Joey, Thanks for bringing the point about the word 'Catholic'. I agree with you that the word has been used even before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence. I agree with you on that one.
The word Catholic comes from the Greek word, katholikos which means 'whole'. Ignatius used this word in 107 AD. In fact, the form of the word katholikos also appears in the Bible in Acts 9:31: "ekklesia kath holos".
Luke and Ignatius used the word katholikos or a form of it to indicate all the churches across the world or what we call as the universal church, or the congregations of the first century, based on what you translate it.
At that time, this name had nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church, even though it was later used for its formation. In fact, many Christian groups have taken names or form of names from the Scriptures for their denominations and have tied them back to their origins.
Regarding the canon, I don't believe that Roman Catholic Church compiled the canon of the NT. These books were already considered as canonical and used by the early Christian Church of the first and second centuries before heretical people like Marcion came up with their lists.
FF Bruce, writes in his essay, The Canon of the New Testament:
"One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and general apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa — at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397 — but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities."
