The Roman Catholic Church

1. Who's Who? The Roman Catholic Church

2. The Pope • Speaks on behalf of God. • Believed to be a direct descendent of the apostle Peter. • Dictates Church policy. • Gregory I (Gregory the Great)

3. Gregory the Great • Emphasized the giving of alms to the poor, developing a system of accounting in the process. • Took special interest in converting the “Angles”, or Anglo tribes of England.

4. Letter to Abbot Mellitus The following is a letter written by Pope Gregory I to Bishop Mellitus, who was going to join Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the English, giving instructions for dealing with the holy places of the newly converted Saxons and their pagan practices. “Tell Augustine that he should be no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God. Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting. They will sacrifice and eat the animals not any more as an offering to the devil, but for the glory of God to whom, as the giver of all things, they will give thanks for having been satiated. Thus, if they are not deprived of all exterior joys, they will more easily taste the interior ones. For surely it is impossible to efface all at once everything from their strong minds, just as, when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds.... Mention this to our brother the bishop, that he may dispose of the matter as he sees fit according to the conditions of time and place.”

5. Augustin • http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf104.iv.iv.iii.html

6. The Cardinals • Appointed by the Pope. • Advisory council to the Pope. • Serve as “Judges” in secretive Roman courts called tribunals.

7. The Archbishops • Leaders of an area called a diocese. • Originally in the Roman Empire a diocese was a local unit of civil government co-led by Church officials. • When the Roman Empire collapsed, Archbishops assumed the role of government officials.

8. The Bishops • Answer directly to the Archbishops. • Have a more direct role in the daily affairs of the diocese. • A more complicated role: In the Roman Catholic Church, the Bishop is technically the official who hands out communion and other sacraments, though usually they delegate these duties to local priests.

9. The Priests • Head of local churches, or parishes. • Must meet certain requirements: • 25 years old • Celibacy – This would become a controversy that became part of the Protestant Reformation.

10. The People • Plebeians and Patricians – who were they? • Most of the population relied completely on the clergy (priests, bishops) to interpret civil laws and canonical laws. • Since most of the population was illiterate, they relied completely on the clergy to interpret holy scripture. • This would lead to the controversy of the Protestant Reformation.