What Is the Roman Catholic Church?

By Pastor Duke Taber Jun 24, 2026 0CategoryDenominationsTag - No Taxonomy Found.

By Pastor Duke Taber

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Almost everyone has a Catholic somewhere in their story. A grandmother who prayed the rosary at the kitchen table. A coworker who gives something up every Lent. A childhood friend whose family walked into Mass on Sunday while yours drove to a Pentecostal storefront down the road. So when an Evangelical asks what the Roman Catholic Church actually is, the question is rarely abstract. It usually has a face attached to it.

I have pastored for more than thirty years, and I have watched many believers come into a living faith out of a Catholic background. I have also sat across the table from sincere Catholics who love Jesus and genuinely want to know God. So I want to handle this subject the way I would want my own faith handled. Honestly. Carefully. Without caricature, and without pretending that real differences do not exist.

This is not a takedown. It is a clear, fair explanation of what the Catholic Church teaches, where we share genuine common ground with our Catholic neighbors, and where Scripture leads many of us to part company. You are an adult who is already trying to think well about your faith. You deserve the truth told plainly, and you deserve to hear the Catholic position stated the way a Catholic would actually state it.

What the Roman Catholic Church Actually Is

The Roman Catholic Church is the largest single body of Christians in the world. According to Vatican statistics, the baptized Catholic population reached roughly 1.42 billion people in 2024, with the fastest growth happening in Africa. That is not a fringe movement. It is a global institution with a history that stretches back many centuries.

Structurally, the Catholic Church is organized under the pope, the bishop of Rome, who Catholics believe is the successor of the apostle Peter and the visible head of the church on earth. Beneath the pope are bishops, then priests, then the laity. The body Catholics call the church actually includes the Latin or Western Church most Americans picture, along with twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches that keep their own ancient liturgies while remaining in full communion with Rome.

The current pope is Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago. He was elected on May 8, 2025, becoming the first pope from the United States and the 267th man to hold the office. That detail surprises a lot of people. For an institution this old, an American pope feels almost unthinkable, yet here we are.

The Catholic Church understands itself as the one church Jesus founded, governed in an unbroken line of authority running through Peter to the present pope. That self-understanding is essential to grasp. When Catholics speak of “the Church,” they do not mean what most Evangelicals mean, which is the worldwide family of all born-again believers. They mean a specific, visible, hierarchical institution centered in Rome. Over the centuries that institution divided from the Eastern Orthodox in 1054 and from the Protestant Reformers beginning in 1517. Those two breaks shaped the entire map of Christianity we live on today.

Where We Stand on Common Ground

Before we look at the differences, we have to be honest about the agreements, because skipping them would be dishonest and unloving. On the central truths confessed in the ancient creeds, faithful Catholics and Evangelicals stand on the same ground.

We confess the same Triune God, one God in three persons. We affirm the full deity of Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His bodily death, His literal resurrection, and His promised return. We hold the same core beliefs of Christianity that the early church defended against every heresy that tried to unseat them. When a Catholic recites the Nicene Creed, he is confessing the same doctrine of the Trinity you confess, and the same identity of Jesus Christ you preach.

The apostle Paul summarized the gospel he received in words both traditions still treasure.

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,” — 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (NKJV)

A devout Catholic believes every word of that verse. We should never speak as though they do not. The differences I am about to describe are serious, and some of them are eternal in their weight, but they are not differences about whether Jesus is God or whether He rose from the dead. They are differences about authority and about how a sinner is actually made right with that God.

Where the Real Differences Begin

Theologians who study this carefully tend to land on the same short list of doctrinal areas that separate the two traditions: authority, justification, the role of Mary and the saints, and the sacraments and the Mass. The Christian Research Institute names these same fault lines. Let us walk through them one at a time.

Authority: Who Gets the Final Word

This is the difference underneath all the others. Evangelicals hold to sola scriptura, meaning Scripture alone is our final and supreme authority for what we believe and how we live. The Catholic Church rests its authority on three things instead of one. Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium, which is the official teaching office of the pope and bishops. Picture a three-legged stool rather than a single pillar.

That difference is not small. It is the reason the Catholic Church can teach doctrines you will not find stated in your Bible, such as purgatory and certain teachings about Mary. The official Catechism is candid that the church “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone,” and that Scripture and Tradition must both be honored with equal reverence. The Catholic Old Testament is also larger than ours, including seven additional books Protestants call the Apocrypha.

For those of us who hold Scripture as the final word, this is where everything turns.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” — 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV)

If Scripture is enough to make the man of God complete, then nothing needs to be added to it. The story of how we got our Bible is worth knowing well, and you can dig into the history of the Bible to see how the church came to recognize the books we hold today.

Justification: How a Person Is Made Right with God

Here we reach the question that split the Western church five hundred years ago, and it still matters today. How does a guilty sinner become right with a holy God?

The Evangelical answer is that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. God declares the believing sinner righteous in a single decisive moment, crediting Christ’s perfect righteousness to our account as a gift we did not earn. The Catholic answer is different in a way that is easy to miss because both traditions use the same words. Catholic teaching describes justification as a process rather than a single declaration, a righteousness that is infused into a person and grows through participation in the church and her sacraments.

I want to be fair here, because this is often misrepresented. Catholics are not teaching salvation by raw human effort, and they would object strongly to that charge. Their Catechism insists that “our justification comes from the grace of God,” which it calls “the free and undeserved help that God gives us,” and it teaches that this grace is first conferred in Baptism. They affirm Christ’s atoning death wholeheartedly.

