Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre was a French Catholic archbishop who greatly influenced modern traditional Catholicism. In 1970, he founded the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a community to train seminarians, in the village of Écône, Switzerland. In 1988, he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for consecrating four bishops against the express prohibition of Pope John Paul II.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is the oldest among the departments of the Roman Curia. Its seat is the Palace of the Holy Office in Rome. It was founded to defend the Catholic Church from heresy and is the body responsible for promulgating and defending Roman Catholic doctrine.
Traditionalist Catholicism is a movement encompassing members of the Catholic Church and offshoot groups of the Catholic Church, which emphasizes beliefs, practices, customs, traditions, liturgical forms, devotions and presentations of teaching associated with the Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Of particular emphasis among Traditionalist Catholics is the Tridentine Mass, a form of the Roman Rite largely replaced in general use by the post-Second Vatican Council Mass of Paul VI.
The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) is an association established in Rome in 1562 for the purpose of providing religious education. In modern usage, it refers to the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., which owns the copyright on the New American Bible Revised Edition, and is a term colloquially used for the catechesis or religious education program of the Catholic Church, normally designed for children. In some Catholic parishes CCD is called PSR, meaning Parish School of Religion, or SRE, meaning Special Religious Education.
Marc Armand Ouellet is a Canadian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America from 2010 to 2023.
The Sodality of Our Lady, also known as the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a Roman Catholic Marian society founded in 1563 by young Belgian Jesuit Jean Leunis at the Roman College of the Society of Jesus. The modern Ignatian lay group Christian Life Community traces its origins to the first Sodality.
A society of apostolic life is a group of men or women within the Catholic Church who have come together for a specific purpose and live fraternally. It is regarded as a form of consecrated life.
Paulo Evaristo Arns OFM was a Brazilian prelate of the Catholic Church, who was made a cardinal and the Archbishop of São Paulo by Pope Paul VI, and later became cardinal protopriest. His ministry began with a twenty-year academic career, but when charged with responsibility for the Sao Paulo Archdiocese he proved a relentless opponent of Brazil's military dictatorship and its use of torture as well as an advocate for the poor and a vocal defender of liberation theology. In his later years he openly criticized the way Pope John Paul II governed the Catholic Church through the Roman Curia and questioned his teaching on priestly celibacy and other issues.
Kurt Koch is a Swiss prelate of the Catholic Church. He has been a cardinal since November 2010 and president of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity since 1 July 2010. He was the bishop of Basel from 1996 until 2010.
César de Bus was a French Catholic priest and founder of two religious congregations.
Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Roman Catholic Church as Pope from 2005 to 2013, continued manouevring the Church through the dynamics of modernity, which the Church had begun engaging in with the Second Vatican Council. Because the question of religious pluralism is a key issue raised by modernity, ecumenism, the establishment of harmony and dialogue between the different Christian denominations, is a significant concern of a post Second Vatican Council Church. Pope Benedict XVI's approach has been characterised as leaning toward the conservative while still being expansive and engaged, involving the full breadth of Christendom, including the Orthodox Churches and Protestant churches, as well as freshly engaging with other Christian bodies considered by Roman Catholics to be more heterodox, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière was a French nobleman who spent his life in serving the needs of the poor. A founder of the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, he also helped to establish the French colony of Montreal. He was the founder of the Congregation of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, Religious Sisters dedicated to the care of the sick poor and has been declared venerable by the Catholic Church.
This is a glossary of terms used within the Catholic Church. Some terms used in everyday English have a different meaning in the context of the Catholic faith, including brother, confession, confirmation, exemption, faithful, father, ordinary, religious, sister, venerable, and vow.
Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as the Cardinal-Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 2014.
Ricardo Ezzati Andrello is an Italian-Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Santiago de Chile from December 2010 to March 2019 and has been a cardinal since February 2014. He previously served as Archbishop of Concepción. He headed the Episcopal Conference of Chile from 2010 to 2016.
João Braz de Aviz is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He has served as the prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life since his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011. He began his career working for twenty years as a parish priest and seminary teacher. He became a bishop in 1994 and was bishop of Ponta Grossa from 1998 to 2002, archbishop of Maringá from 2002 to 2004, and archbishop of Brasília from 2004 to 2011.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Catholic Church:
Jean de Viguerie was a French historian. He specialized in the history of education and of the Catholic Church in the Enlightenment period.
Latin American liberation theology is a synthesis of Christian theology and Marxian socio-economic analyses, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples". Beginning in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, liberation theology became the political praxis of Latin American theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor". It arose principally as a moral reaction to the poverty and social injustice in the region, which Cepal, a leftist think tank, deemed the most unequal in the world.
