Catholic Church

The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition". According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops, though the concept has a complex history of development. Scripture and Tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith."

The Roman Rite (Latin: Rītus Rōmānus) is the most common ritual family for performing the ecclesiastical services of the Latin Church, the largest of the sui iuris particular churches that comprise the Catholic Church. The Roman Rite governs rites such as the Roman Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours as well as the manner in which sacraments and blessings are performed.

The Roman Rite developed in the Latin language in the city of Rome and, while distinct Latin liturgical rites such as the Ambrosian Rite remain, the Roman Rite has gradually been adopted almost everywhere in the Latin Church. In medieval times there were numerous local variants, even if all of them did not amount to distinct rites, yet uniformity increased as a result of the invention of printing and in obedience to the decrees of the Council of Trent of 1545–1563 (see Quo primum). Several Latin liturgical rites which had survived into the 20th century were abandoned after the Second Vatican Council. The Roman Rite is now the most widespread liturgical rite not only in the Catholic Church but in Christianity as a whole.

Latin liturgical rites, or Western liturgical rites, is a large family of liturgical rites and uses of public worship employed by the Latin Church, the largest particular church sui iuris of the Catholic Church, that originated in Europe where the Latin language once dominated and further by Western Rite Orthodoxy and Independent and Old Catholicism. Its language is now known as Ecclesiastical Latin. The most used rite is the Roman Rite.

The Latin rites were for many centuries no less numerous than the modern Eastern Catholic liturgical rites. The number of Latin rites and uses is now much reduced. In the aftermath of the Council of Trent, in 1568 and 1570 Pope Pius V suppressed the breviaries and missals that could not be shown to have an antiquity of at least two centuries in favor of the Roman Missal and Roman Breviary. Many local rites that remained legitimate even after this decree were abandoned voluntarily, especially in the 19th century, in favor of the Tridentine Mass and other Roman Rite rituals. In the second half of the 20th century, most of the religious orders that had a distinct liturgical rite chose to adopt in its place the Roman Rite as revised in accordance with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council (see Mass of Paul VI). A few such liturgical rites persist today for the celebration of Mass, since 1965–1970 in revised forms, but the distinct liturgical rites for celebrating the other sacraments have been almost completely abandoned.

The Eastern Catholic Churches of the Catholic Church utilize liturgies originating in Eastern Christianity, distinguishing them from the majority of Catholic liturgies which are celebrated according to the Latin liturgical rites of the Latin Church. While some of these sui iuris churches use the same liturgical ritual families as other Eastern Catholic churches and Eastern churches not in full communion with Rome, each church retains the right to institute its own canonical norms, liturgical books, and practices for the ritual celebration of the Eucharist, other sacraments, and canonical hours.

Historically, tension between Latin Catholics and those worshipping with Eastern liturgies resulted in the latinization, restriction, or prohibition of Eastern liturgies within the Catholic Church. Since the early 20th century, popes have encouraged the usage of traditional liturgies among Eastern Catholics and delatinization. Further emphasis on Eastern Catholic liturgical practice was made during the Second Vatican Council with the publication of the 1964 Orientalium Ecclesiarum.

Mendicant orders are primarily certain Catholic religious orders that have vowed for their male members a lifestyle of poverty, traveling, and living in urban areas for purposes of preaching, evangelization, and ministry, especially to less wealthy individuals. At their foundation these orders rejected the previously established monastic model, which prescribed living in one stable, isolated community where members worked at a trade and owned property in common, including land, buildings and other wealth. By contrast, the mendicants avoided owning property, did not work at a trade, and embraced a poor, often itinerant lifestyle. They depended for their survival on the goodwill of the people to whom they preached. The members of these orders are not called monks but friars.

The term "mendicant" is also used with reference to some non-Christian religions to denote holy persons committed to an ascetic lifestyle, which may include members of religious orders and individual holy persons.

