RELIGION

A religion is a set of beliefs that is held by a group of people. There are many different religions, each with a different set of beliefs. The beliefs are about the world and the people in it, about how they came into being, and what their purpose is. These beliefs are often linked to supernatural beings such as God, a number of gods or spirits. They may also be linked to an idea such as a path that the spirit of each person should take towards goodness, truth and duty. This is called spirituality. Each religion has different ideas about these things. Each religion also has a "moral code" which is a set of beliefs about how humans should act. Each religion usually has their own type of "devotions" when people worship or pray. They often have rituals (special things that are always done in the same way) for certain times of the year or certain times of a person's life.

*CATHOLIC RELIGION

Catholicism and its adjectival form Catholic are used as broad terms for describing specific traditions in the Christian churches in theology, doctrine, liturgy, ethics, and spirituality.

"Catholicism" and "Catholic" in this sense refer to the practices of several Christian churches. This sense is to be distinguished from the use of these words to refer to the Roman Catholic Church, that which is in full communion with the Holy See, as well as theOrthodox Catholic Church, which also considers it self the universal and apostolic church.

In the sense of indicating historical continuity of faith and practice from the first millennium, the term "catholic" is employed by many other historic churches which hold themselves to be "heirs of the apostolic faith". These churches consider themselves to be catholic, teaching that the term "designates the historic, orthodox mainstream of Christianity whose doctrine was defined by theecumenical councils and creeds" and as such, most Reformers "appealed to this catholic tradition and believed they were in continuity with it."