Talk:Catholic Church/History lead draft

The Christian religion is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, who lived and preached in the 1st century AD in the province of Judea of the Roman Empire. Catholic doctrine teaches that the contemporary Catholic Church is the continuation of this early Christian community established by Jesus. Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire, despite persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in AD 313, and it became the state religion in 380. Germanic invaders of Roman territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, many of whom had previously adopted Arian Christianity, eventually adopted Catholicism to ally themselves with the papacy and the monasteries.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, continuous Muslim conquests following the advent of Islam led to an Arab domination of the Mediterranean that severed political connections, and weakened cultural connections, between Rome and the Eastern Roman Empire. Conflicts involving authority in the church, particularly the authority of the Bishop of Rome finally culminated in the East West Schism in the 11th century, splitting the Church into the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Earlier splits within the Church occurred after the Council of Ephesus (431) and that of Council of Chalcedon (451). However, a few Eastern Churches remained in communion with Rome, and portions of some others established communion in the 1400s and later, forming the what are called the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Early Monasteries throughout Europe helped preserve Greek and Roman classical civilisation. The Church eventually became the dominant influence in Western Civilization unto the modern age. Many Renaissance figures were sponsored by the church. The 16th century, however, began to see challenges to the Church, in particular to its religious authority by figures in the Protestant Reformation, as well as in the 17th century by secular intellectuals in the Enlightenment. Concurrently, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and missionaries spread the Church's influence through Africa, Asia, and the New World.

In 1870, the First Vatican Council declared the dogma of Papal Infallibility. Also in 1870, the Kingdom of Italy annexed the City of Rome, the last portion of the Papal States to be incorporated in the new nation. In the 20th century, the church endured a massive backlash at the hands of anti-clerical governments around the world, including Mexico and Spain, where thousands of clerics and laypersons were persecuted or executed. During the Second World War, the Church condemned Nazism, and protected hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust; its efforts, however, have been criticized as potentially inadequate. After the war, freedom of religion was severely restricted in the newly aligned Communist countries, several of whom had large Catholic populations.

In the 1960's, the Second Vatican Council led to several controversial reforms of the church liturgy and practices, an effort descried as "opening the windows" by defenders, but leading to harsh criticism in several conservative circles. In the face of increased criticism from both within and without, the Church has upheld or reaffirmed at various times controversial doctrinal positions regarding sexuality and gender, including limiting clergy to males, and moral exhortations against abortion, contraception, sexual activity outside of marriage, remarriage following divorce without annulment, and against homosexual marriage.