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this is more a disambiguation page - Roman Catholic Church is primary, but not only, meaning of "Catholic"
#REDIRECT [[Roman Catholic Church]]
The term '''Catholic''' has a number of related meanings:
# originally it comes from a Greek word meaning universal - and thus, referred to the church as a whole, as opposed to a particular local church. This is the sense in which it is used in the historic creeds ("one holy, catholic and apostolic church") - and in this sense Protestants and Eastern Orthodox consider themselves to be part of the catholic church
# the term has evolved, however, to refer to the [[Roman Catholic Church]] specifically. It also refers to the [[Eastern Catholic]] churches, which form part of the Roman Catholic Church, yet follow Eastern rather than Roman traditions in liturgy and other matters
# it can also be used to refer to [[Independent Catholic churches|splinter groups]] which have broken away from the [[Roman Catholic Church]]. It is used in particular to refer to those groups which while breaking away maintain much of the Roman Catholic church's traditions - as opposed to [[Protestant]] churches, which rejected much of the Roman Catholic Church's position when they split from it
# it also refers to a tendency in [[Anglicanism]] ([[Anglo-Catholicism]]), which sees the Anglican church as nearer to the Roman Catholic Church than to Protestantism, and thus adopts many of the Roman Catholic church's tradition. A similar tendency also exists in the [[Lutheran]] churches.
[[Category:Christianity]]