Preliminaries
Catholic Christianity is based on the Nicene Creed, which stipulates the existence of “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”. “Catholic” is an anglicised form of Greek καθολικός “general, universal”. In essence, the Catholic Church’s name is a claim to be the sole legitimate embodiment of the Church to which the Creed refers.
In practice, the Catholic Church governs those individuals and churches who are in full communion with the Catholic Diocese of Rome. The metropolitan bishop of Rome, styled the Pope, is the ecclesiastical and temporal leader of the worldwide church.
Holy See
The Holy See is the Diocese of Rome in its capacity as the central government of the Catholic Church.
Roman Curia
The Roman Curia is the executive of the Catholic Church. Its major executive departments are referred to as dicasteries.
Dicastery for the Clergy
The Dicastery for the Clergy, formerly the Congregation for the Clergy, has responsibility for the Church’s priests and deacons. In that capacity it is vaguely analogous to the human resources department of the Catholic ecclesiarchy.
Opus Dei
Opus Dei is a personal prelature under the governance of the Dicastery for the Clergy. It is rumoured, with varying amounts of evidence, to be engaged in influence operations and/or clandestine work, advancing a dominionist, integralist, and/or fascist political programme in service of the interests of the Church/itself.
- The New Media Foundation, an Australian online publisher with a strongly conservative political line on bioethics which it applies strenuously to trans affairs, was originally registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission at the address of an Opus Dei property in Carlton, Victoria. Several of its registered directors have also been members of Opus Dei. However, it denies any formal affiliation with Opus Dei, which is probably true but not necessarily meaningful.
Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), formerly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and previously the Roman Inquisition, is the Catholic Church’s doctrinal and internal affairs division. Its role in the modern day is similar to a secular inspectorate-general.
- Joseph Ratzinger, the later Pope Benedict XVI, who was a highly effective anti-trans theorist and political activist within the Catholic Church, served as Prefect of the CDF from 1982 through 2005.
Other Catholic entities
There are some entities which are not formally part of the Catholic Church’s organisational hierarchy but are clearly sufficiently aligned with the Church in terms of theory and/or praxis that it is appropriate they be listed here.
- The Australian Catholic Medical Association was set up in 2017 with the approval of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the episcopal conference for Australia. However, it is unclear whether the conference actually authorised the Association’s formation, which if it had would presumably render the Association an instrumentality of the Church.
Metadata
- Version: 1 (17 April 2024).
- Created: 17 April 2024.