Catholicism stands for
the doctrine, method and practice that are followed by the Roman Catholic
Church, well-known as Catholic Church. Pope who is the religious head of Rome
was initially the final authority of the Christian churches through the world. The pope usually used to commend high honor
and respect as the highest personality of the roman church and as the religious
leader of the Christians. The Catholic Church was originally inspired with the
high idea of christianly and the professed objective to propagate Christ’s
sermons and messages. It enjoyed inevitably common people’s trust and faith and
profoundly affected their outlook on life and society.
But it is also true
that highly honored status of the Catholic Church began to decline. This is
because it was the abuses of power and corrupt practices in the catholic
churches almost throughout Europe. The catholic churchmen were found, in no few
eases, to give up the ideal of an austere and ascetic life and to indulge in
luxurious and sensual life style. Moreover, even the atonement was bought and
sold on financial consideration under the sections of the church, and that was
wholly against the Christian principle. The mighty churchmen even interfered in
political affairs in order to gain power and fortune. Such a sort of meddling
in politics ultimately corroded the holy function of the church. Finally, the
Catholic Church, in a good many European lands, were involved in the
exploitation of the common people by exerting various impious pressures.
Over the life, loss of life, and resurrection of Jesus Christ God has
resigned adult males to himself, and with Christ who proposes unity to any or
all mankind. By his word god calls us in to a new relationship with himself as
our father and collectively as his children—a relationship, inaugurated by
simply Baptism in to Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, nurtured as well as
deepened through the Eucharist, and expressed within a confession of merely one
faith along with a common life of warm service.
The result was the
decline of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther rose against the church and
Protestantism, as an alternative to the Catholic Church, came into existence.
Of course, reformations were tried to be achieved by the counter processes of
certain catholic churchmen. In the same places, sincere Endeavours were there
to regain the lost glory of the Catholic Church. But what was lost could not be
fully recovered. The Catholic Church had to adjust itself with Protestantism
and other churches with other Christian views in the Christendom, as it is now.