Catholicism

One of my favourite priests has always been G K Chesterton's sleuth of human nature, Father Brown. I grew up in a fairly catholic environment myself, where reading about such interesting characters was not frowned upon; indeed, we were encouraged, through the influence of C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien, to explore the realms outside the narrow frame of reference employed by many conservatives.

But what has always intrigued me about Catholicism (Roman and otherwise) is that the word has a wonderful etymology. The Latin catholicus comes from Greek kata ('encompassing' or 'about') and holos ('whole', or 'all'). To say that something is catholic is to say that something is not merely eclectic (from Greek eklegein, 'to specially select' or 'to call out'), but all-encompassing.

To call someone a Roman Catholic is to say that that person believes in one holy apostolic and catholic church, and also that he or she subscribes to it being led by the Bishop of Rome, which is to say the Pope.

But I am not Catholic in that sense. I am catholic (with nothing 'merely' about it) and happy with that. 'Catholicism' actually is equivalent to 'Cata-holism', with all the implications that you might sense from the catalytic and catastrophic. It is an interesting state to be in.