Something slightly awkward happens in a lot of churches on a Sunday morning. The congregation stands to recite the Apostles’ Creed, every voice rolling along together—and then it arrives. “I believe in the holy catholic church.” A few voices go quiet. Someone mouths “Christian” instead. A visitor glances down at the order of service, wondering if they’ve walked into the wrong building.

It’s an understandable flinch. For most people the word catholic means one thing: Rome, the Pope, the Vatican. So why is it sitting there in a creed recited for centuries by churches with no allegiance whatsoever to the papacy?

Here’s the short answer: the catholic of the creed has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church. The word is older, broader and far more precious than the confusion suggests—and quietly swapping it for “Christian” gives away something you would almost certainly rather keep. Let’s unpack why.

The Word That Trips People Up

The problem is a collision of two very different words that happen to be spelled the same way.

• catholic (small “c”)—an ancient adjective meaning universal, describing a quality of the whole church.
• Catholic (capital “C”)—a proper name for one particular communion of churches, the one led from Rome.

When we recite the creed, we’re using the first. The trouble is that centuries of usage have made the second so dominant the original meaning has all but vanished from everyday hearing. So people do one of two things: they grit their teeth and say the word anyway without quite knowing what they mean, or they replace it. Some hymnals and service sheets now simply print “Christian church.” The intention is good. The instinct to protect the congregation from confusion is kind. But as we’ll see, it trades a mountain for a molehill.

So What Does “Catholic” Actually Mean?

The word comes straight from Greek. Katholikos is built from kata holon, meaning “according to the whole” or “throughout the whole.” In plain English: universal, general, complete.

You won’t find the word itself in the New Testament. But the reality it describes is everywhere—one body, one Lord, one people drawn from every nation. The apostle Paul greets “the church of God… together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2). That is catholicity in a single sentence.

The word attached itself to the church remarkably early. Consider the timeline:

Notice the first date. Ignatius of Antioch used the word around AD 110—roughly 1,400 years before there was any such thing as a “Roman Catholic Church” in the sense we mean today. Cyril of Jerusalem’s five reasons never once mention a bishop of Rome; every one of them is about the church reaching everywhere, teaching everything, and healing everyone. The word was never a Roman invention. It belonged to the whole church first.

“Catholic” Is Not “Roman Catholic”

This is the hinge of the whole matter: The historic churches that came out of the Reformation cheerfully confess the catholic church while flatly denying this means the Roman church. Here’s the distinction laid side by side:

There’s a delicious irony hiding here. To insist catholic really means “the church under the one bishop of Rome” is to take a word that means universal and shrink it down to a single city. It’s, if anything, the least catholic definition available. The historic argument runs the other way: the church is catholic precisely because it’s not confined to one see, one culture or one century.

So when did the confusion set in? Largely after the Reformation, when Rome pressed “Catholic” into use as a badge to mark itself off from Protestants. Martin Luther, wanting to spare ordinary German believers the muddle, translated the creed’s word as “Christian.” John Calvin, by contrast, kept the older word “catholic” and refused to surrender it. He was right to hold on. It’s a good word, and it belongs to every believer.

One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic: The Four Marks

In its fuller form, the Nicene Creed confesses “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Those four words became known as the four marks of the church—the family features that identify Christ’s people wherever they’re found.

One point deserves a flag, because it’s a common source of worry. Apostolic doesn’t mean an unbroken chain of ordinations stretching back to Peter—the “laying of hands” from bishop to bishop. It means the church holds fast to apostolic doctrine: the teaching the apostles delivered, now preserved for us in Scripture. A church is apostolic not because of who ordained its ministers, but because of what it believes and preaches.

Universal in Place, People and Time

Catholicity is bigger than most people imagine. It stretches in three directions at once.

• Across every place. John saw a multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9). The church has no home country and no headquarters city.
• Across every kind of person. In Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek… slave nor free… male and female” (Galatians 3:28). No class, race or culture is turned away at the door.
• Across every age. This is the dimension people most often miss. The church runs from the beginning of the world to its end. Augustine of Hippo spoke of the church from Abel—God’s people reaching all the way back to the first believer. The Heidelberg Catechism captures it beautifully, confessing that the Son of God gathers his church “from the beginning of the world to its end.”