The real divide is this. In Catholic teaching, justification “establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom,” so grace becomes intrinsically linked to the sacraments and to the works that flow from them. Even Catholic sources describe an initial justification at baptism, a progressive justification as a person grows, and a final justification on the last day. Righteousness is something God works into you over a lifetime, with your cooperation, rather than something God credits to you in an instant.

Scripture frames it differently.

“Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” — Romans 4:4-5 (NKJV)

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” — Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV)

Paul says God justifies the ungodly while they are still ungodly, and that the verdict is counted to faith, not added up from works. This is what we mean by grace versus works and what the Reformers meant by the legal, declared side of salvation. Understanding the difference between law and grace is not a minor doctrinal hobby. It is the difference between resting in a finished work and laboring toward an uncertain one. If you have ever wrestled with faith versus works, you already know how much peace hangs on getting this right.

Mary, the Saints, and Purgatory

Few Catholic practices puzzle Evangelicals more than the place of Mary. Here too we need precision. Both traditions honor Mary as the mother of Jesus and affirm the ancient title Theotokos, meaning God-bearer. The differences come in the dogmas Rome later defined. The Immaculate Conception was declared in 1854, teaching that Mary herself was conceived without original sin. Her bodily Assumption into heaven was declared in 1950. Catholics also teach her perpetual virginity.

Catholics are careful to say they do not worship Mary or the saints. They venerate them, and they ask them to pray on their behalf, the way you might ask a friend to pray for you. The Evangelical concern is not that honoring godly people is wrong. The concern is that Scripture names only one mediator between us and God.

“For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,” — 1 Timothy 2:5 (NKJV)

Purgatory raises a related issue. The Catholic Church teaches a state of final purification after death for those who die in God’s grace but still need cleansing before heaven. We do not find that taught in Scripture, and it sits uneasily beside the finished work of Christ.

The Mass and the Sacraments

Catholic life flows through seven sacraments, which Catholics understand as actual channels of God’s grace rather than mere symbols. The center of it all is the Mass. Catholic teaching holds that in the Eucharist the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ, and that the Mass re-presents the one sacrifice of Calvary, so that “the work of our redemption is carried on” each time it is celebrated.

That phrasing is where many of us pause, because Hebrews presses the opposite point with great force.

“For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.” — Hebrews 10:14 (NKJV)

One offering. Perfected forever. The cross was not a sacrifice that needs renewing. It was a finished transaction. This is why the conversation about the means of grace matters so much, because how we believe God delivers His grace shapes the whole shape of our walk with Him.

So Are Catholics Saved?

This is the question most people are really asking, and you deserve a straight answer rather than a dodge. Here is mine, given as a pastor who takes both truth and people seriously.

Salvation belongs to God, and it comes by grace through personal faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

“that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” — Romans 10:9 (NKJV)

I have known Catholics who clearly trust Christ Himself for their salvation, who love Him and lean on His cross rather than on their own performance. I have also known lifelong churchgoers in my own tradition who were trusting in their church attendance instead of in Jesus. Salvation is finally a matter of the heart’s trust, and that is something God alone reads with perfect accuracy. It is not my place to pronounce a verdict on any individual soul.

What I can say plainly is this. The official Catholic system, as taught, adds requirements to the gospel that Scripture says were already finished at the cross. Wherever a person is leaning on sacraments, on Mary, on purgatory, or on a lifetime of cooperation to secure what Christ already secured, that person is leaning on the wrong thing. The gospel is good news precisely because the work is done. Anyone who has never settled this for themselves can settle it today, and our guide on how to become a Christian walks through exactly what that means.

How to Love Your Catholic Neighbor

Knowing the differences is not permission to be unkind. It is preparation to be helpful. So let me offer some pastoral counsel for the relationships you actually have.

Do not caricature. Nothing closes a heart faster than telling someone their beliefs are something they are not. Learn what your Catholic friend actually believes, then talk about Jesus and the cross rather than starting an argument about Mary. Ask questions more than you make accusations. Point them, gently and consistently, back to the Scriptures themselves.

That last point is where the early believers in Berea set the pattern for all of us.

“These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” — Acts 17:11 (NKJV)

The Bereans did not take Paul’s word for it, and they did not take their tradition’s word for it. They opened the text and checked. That is the habit that protects you from error in any direction, and it is exactly why a site like Answered Faith exists. We are here to help you know what you believe, know why you believe it, and ground every bit of it in the Word of God rather than in hearsay. The goal is never to win a debate. The goal is to become a believer who can read Scripture for yourself and stand on it.

A Closing Word

The Roman Catholic Church is vast, ancient, and full of people Jesus loves. Some of them know Him personally and some of them, like some in every church, are trusting in a system instead of a Savior. The most loving thing you can do is hold two things at once. Real respect for the people, and real clarity about the gospel. Those two are not enemies. They are the two hands of genuine love.

Christ did not leave us guessing about how to be saved. He finished the work and invited us to rest in it. Anchor yourself there, search the Scriptures daily, and let the finished work of Jesus be the ground you stand on and the message you carry.

Ready to build your beliefs on Scripture instead of secondhand opinion? Start with our free study, How to Study the Bible, and learn how to open the Word for yourself with confidence, so that whatever question comes your way next, you will know how to search the Scriptures and find out whether these things are so.