QUESTION:
What does Catholic mean anyway? Are we the same as Christians?
ANSWER: Here is an explanation I found at Newadvent.com and hope that it answers your question.
The word Catholic (katholikos from katholou — throughout the whole, i.e., universal) occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers in what we may call its primitive and non-ecclesiastical sense. Thus we meet such phrases as the “the catholic resurrection” (Justin Martyr), “the catholic goodness of God” (Tertullian), “the four catholic winds” (Irenaeus), where we should now speak of “the general resurrection”, “the absolute or universal goodness of God“, “the four principal winds”, etc. The word seems in this usage to be opposed to merikos (partial) or idios (particular), and one familiar example of this conception still survives in the ancient phrase “Catholic Epistles” as applied to those ofSt. Peter, St. Jude, etc., which were so called as being addressed not to particular local communities, but to the Church at large.
The combination “the Catholic Church” (he katholike ekklesia) is found for the first time in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written about the year 110. The words run: “Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church.” However, in view of the context, some difference of opinion prevails as to the precise connotation of the italicized word, and Kattenbusch, the Protestant professor of theology at Giessen, is prepared to interpret this earliest appearance of the phrase in the sense of mia mone, the “one and only” Church [Das apostolische Symbolum (1900), II, 922].
All Catholics are Christians- not all Christians are Catholic. To be Christian is to be a ?follower of Christ.? We believe that the Catholic Church is the one true church started by Christ Himself as referenced in Scripture, Matthew 16:18,
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, 1and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
You can also reference the website listed to see when and by whom the other religions and churches were started by (if you are interested)