What Does Diocese Mean?

The diocese was a form of organisation adopted by the Christian church from very early days indeed on account of its wide distribution through the Roman Empire and arising from the manner in which it was first spread. The Apostle Paul and presumably also the other Apostles, when evangelising a new area, would pick a large cosmopolitan centre of population in which to base themselves, start a church there and then trust the church they left behind to evangelise the surrounding area. The churches the first church planted would repeat the process, until only the extreme rural areas remained unevangelised. This worked so well that the Latin word, "paganus", meaning rustic, countrydweller has passed into English as the opposite of "Christian" i.e. "pagan". Christianity was also an extremely popular religion in the Roman army and was disseminated throughout the empire with the soldiers. Most religions of the day involved comparatively complex rituals performed by expert priests with comparatively simple belief systems. Christianity was the opposite way around, having simple worship backed by a body of knowledge not readily accessible to a non-Jew, but which needed to be shared with each individual christian. The church was growing and the difficulty was to make sure that new christians were not being indoctrinated with errors. The solution to this was the diocesan method of organisation where elders (bishops) were in charge of the spiritual welfare of each individual church and a senior, experienced church leader (archbishop, if you like, though the church called them apostles) would be in overall charge of all the churches in a large area. For example, we know that at the very latest, by AD 90, the apostle John was in charge of the seven churches scattered throughout Asia Minor (Turkey). By the time Constantine came on the scene the church had a network of churches organised into dioceses throughout the Roman empire, and this had by and large kept their teachings the same throughout. This was one efficient organisation. Whatever one thinks about Contantine's faith, or lack of it, he very much coveted the christian movement as a unifying force throughout the empire and it was the churches diocesan organisation which he actually adopted in its entirety, unchanged, as the means through which he would organise his own government. Once christianity was made the state religion of the the roman empire, the church everywhere was literally swamped with people who could not be readily assimilated and the organisation broke down in so far as divergent teachings began to make their appearance in the church as a result. By AD300, Constantine pressed the church leaders to call the council of Nicaea to reach some formula over the nature of Christ in order to maintain unity within the church and therefore the Empire. The diocesan organisation worked fantastically for Constantine, but the church had to put up with his political meddling in church affairs where he felt a problem within the church impinged upon the state for the rest of his reign.

Diocese is an administrative territorial division adopted in the churches and administered by a bishop. It is also referred to as a bishopric or Episcopal which signifies the office which is held by the bishop. The diocese is the prime unit of authority in the type of church governance referred to as Episcopal polity.

The Church of England sustained and developed this diocesan structure after the Reformation. The Catholic Church implemented the Roman diocesan constitution of authority during the Th and Th centuries, as each bishop entirely assumed the responsibility of the former Roman prefects.

In the later association of the Roman Empire, the progressive subdivision of provinces was administered and associated in a bigger unit, the diocese. It has been derived from the Latin dioceses, meaning "administration".

A diocese is a term used in Christian circles. It is usually used to describe an administrative unit that is administered by a Christian, often Catholic, Bishop. Owing to this, a diocese is also called a bishopric or an episcopal see. A diocese is an important unit in church governance which is of course officially referred to as episcopal polity.

The Roman Catholic Church uses the term archdiocese to allude to an important diocese that is not under the administration of a Bishop but falls under the jurisdiction of an Archbishop's considerable authority.

The original meaning of a diocese is of Roman origin. In the old days it was a term used to describe a Roman administrative unit. In fact the Church adopted many features of the Roman administrative setup and the diocesan system of authority is one of them