That third strand is why reciting the creed is such a quietly thrilling act. When we confess the holy catholic church, we’re not merely nodding at other congregations across town. We’re joining hands with believers on every continent and in every century—a people so vast that no one could number them.

What the Reformers Reclaimed

Here’s where the story takes a turn that surprises many. The leaders of the Reformation didn’t think they were starting a new church or walking out of the catholic church. They believed they were restoring it.

Their charge against Rome wasn’t that Rome was too old, but that it had drifted from the faith once delivered. Reformation, they insisted, isn’t revolution. It’s repair—recovering a catholic truth that had become corroded, not inventing something novel. That conviction is written into the great confessions:

• The Belgic Confession (Guido de Brès, 1561) describes the “catholic or universal church” as a holy congregation of true believers that “has existed from the beginning of the world and will be to the end,” because Christ is an eternal King who cannot be without subjects.
• The Westminster Confession distinguishes the invisible catholic church—the whole number of God’s elect across all ages—from the visible church of all who profess the true faith, together with their children. Under the gospel this visible church is no longer penned into one nation, as Israel once was, but is genuinely worldwide.

That visible-and-invisible distinction is the key that frees the word catholic from Rome’s grip. Rome ties the universal church to a single visible institution. The older answer is richer: the truly universal church is ultimately the whole company of the redeemed, known finally to God alone, appearing visibly wherever the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.

Which raises the obvious question—how do we tell the true church from a false one? The historic answer names three marks of a true church: the pure preaching of the gospel, the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and faithful church discipline. Not a postal address in Rome, but the Word, the sacraments and holy order.

“But Didn’t ‘Catholic’ Already Mean Rome?”

It’s the strongest objection, and you’ll meet it online: by the time the creed was written in AD 381, “catholic” supposedly already meant the single institution now led from Rome, so reading it as merely “universal” is a modern dodge. Four short replies dismantle it:

• The plain meaning was always “universal.” That is the undisputed root sense, and it governs how the early teachers used the word.
• It marked out truth, not Rome. Where “catholic” distinguished the orthodox from heretics, it did so by right doctrine—which is exactly the point being made here.
• Rome held no universal rule then. In the fourth century the bishop of Rome had no authority over the Eastern churches, and it was Eastern bishops who framed and signed the creed. They were plainly not confessing submission to a pope.
• The Roman reading is self-defeating. It turns a word meaning universal into a word meaning this one particular city—the very opposite of what it says.

Why It Matters Every Time We Say It

So why not just print “Christian” and spare everyone the bother? Because the swap costs more than it saves.

• It shrinks our faith. “Catholic” pushes back against the lonely, sectarian instinct that says it’s just me and my Bible or just my little church. We belong to something enormous.
• It roots us in history. We’re not newcomers. We stand in a line of the faithful two thousand years deep (Hebrews 12:22–23).
• It fuels mission. The gospel is the property of no single culture. A church that grasps its catholicity wants the whole world in.
• It breeds humility. We share the great essentials with every true believer in Christ, across the lines that divide the visible church.

Christ himself promised, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). To confess the holy catholic church is simply to take him at his word: one people, in every place, through every age, that no power in heaven or earth can destroy. That’s not a word to mumble past. It’s a word to reclaim.

Reclaiming the Word

So the next time we reach that line in the creed, let’s not drop our voice or reach for a substitute. Let’s say it with confidence. To confess the holy catholic church is to declare Jesus Christ has one people—gathered from every nation, every walk of life and every century since the world began—and that we, by grace, belong to it.

The word was never Rome’s to keep, and it isn’t ours to surrender. It’s the joyful confession that the multitude no one can number, standing before the throne, is real; that the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and that our name, if we are in Christ, is written among them. That’s a mountain. “Christian” church, however well meant, is by comparison a molehill. Take back the word.

Related Reads

• What Are the Marks of a True Church?
• What Is the Church? A Biblical Definition of Ekklesia
• The Council of Nicaea: Uncovering Its History and Impact
• The Case for Sola Scriptura: Can We Trust the Reformers?
• Upon This Rock I Will Build: What Rock Did Jesus Mean?
• Assurance of Salvation: How Can I Know I’m Truly Saved?