As usual Edwarda, you are incomplete on historical (especially Tudor and Stuart) matters. The English heretics preferred to consider themselves members of the universal church mentioned in the credo, so they refused to cede the use of "Catholic" to their oppressors. Many bigshot Romish (or Papist) churchmen, in turn, resented being called Romish or Papist, so they eventually implicitly agreed to be called "Roman Catholic." In English speech, "Roman Catholic" is the polite and generally accepted term for the Romish, Papist (in CE terms) or Catholic (in continental Catholic terms).
The Catholic (sic!) Encyclopaedia explains the acceptance by Catholic authorities of "Roman Catholic" as follows:
The "Oxford Dictionary" is probably right in assigning the recognition of "Roman Catholic" as the official style of the adherents of the Papacy in England to the negotiations for the Spanish Match (1618-24). In the various treaties etc., drafted in connection with this proposal, the religion of the Spanish princess is almost always spoken of as "Roman Catholic".
BTW, all of this is irrelevant, as I will happily substitute "Papist" for "Roman Catholic" if this will lessen offense. I wasn't referring to the Protestant revolution in the 16th century, but to the Synod of Whitby (7th century) as reported by the Venerable Bede (referred to as the "Venomous Bede" in Seller and Yeatman's definitive 1066 and All That) a well-known Anglo-Saxon chronic. The Irish (or the Scots as they were called then, not to be confused with the Scots from whom St. Padraic had been kidnapped by the Irish (as they were then called)) faced the representatives of the Pope over the critical question of the date of Easter which the Irish had not kept up to date. The king decided for the Papists because a bird flew through the hall (illustrating the transience of avian life), and the English became Papists rather than Irish (which would have anticipated the United Kingdom -- at least so far as Armagh went. I hope this clears things up. |
