When was the Church started to be called “Catholic” ?

The word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, the combination of two Greek words: kata, which means concerning, and holos, which means whole – concerning the whole; sometimes it is also translated to mean, universal.

The word “catholic,” was first used in the earliest writings of Saint Ignatius of Antioch in 107 AD, only a few decades after the Gospel of John was written in 90 AD. Saint Ignatius was sentenced to death by lions in the Roman Coliseum. As he was being escorted to Rome he wrote a famous series of letters to different Churches.

In his letter to the Church at Smyrna, ch. 8.2  he wrote;

“Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. The celebration of the Eucharist is valid only if it is administered by the bishop or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Where the bishop is, there let the people also be; just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

 (The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2nd. ed., The Letters of Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans, Chapter 8.2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), pp. 189 & 191.

The fact that Saint Ignatius uses the word “catholic” without explaining what he meant has lead scholars to believe that the appellation, Catholic Church, may have been in use as early as the second half of the first century. Since the time Saint Ignatius used the word “Catholic” and, most probably, well before that, the term Catholic has been used to distinguish between the Church that Jesus established – the universal Church – from the splinter groups that have broken away. It is true that we can read in the Acts of the Apostles that the early followers of Christ at Antioch became known as "Christians" (cf. Acts 11:26).However, in the New Testament, the name Christian was never commonly applied to the Church herself, it is simply called "the Church." There was only one Church. In that early time there were not yet any break-away bodies substantial enough to be rival claimants of the name and from which the Church might ever have to distinguish itself. However, during the early period in post-apostolic times, the Church did acquire a proper name-and precisely in order to distinguish itself from rival bodies which by then were already beginning to form. And the name that the Church acquired when it became necessary for it to have a proper name was the name by which she has been known ever since-the Catholic Church.

Moreover, mention of the name Catholic Church became more and more frequent in the written record. It appears in the oldest written account we possess outside the New Testament of the martyrdom of a Christian for his faith, the "Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp," bishop of the same Church of Smyrna to which St. Ignatius of Antioch had written. Saint Polycarp was martyred around 155 AD, and the account of his sufferings dates back to that time. The narrator informs us that in his final prayers before giving up his life for Jesus Christ, Saint Polycarp "remembered all who had met with him at any time, both small and great, both those with and those without renown, and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world." We know that Saint Polycarp, at the time of his death in 155 AD, had been a Christian for 86 years. He could not, therefore, have been born much later than 69 or 70. Yet it appears to have been a normal part of the vocabulary of a man of this era to be able to speak of "the whole Catholic Church throughout the world."

We would like to reiterate that the term "catholic" simply means "universal," and when employing it in those early days, Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Polycarp of Smyrna were referring to the Church that was already "everywhere," as distinguished from whatever sects, schisms or splinter groups might have grown up here and there, in opposition to the Catholic Church. The term was already understood even then to be an especially fitting name because the Catholic Church was for everyone, not just for adepts, enthusiasts or the specially initiated who might have been attracted to her. Again, it was already understood that the Church was "catholic" because she possessed the fullness of the means of salvation. She also was destined to be "universal" in time as well as in space, and it was to her that applied the promise of Christ to Peter and the other apostles that "the powers of death shall not prevail" against her (Mt 16:18).

So the name Catholic became attached to the Church for good. By the time of the first ecumenical council of the Church, held at Nicaea in Asia Minor in the year 325 A.D., the bishops of that council were legislating quite naturally in the name of the universal body they called in the Council of Nicaea's official documents "the Catholic Church." As most people know, it was that same council which formulated the basic Creed in which the term "catholic" was retained as one of the four marks of the true Church of Christ. And it is the same name which is to be found in all 16 documents of the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Church, Vatican Council II. In the Creed which we recite on Sundays and holy days speaks of one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. As everybody knows, however, the Church referred to in this Creed is more commonly called just the Catholic Church.

"The Church is catholic because she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation. She is sent out to all peoples. She speaks to all men. She encompasses all times. She is 'missionary of her very nature." (“The Catechism of the Catholic Church”, no. 868).