catholic

adj

1. Universal; all-encompassing.

   “The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.”

   “Essentially, and in idea, the empire, in the minds of the Romans, was world-wide. This conception descended to the Church, which was ‘Catholic’ in spite of Buddhists, Confucians, and (later) Muhammadans.”

   “Newton Heath depot has lately been catholic in its choice of power for the 6.10 p.m. Manchester-Southport and the 9 p.m. back via Bolton.”

   “This semifossorial mammal tends to reside in areas with herbaceous cover, frequenting runways in the upper soil horizons where it feeds on a highly catholic diet of animal and plant materials […]”

2. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of Catholic.
3. (obsolete)Common or prevalent; especially universally prevalent.
4. (usually)Embracing all.

   “[…]a knowledge which should not only know at what particular spot in these mounds it should excavate, but, having excavated, would understand how to sift and use these materials properly, with a profoundly pious and reverential mind,—a knowledge not narrow, sectarian, one-sided, but catholic, human, large, one to which Homer and Horace and Goethe and Tennyson should no be more foreign than Church Fathers, and archæologists, palæographers and antiquaries[…]”

   “A catholic mind is a continual source of pleasure, a catholic taste continually enjoys it. Narrow-mindedness is a curse wherever it exists, whether in the religions, scientific, literary, or aesthetic sphere, or in the world of social intercourse; whether it dwindles religion into a dogma, or science into a formula, or literature into a style, or art into a school, or morality into a maxim.”

   “"I've got catholic tastes. Catholic with a small "c", of course."”

   “He was omnivorous in his appetite for knowledge, quite catholic in his range of interests […]”

5. (obsolete)Universally applicable.
6. Of universal human interest or use.

   “And as the whole booke of Psalmes is Oleum efjusum, (as the Spouse speaks of the name of Christ) an Oyntment powred out upon all sorts of sores, A Searcloth that souples all bruises, A Balme that searches all wounds; so are there some certaine Psalmes, that are Imperiall Psalmes, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over all occasions, Catholique, universall Psalmes, that apply themselves to all necessities.”

   “And this vast number is but a selection ; the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, and what was of catholic rather than of national interest.”

7. Of the Western Christian church, as differentiated from e.g. the Orthodox church.

   “Christmas is celebrated at different dates in the Catholic and Orthodox calendars.”

8. Of the Western Christian church, as differentiated from e.g. the Orthodox church.

   “The Church of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic one.”

   “Catholic churches are adorned differently from Protestant ones.”

9. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of catholic.

noun

1. A member of a Catholic (western Christian) church.
2. (ellipsis, often)A member of a Catholic (western Christian) church.

   “The wife of the Prime Minister is a Catholic.”

   “The consubstantialists, who by their success have deserved and obtained the title of Catholics, gloried in the simplicity and steadiness of their own creed, and insulted the repeated variations of their adversaries, who were destitute of any certain rule of faith.”

name

1. A surname.