Enclosed religious orders are religious orders whose members strictly separate themselves from the affairs of the external world. The term cloistered is synonymous with enclosed. In the Catholic Church, enclosure is regulated by the code of canon law, either the Latin code or the Oriental code, and also by the constitutions of the specific order. It is practised with a variety of customs according to the nature and charism of the community in question. This separation may involve physical barriers such as walls and grilles (that is, a literal cloister), with entry restricted for other people and certain areas exclusively permitted to the members of the convent. Outsiders may only temporarily enter this area under certain conditions (for example, if they are candidates for the order, doctors or craftsmen). The intended purpose for such enclosure is to prevent distraction from prayer and the religious life and to keep an atmosphere of silence.

Under certain circumstances, exceptions may be granted for enclosed men or women to leave the enclosure temporarily or permanently.

In the Catholic Church, an association of the Christian faithful or simply association of the faithful (Latin: consociationes christifidelium), sometimes called a public association of the faithful, is a group of baptized persons, clerics or laity or both together, who, according to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, jointly foster a more perfect life or promote public worship or Christian teaching, or who devote themselves to other works of the apostolate.

A 20th-century resurgence of interest in lay societies culminated in the Second Vatican Council, but lay ecclesial societies have long existed in forms such as sodalities (defined in the 1917 Code of Canon Law as associations of the faithful constituted as an organic body), confraternities (similarly defined as sodalities established for the promotion of public worship), medieval communes, and guilds.

The Catholic Church in France, Gallican Church, or French Catholic Church, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. Established in the second century in unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, it is sometimes called the "eldest daughter of the Church" (French: fille aînée de l'Église).

The first written records of Christians in France date from the second century, when Irenaeus detailed the deaths of 90-year-old bishop Saint Pothinus of Lugdunum (Lyon) and other martyrs of the 177 AD persecution in Lyon. In 496 Remigius baptized King Clovis I, who therefore converted from paganism to Catholicism. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Roman Empire, forming the political and religious foundations of Christendom in Europe and establishing in earnest the French government's long historical association with the Catholic Church. In reaction, the French Revolution (1789–1799) was followed by heavy persecution of the Catholic Church. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Laïcité, absolute neutrality of the state with respect to religious doctrine, is the official policy of the French Republic.

Maryland (US: /ˈmɛrɪlənd/ MERR-il-ənd) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east, as well as with the Atlantic Ocean to its east, and the national capital and federal district of Washington, D.C. to the southwest. With a total area of 12,407 square miles (32,130 km), Maryland is the ninth-smallest state by land area, and its population of 6,177,224 ranks it the 18th-most populous state and the fifth-most densely populated. Maryland's capital city is Annapolis, and the state's most populous city is Baltimore.

Maryland's coastline was first explored by Europeans in the 16th century. Prior to that, it was inhabited by several Native American tribes, mostly the Algonquian peoples. One of the original Thirteen Colonies, the Province of Maryland was founded in 1634 by George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, a Catholic convert who sought to provide a religious haven for Catholics persecuted in England. In 1632, Charles I of England granted Lord Baltimore a colonial charter, naming the colony after his wife, Henrietta Maria. In 1649, the Maryland General Assembly passed an Act Concerning Religion, which enshrined the principle of toleration. Religious strife was common in Maryland's early years, and Catholics remained a minority, albeit in greater numbers than in any other English colony.

The concept of human development expands upon the notion of economic development to include social, political and even ethical dimensions. Since the mid-twentieth century, international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank have adopted human development as a holistic approach to evaluating a country’s progress that considers living conditions, social relations, individual freedoms and political institutions that contribute to freedom and well-being, in addition to standard measures of income growth.

The United Nations Development Programme defines human development as "the process of enlarging people's choices", such choices allowing people to "lead a long and healthy life, to be educated, to enjoy a decent standard of living", as well as "political freedom, other guaranteed human rights and various ingredients of self-respect". Thus, human development is about much more than economic growth, which is only a means of enlarging people's choices. Some organizations, such as the Catholic Church and the Organization of American States, use the term "integral development" to reflect something wider than "economic" development.