UNIZIK JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND HUMAN RELATIONS

Like identical twins raised in different environments, two words with the same etymological root, can diverge significantly in meaning after long use in different semantic fields, without losing entirely their family resemblance. This is the case with the concepts “Catholic” and “Universal.” From this point of view, the recent decision of the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to replace ‘Catholic’ in the Apostle’s Creed with ‘Universal’ not only rehashed an old issue that commanded much attention in the 1960s but also presumed correspondence in meaning between two concepts with divergent connotations and denotations. The result, in my opinion, is a loss in theological meaning and depth gained through ecumenical dialogues. Using the historical approach, the rediscovery of catholicity in the ecumenical dialogues would be explored. This will be complemented with the interpretation of catholicity vis-a-vis universality as regards their ecclesiological fittingness. In this way, the nuanced understanding of catholicity will be presented which goes beyond the identification of one denomination as the Catholic Church as well as a merely geographical understanding of the concept.

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