Hierarchy of the Catholic Church distinct from the general apostolate or ministry of the laity described above. The consultative leadership of the church, in both the diocese and the parish, usually comprises a Pastoral Council and a Finance Council, as well as several Commissions usually focusing on major aspects of the church's life and mission, such as Faith Formation or Christian Education, Liturgy, Social Justice, Ecumenism, or Stewardship. Religious—who can be either lay people or clergy—are members of religious institutes, societies in which the members take public vows and live a fraternal life in common. This is a form of consecrated life distinct from other
Relations between the Catholic Church and the state religious unity, anyone within the Church who did not subscribe to Catholic Christianity was seen as a threat to the dominance and purity of ""the one true faith"" and they saw it as their right to defend this by all means at their disposal. Beginning with Edward Gibbon in "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" some historians have taken the view that Christianity weakened the Roman Empire through its failure to preserve the pluralistic structure of the state. Pagans and Jews lost interest and the Church drew the most able men into its organisation to