ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between Roman Catholicism and worldwide Christianity, and it examines how the former exists in the modern world, it size and its geographical spread. It explains, the term 'Catholic' has so many meanings, and is claimed by so many different Churches. Catholics argue that those who have, in Catholic eyes, separated themselves from God's Church and gathered in communities distinct from it, cannot constitute Churches themselves because there is only one Christian institution that can properly be called a Church, and that is the Roman Catholic one. In the Roman Catholic Church the bishop with whom all its bishops are in communion is the bishop of Rome, the pope. Perhaps it would be better to describe the Roman Catholic Church as the 'Roman Communion' of Churches, because to call it Roman Catholic upsets a large number of Christians who are in communion with the bishop of Rome, but are not in any other sense 'Roman' Catholics.
