I know "Roman Catholic" is a common term, but it is often used with emphasis on the "Roman" part with overtones of painting Catholicism as a foreign, un-American kind of a religion. It is used in other ways, too, almost as what you might call the formal, full-name. For instance, my brother tells me that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia puts Roman Catholic right up there on the letterhead stationary. The Diocese of Bismarck has Roman Catholic on the big sign in front of the Diocesan offices. I learned from my Jesuit teachers that the full name of the Church is "The One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church" which is quite a mouthful, and it has traditionally been called the Catholic Church. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the rites, "Roman, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Armenian, and Maronite" were all part of the Catholic Church, and their bishops all recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. Of course, the Orthodox churches don't recognize the Pope, but seem to be more along the line of government-churches. The Anglican Church for example, has the Queen of England as their head. I don't know how the Lutheran Church in Norway handles it, but I think it is a government-church, too. Maybe its head is the King of Norway. I think Roman Rite would be the rite that is peculiar to the City of Rome or the Diocese of Rome, just as the Church of Rome would be the Diocese of Rome. Isn't there a Latin Rite which is distinguished from the Byzantine, Alexandrian, Armenian, Maronite, etc. rites? National Geographic magazine has a practice of writing "Roman Catholic" in any article that mentions the Catholic Church or its members. Oddly, this is done only the first time the name occurs in text, or in a caption. After that, it is "Catholic Church." I have also been a thorn in the side of the National Geographic on the subject. I think the magazine uses the term "Roman Catholic" because it tends to harken back to the days when the magazine was an expression of the old Ivy League, US Naval Academy, old-money types who would not be overjoyed to learn that people named "Kirwin/Kirwan/etc" or other such names were beginning to climb the economic and social ladder in the USA! In Ireland, The Irish Times newspaper, which is an elegant institution, full of learning, seems to use "Roman Catholic" all the time. This newspaper was the organ of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland for years, and was owned, managed, edited and widely-read by members of the government-church of Ireland, The Church of Ireland. In the USA, this is equivalent to the Episcopalian Church. I think the Irish Time's use of "Roman Catholic" is a vestige of the bad old days of British rule in Ireland. The other Irish newspapers use "Catholic." The Rev. Ian Paisley, who rejoices in the possession of a degree from Bob Jones University, and who was recently spitting abuse at Catholics who were under siege by the Orange Order marching men at Garvaghy Road, uses "Roman Catholic" exclusively. Enough said? To summarize, many people like me find "RC" and "Roman Catholic" to have the connotation of looking down the nose while pronouncing the term or the name, and I think the sooner it is allowed to fade-away from present-day discourse, the better. As I wrote before, you can't change history, so when the terms occur in documents or records, it is only honest scholarship to quote them as they occur.