The word "Catholic" comes from the Greek, Katholikos which is a compound word.
The word "Orthodox" is yet another compound word from the Greek. Notice, as in countless other cases, that an O separates the two words which form a compound.
Orthodox comes from the Greek words:
Orthos: straight, true, correct, upright
Doxa: glory, praise, worship
The best way to explain it to you would be to take a couple of English words that derive from the Greek to illustrate.
What does an Orthodontist do? He straightens, or corrects, or makes true the direction of your teeth. An Orthopedic surgeon is someone who would literally straighten out children, such as those with spinal or bone deformities. Orthotics (such as those placed in your shoes) are designed to correct some sort of deformity.
I think you get the idea.
Something you will hear frequently in Greek Orthodox Churches is "Doxa Patri ke Io ke Agio Pnevmati..."
Which is simply, "Glory to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit..."
So doxa means "glory" in Greek. But sometimes it is also translated "praise" or "worship".
so Orthodox simply means right/correct/true glory/praise/worship.
Orthodox Christians praise or give glory to God correctly or in a true fashion.
Now let's move on to the compound word Catholic, or in Greek "Katholikos".
kata or kath: according to
holos: whole
So literally you would say Katholos means "according to the whole".
Now the word kata can have a variety of meanings, and when it is used as a prefix of another word it often is used in the intensive case. Two examples of this would be kataklysmos (cataclysm) and katastrophe (catastrophe). I think most people would agree these are intense!
Now the Greek word "holos" means whole. An example in English some of you might be familiar with is "holocaust" which means "wholly burnt" or "burned whole".
Only sometimes in English the word "whole" means "entire" as in the "whole world", and in other instances it can mean "complete" or "lacking nothing" such as when Christ says, "Thy faith hath made thee whole".
It is this latter usage which applies to the term katholos, from which the word katholikos is derived.
Now recall that kata means "according to" but when used as a prefix to the word holos it intensifies the meaning, rendering it closer to the meaning "absolutely".
So katholos or catholic as used by the early Church Fathers meant "absolutely whole (or complete)" or "absolutely lacking nothing."
And this is the concept I have been trying to get across in my posts. That the Church is a creation of Christ and Christ does not create things incomplete or lacking anything.
Christ created the Church absolutely whole.
Now many people translate the compound Greek word "catholic" to mean "universal". It is apparent that they intend by their translation "according to the whole" to render "whole" in the sense of "according to the whole world".
Now there is a Greek word that already serves this purpose and it is "oikoumenikos" which in english would be rendered "ecumenical" or "oecumenical".
The Church Fathers used it in the first sense that I explained.
The Roman "Catholics" presume to believe that whomever is the current occupant of the See of Rome has "universal" primacy or authority over the entire Church, to which they presume extends to the entire inhabited world, i.e. "universal" or "catholic".
On an interesting side note, the word in Greek for wolf is "lukos", which is very similar to "likos" in the ending of the word "Kathalikos".
I think there are some Greeks out there who like to make a play on words and call the (Roman) Catholics "Katholukos" instead of "Katholikos" to demonstrate their displeasure with the Papists.
I am not Greek, nor am I an expert in Greek language, so take my words for what they are worth.
Cyprian (in Greek Kyprianos) |
