I don’t really want to get you started but if they weren’t Catholics what were they? I’m truly curious.
Acts 11:26b "...And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch."
“Acts 11:26b “...And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”’
You’re being disingenius. There were protestants even then called Christians.
And it was the bishop of Antioch, some 70 or so years later, who gives us the first recorded use of the term "Catholic Church" to describe the Christian community.
The term "Catholic Church" was coined in 106 AD by St. Ignatius in his epistle to the Smyrnaeans:
"Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."
Augustine continued the formalization of the term Catholic in the 4th century: "In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate.
"And so, lastly, does the very name of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.
The term "Catholic Church" was finally formalized in 380 AD by Theodosius I, in response to the myriad heresies which had sown confusion across the evangelized world. Christianity thereby became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
I’m very sorry, but in the year 107 Ignatius the Bishop of Antioch wrote this to the church in Smyrna on the way to his martyrdom in Rome.
“Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church”.