Catholic (term) Catholic (term) The word catholic (with lowercase "c"; derived via Late Latin "catholicus", from the Greek adjective ("katholikos"), meaning "universal") comes from the Greek phrase ("katholou"), meaning "on the whole", "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole". The term Catholic (usually written with uppercase "C" in English) was first used to describe the Christian Church in the early 2nd century to emphasize its universal scope. In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. The word in English can mean either "of
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way in the Rocky Mountains" that was part of the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Issue, and reprinted a century later. A Currier and Ives print from 1868 uses the same title and theme for a very different print, showing a railroad crossing a new settlement as the train goes west. A and a stereograph by Alexander Gardner, both of an 1867 end-of-track frontier construction train, were titled "Westward The Course of Empire Takes Its Way". David Foster Wallace named one of his short stories "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" in his 1989 collection "Girl with Curious Hair". Early revisions of