I always thought it meant "universal," i.e., meant for all peoples of the world, an assertion I'd heard repeated countless times over the years. On the occasion of it being repeated by a columnist in his archdiocesan newspaper, Rich Leonardi has a post up pointing to a different explanation.
For an orthodox explanation of the historical meaning of the word "Catholic" in the Apostle's Creed, see this entry from Catholic Answers:
The Greek roots of the term "Catholic" mean "according to (kata-) the whole (holos)," or more colloquially, "universal." At the beginning of the second century, we find in the letters of Ignatius the first surviving use of the term "Catholic" in reference to the Church. At that time, or shortly thereafter, it was used to refer to a single, visible communion, separate from others.
The term "Catholic" is in the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, and many Protestants, claiming the term for themselves, give it a meaning that is unsupported historically, ignoring the term’s use at the time the creeds were written.
.The "unsupported historically" meaning of "catholic" is, I take it, the one limited to conveying the sense of "intended for all peoples at all times and places."
I find this interesting, and am sort of surprised at myself that I never noticed the root "holos." It still raises a few linguistic or definitional questions to me — being the sort who likes to make nice distinctions. Does "according to the whole" carry a sense of "that which we are all united in professing," i.e., a sort of one-ness? If so, how precisely does it fit into the "four marks of the Church," that is, that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? How precisely is "catholic" (in the sense above) to be a mark that is distinct from the mark of unity, or one-ness? Perhaps "one" means nothing more or less than the unique number… mathematical unity, rather than confessional unity.
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