, more disciplined and often Community. The orders, the missions and the movements represent forms very different of engagement in the name of the catholic faith.  

Religious orders
Following the example of most known of them, like the Benedictines and Bénédictines of saint Benoit (VI E century), the Franciscan ones of Saint Francis of Assisi (XIII E century), Clarisses of holy Claire (XIII E century), the Dominican ones of saint Dominique (XIII E century) or the Jesuits of Ignace de Loyola (XVI E century), all the religious orders follow rules of life which answer the three evangelic calls: poverty, chastity and obedience. They are different nevertheless by their main activity: preaching, the action social missionary and or the prayer (in particular in the contemplative orders living in monasteries). Contrary to the priesthood, the orders admit men and women, but in separate communities. The statute of monk is not incompatible with the priesthood, so much and so that much of monk are also priests. In addition, certain orders (like the Dominican ones and the Franciscan ones) instituted a “third order”, in which the laic ones are gathered, married or not, which, while continuing to live in the world, commit themselves following certain precepts of the rule adopted by the order to which they belong.  

The religious orders, for the majority, swarmed on all the continents. The persons in charge of the communities depend, according to the cases, of the bishop of the place or an central authority attached directly to the Holy See.  

Movements
They gather catholics eager to act in the name of the faith, of justice and charity Christian women within the framework of one of the many existing organizations, associations or institutions. Whereas some of them have an only local dimension, others (like Caritas International, to which belonged French Catholic aid) are international.  

These movements combine to differing degree the study or the formation religious, the spiritual deepening and the charitable action or social. A tension exists however between those which would be tempted to forget the “world” and those which, on the contrary, engage “in the world” without proposing their identity of members of the Church.

Through these many engagements, Catholicism continues to be active in the hospital or caritative assistance and curricular areas, which it had a long time had in load. With the industrial revolution of the XIX E century, it was invested on the social field to denounce the “unmerited misery of the workmen” (encyclical Rerum novarum of Leon XIII, in 1891) and to seek remedy there. Known under the name of social Catholicism, this movement led to the political action, led by the parties of the Christian Democrat, and prepared the blossoming of the apostolate of laic, in particular the catholic Action in France.  

The increasingly many presence missionaries in the Third World countries made it possible to the catholics to take part in the fight for the development of the countries of the South and to carry assistance to most underprivileged.