There are approximately nine categories of Roman Catholic people around the world. The distinctions between them are not often clear because they can overlap or merge or blur into one another. Nor would individual Catholics necessarily appreciate or agree with such labels. But they will serve as convenient definitions for purposes of discussion.

1. Nominal or Social Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism of the largely uncommitted - perhaps those born or married into the Church but who have little knowledge of Catholic theology and who are, in practice, Catholics in name only.
 

2. Syncretistic/eclectic Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism that is, to varying degrees, combined with and/or absorbed by the pagan religion of the indigenous culture in which it exists (e.g., as in Mexico and South America).
 

3. Traditional or orthodox Catholicism:
    The powerful conservative branch of Roman Catholicism that holds to historic church doctrines such as those reasserted at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.
 

4. "Moderate" Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism of Vatican II, which is neither entirely traditional nor entirely liberal.
 

5. Modernist, liberal Catholicism:
    The post-Vatican II "progressive" Roman Catholicism that, to varying degrees, reject traditional doctrine.
 

6. Ethnic or cultural Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism often retained by migrants to America who use "their religion to provide a sense of belonging. They feel that not to be Roman Catholic is not to belong and to lose [their] nationality and roots."
 

7. Lapsed or apostate Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism which involves alienated, backslidden, or apostate Catholics who are largely indifferent to the Catholic Church.
 

8. Charismatic Catholicism:
    The Roman Catholicism that seeks the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and speaking in tongues and other spiritual gifts as signs of a deeper Catholic spirituality.
 

9. Evangelical Catholicism:
    The branch of former Roman Catholics who are truly evangelical and have rejected the unbiblical teachings of Rome, often deciding to remain in the Church to evangelize other Catholics.
 

    The traditionalists are arguably the most influential segment of the Church because through the Pope, bishops, and orthodox priests, they occupy the center of power in Catholicism. Traditionalists believe that by being obedient to the Church, they are being obedient to God and Christ. They have been taught that whatever the Church decrees as orthodox belief and practice through its tradition is, by definition, the will of God.