I have on my reference shelf a copy of Halley’s Bible Handbook, first published in 1927, but updated and revised many times, and used in (Protestant) Bible study classes at least into the 1980s. The maps of Biblical Palestine are great, but the theology is, to say the least, hardcore.
According to Halley, the “paganization of the Church” began in the 4th Century, when Theodosius proclaimed Christanity to be the state religion of the Roman Empire. I won’t go into the next 17 pages in detail, but let’s just say Halley argued that the Church became more and more corrupt, more secularized and more “imperial” over the next 12 centuries.
Then Martin Luther came along. Unlike earlier reformers, Luther succeeded, with the cooperation of the German princes, in separating the secular church organization (i.e., Roman Catholicism) from true Christanity. While Luther and the other reformers fought to save Christianity, the Roman Catholic hierarchy continued to force a corrupted, secularized theology, establishment of the Pope as an earthly, not spiritual leader, paganized forms of worship (the saints, Mary, etc.), and bad things in general.
So Roman Catholics not only aren’t True Christians, they’re corrupt idolators.
A lot of the tension between Catholics and Protestants dates back to the reformation and particularly to the teachings of John Calvin. There is no way to overemphasize the hatred that Calvin felt toward Catholics, and he endowed his followers with this antipathy for many generations. Of course John Calvin was fully as cold, dogmatic and brutal as his Catholic detractors, but his adherents conveniently overlook this.
Today many followers of Calvinism (notably conservative Presbyterians, Baptists, and Reformed) will tell you that Catholics are not “real” christians. But of course they think that Episcopalians, Unitarians, and even their own liberal brethern are hopelessly misguided as well.
Many Evangelicals are actually rooted in Wesleyan tradition, and thus take a somewhat more charitable view of Catholics, although they too can sometimes make the claim that anyone who believes differently from themselves is a fount of error.
Wesleyans, who include most Pentecostals in their taxonomy are generally geared toward a less dogmatic and more experiencial faith and many tend to be somewhat more open minded than Calvinists.
In my experience however, it is rare indeed to find a Catholic who does not self-identify as Christian.
SS
Not really true. I have seen in Montreal, in some neighborhoods, two separate huge Catholic churches side by side, one for the Francophones and one for the Anglophones and they were built before Vatican II.
This is not actually inconsistent with Catholic teaching: For all we know, God might have accepted Hitler into Heaven. There are some specific people who (the Church claims) are known to be in Heaven, but there is no individual other than Satan himself who is known to be in Hell, and in fact, for all we know, there might only be a handful of people there, total.
Not true. While the U.S. Catholics desegrated earlier than many other denominations, many dioceses were intentionally segregated as late as World War 2.
In St. Louis, John Glennon, otherwise considered an excellent administrator, actively fought integration. His successor, Joseph Ritter, seems to have received the appointment at least partly because he successfully integrated the churches in Indianapolis.
Granted, we’re talking more than 60 years ago, but not “never.”
This is a hold-over from the pre-Vatican II ecumenical movement (and a reaction against the mild persecution of Catholics in the U.S. in the preceding decades).
The number of Protestants and Evangelicals who truly held that Catholics were not Christian was quite a bit larger in previous decades. At that time, “Christian” became a code word for Protestant or Evangelical on applications for employment, housing, loans, and other forms. Catholics picked up on that pretty quickly, of course, and some number of Catholics began asserting that they were Catholic-not-“Christian” as an act of defiance. I am a little bit surprised to see such attitudes continuing into the second decade of the 21st century, but I can certainly see it continuing among people who grew up with a habit of language who did not spend much time considering what the phrases meant.
Ethnic parishes, founded by immigrant groups, have a long tradition in North America. This is a bit different than establishing separate parishes that would physically divide blacks from whites. To the extent that racially segregated neighborhoods exist, there are, indeed, separate parishes for blacks and whites. The creation of separate parishes explicitly to separate blacks from whites, however, was not a Catholic tradition. This is not to say that it never happened, because it did, but it was not a tradition that was formal in practice.
I do not know the entire history of the St. Louis diocese, but I would guess that the segregation that occurred among parishes reflected the segregation occurring in neighborhoods rather than an effort to create separate “black” parishes. Glennon was infamous for fighting to preserve segregated schools, but I am not aware of any efforts to set up separate churches.
I’m not sure how relevant that is, though, since Lutherans are actually fairly close to Catholics, as Protestant denominations go, and I doubt that it’s very often Lutherans who accuse Catholics of “not really being Christian”.
My mother grew up in a large extended Baptist family and recalls that when they were in high school, her female cousin was reprimanded for dating a Catholic boy. He was not permitted to come to the house. I don’t think anyone in my mom’s family still feels that way, although a few years ago, before they died, my grandparents were visiting and came to church with me (Episcopal). After seeing the vested procession, the stained glass, the prayer book, and the collared priest, my GF leaned over to me and said, “What are you… some kind of Catholic?!” I smiled and said Yes, some kind.
