THE Christian religion is said to be based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived and preached in the 1st Century AD, in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire where Christianity spread throughout the early empire, gaining major establishments in cities such as Jerusalem, Antioch and Edessa, despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan State religion.
In the 5th and 6th centuries, Germanic invaders of Roman territory also eventually adopted Catholicism to ally themselves with the papacy and the monasteries.
From the 6th Century AD, other Germanic tribes were converted (and re-converted) by missionaries of the Catholic Church. The Church eventually became the dominant influence in Western civilisation into the modern age.
The Kingdom of Hungary, founded in the year 1000, became one of the most powerful Medieval States in Central and Western Europe.
The people were Christianised by the king, Saint Stephan I of Hungary, a very religious monarch who founded the Hungarian State modelled on the Germanic system.
Succeeding monarchs generally kept a close relationship with Rome.
The Hungarian royal house gave the most saints and blessed personalities to the Catholic Church during the Medieval times.
From the mid-10 th to the mid-11th centuries, the Scandinavian kingdoms were unified and Christianised, resulting in an end to Viking raids, and greater involvement in European politics.
Following the advent of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries, expanding Muslim conquests led to an Arab domination of the Mediterranean that severed political connections between that area and northern Europe, and weakened cultural connections between Rome and the Byzantine Empire.
Beginning in the 7th Century, Islamic caliphates rose and gradually began to conquer greater areas of the ‘Christian’ world. Northern and western Europe escaped largely unscathed by the Islamic expansion.
In fact, the challenge presented by the Muslims helped to solidify the religious identity of Christians where the Church survived. Nevertheless, the massive Islamic invasions began a long struggle between Christianity and Islam throughout the Mediterranean Basin
New challenges to the Church began in the 16th Century, particularly to its religious authority.
The Renaissance eventually brought changes that led to the Protestant Reformation during which the Protestant Lutheran and the Reformed followers of Calvin, Knox and others split from the Catholic Church; with secular intellectuals following in the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th Century.
Concurrently, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and missionaries spread the Church’s influence through Africa, Asia and the New World – America.
A series of non-theological disputes, at this time, also led to the English Reformation which led to the independence of the Church of England.
During the Age of Exploration/Discovery and the Age of Imperialism, Western Europe spread the Catholic Church and the Protestant and Reformed churches around the world, especially in North and South America.
These developments, in turn, led to Christianity being the largest religion in the world today.
Catholics represent about half of all Christians
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, claims to be the largest Christian church with 1,254 billion followers or 17,7 percent of the world population by the turn of the Century (2013), including Zimbabwe, where there are just under one million members — about seven percent of the country’s total population.
Church membership steadily increased from 437 million in 1950 to 654 million in 1970.
Since 2010, the rate of increase was 1,5 percent, with a 2,3 percent increase in Africa, where 16 percent of Catholics live.
48,8 percent of Catholics live in the Americas; 23,5 percent in Europe; 10,9 percent in Asia; and 0,8 percent in Oceania.
In 2011, the Catholic Church had 413 418 priests. Asia and Africa, being the main growth areas had 39 percent and 32 percent increases respectively since 2000.
While the numbers were steady in North and South America, they dropped by nine percent in Europe.
Currently, the Catholic Church maintains it is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world.
In 2010, the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers said that the Church manages 26 percent of health care facilities in the world, including hospitals, clinics, orphanages, pharmacies and centres for those with leprosy.
As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, the Catholic Church has played a prominent role in the history of Western civilisation.
The preservation of the history of Western civilisation was helped by Christian monasteries.
The East-West Schism of 1054 formally separated the Christian church into two parts: Western Catholicism in Western Europe and Eastern Orthodoxy in the east.
It occurred when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other, mainly over disputes as to the existence of papal authority over the four Eastern patriarchs.
Since the split of 1054, the Eastern Church took the adjective ‘Orthodox’ as its distinctive designation while the Western Church, in unity with the Holy See (Pope in Rome), similarly took ‘Catholic’, keeping that description also after the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century, when those that ceased to be in communion became known as ‘Protestant’.
The Church of the East had its inception at a very early date in the buffer zone between the Parthian and Roman Empires in Upper Mesopotamia, and Edessa in north-western Mesopotamia, which, from apostolic times, was the principal centre of Syriac-speaking Christianity. At a time when early Christians were scattered abroad because of persecution, some found refuge at Edessa.
The Missionary Movement in the East began in AD 280 and gradually spread throughout Mesopotamia and Persia.
While initially the rulers of the Second Persian empire (226-640) also followed a policy of religious tolerance, they later gave Christians the same status as a subject race.
These rulers encouraged the revival of the ancient Persian dualistic faith of Zoroastrianism and established it as the State religion, with the result that the Christians were increasingly subjected to repressive measures. It was not until Christianity became the State religion in the West, however, that animosity toward Rome was focused on the Eastern Christians.
In AD 424, a council of the Church at Seleucia elected the first patriarch to have jurisdiction over the whole Church of the East, including India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
The establishment of an independent patriarchate with nine subordinate metropolises contributed to a more favourable attitude by the Persian Government which no longer had to fear an ecclesiastical alliance with the common enemy, Rome.
The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one true Church, founded by the Savour Jesus Christ.
Catholic doctrine imparts that the contemporary Catholic Church is the continuation of the early Christian community established by Jesus.
Reflecting the concern Jesus showed for the impoverished, catholic social teachings places a heavy emphasis on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy – namely the support and concern for the sick, the poor and the afflicted.
The teaching of the Christian Church calls for “…a preferential option for the poor,” while canon law prescribes that “…the Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor.”
Catholicism teaches that through God’s mercy a person can repent at any point before death, be illuminated with the truth of the Catholic faith and thus obtain salvation.
Some Catholic theologians have speculated that the souls of un-baptised infants and non-Christians without mortal sin but who die in original sin, are assigned to limbo, although this is not an official dogma of the Church.
While the Catholic Church teaches that it alone possesses the full means of salvation, it also acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of ecclesial Christian communities to “…impel towards Catholic unity… and tend and lead toward the Catholic Church, and thus bring people to salvation.”
It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved outside of the ordinary means (ex opere operato) known as baptism of desire, and by pre-baptismal martyrdom, known as baptism of blood, as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.
Thus, on this premise Christian missionaries set forth to save barbaric souls wherever they could.
Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and is a published author in her field. For comments e-mail: linamanucci@gmail.com