So, do the Protestants who hold this view think there were no Christians around until Luther? Or do they think that the pre-Luther Catholics were really Protestants who lost their way somehow? It is odd to me that no one has brought up the history of the chuch yet.
I can’t say who is Christian, but I do know both sides are meshuggah
As pointed out previously, for 15 centuries there was only 1 Christian religion - the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in the west. The Eastern Orthodox churches separated in the 5th century, mostly over cultural differences.
Every spiritual belief of Protestant Christians was inherited from RCC. It is only that the human corruption associated with centuries of build-up of secular power were NOT accepted as valid spiritual conduct. In particular, the unique necessity and restriction of a priest to be the spiritual intermediary between a Christian and God was rejected as contrary to the spirit of God’s love as described in New Testament scripture.
Modern denominations of Protestants may have developed different methodologies in their worship, but we and the Catholics still believe in the same God of the Gospels - the father, son, and holy spirit… the 3 faces of the one God.
Many Protestant confessionals which are recited in open church, contain the phrase “I believe in the holy catholic church” - the word means “the whole”, or “all-embracing”, and describes the unity-in-spirit of all who believe in Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic is my spiritual brother just as much as my Pastor standing in the pulpit.
I read in one of Jack Chick’s comics once that the real Christians went underground, or fled to the mountains, when Constantine turned the Roman Empire “Christian,” and re-emerged after Luther started preaching from the Bible. It’s a lot like the idea that Wicca survived underground since pre-Christian Europe instead of having been invented by Gerald Gardner.
Well, there were indeed proto-Protestant movements such as the Hussites, the Lollards, the Waldensians. Unfortunately, I have seen some Protestant authors who should have known better include among those movements the Albigensians, Bogomils and Cathars (oh my!).
One thing you gotta admit is that the conduct of Romanized Christendom did make it quite vulnerable in some areas to being a departure from Biblical Christianity. How they made the leap from the Sermon on the Mount to the torture & execution of religious dissidents still baffles me. And if Revelation 17 doesn’t look like a verbal editorial cartoon against a persecuting Roman-centered church, I don’t know what does. (I actually think it was a blast against the Apostle-persecuting Sadducean Priestly Establishment which was in an uneasy alliance with Rome.)
If torture rules out Christianity, Catholics are not the only ones off the reservation. Look up what Elizabeth did to the Catholics some time. Catholic missionaries who got caught wound up with their heads on pikes. In general, if secular malfeasance somehow makes a person non-Christian, there are a lot fewer of you than the polls indicate.
I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to mix in 16th European religious-political conflict to help define what different religions regard as ‘Christian’ or not. 16th century worshipers from either side would not have used evidence of torture and persecution as ‘un-Christian’ - everybody was at it.
But it’s all simple really and does go back to the birth or Protestantism in the first place. From the protestant standpoint, Catholics were corrupt idolators who had lost connection with God (therefore not Christian), whereas from the Catholic standpoint (a position my uber-Catholic in-laws still firmly hold) Protestants have rejected the One True Church (the only route to God, therefore the only kind of Christianity) and are pretty much dancing with the devil.
Edit: Sorry Voyager, I think I’m agreeing with you, rather than FriarTed, who is taking pot shots at Catholics for torture etc.
Not if you put it in the context of society and politics of the time. People are people at the end of the day, religion hasn’t done much to make us any nicer, it just gives us another stick to beat others with. As Voyager said above, both Catholics and Protestants (and any other religion we want to drag up) has committed atrocities in its name.
Actually, there was only one denomination until about the first millenia and one official ‘Church’ as in christianity the Church is considered to be the body of Christ, with Christ acting as the head. The separation or Schism of the churches occured around 1000 AD and it was not due to cultural differences but due to Theological / Political differences.
The Pope was trying to gain more power both in Religious and Political circles and started re - writing some of the scriptures, or to be more accurate alterating certain teachings of the early fathers of the Church.
By doing so, he set himself as the natural succesor of the head of the church, in which all should bow their head. This resulted into a great debate between the Pope and the Archbishop of Constantinople which finally brought the schism. The areas that were influenced by the Byzantine empire followed the Archbishop, wherea those influenced by the Pope (The west) followed the Pope.
From and Orthodox point of view, since the Orthodox did not in fact change any teachings of the pre schism era, the continue to follow the ‘original’ christianity.
Catholics on the other side, after the schism deviated a lot from the original christian theology introducing logic to explain stuff like the nature of God etc. This in turn resulted (depending on how each scripture was understood) to other denominations such as Luthirans, Anglicans, Presbyterians etc.
As Catholics ‘broke the line’ of Christianity by deviating from the pre schism theology, they are thought as being apart from the body of church.