Since I’m not religious, religion sometimes baffles me. I’ve heard the claim that Catholics aren’t Christians before. ‘They use a different Bible.’ But isn’t the Roman Catholic Church the ‘original’ Christian church? (i.e., the church that grew out of the Christian cults?) Wasn’t there a time (Dark Ages?) when the Catholic church was all there is, and the areas it controlled were collectively called ‘Christendom’? ISTM that the Protestant/Catholic thing is the same as the Shia/Sunni thing. Different sects of the same religion; Christian in the former case, and Muslim in the latter.
I’ve never encounteref the “Catholics aren’t Christian” thing so can’t comment, other than to say it’s nonsense.
But I would also add that it would not be a good idea to tell an Orthodox or adherent of one of the other eastern churches that the Catholic Church was the original Christian church. There were several different groupings that grew out of the early Christian movement; western Catholicism is simply one of those ancient traditions.
Ordinary bigotry and bias. I once had the joy of seeing a lawsuit filed against the Catholic Church by a silly guy who alleged they “Weren’t interpreting Scripture properly.” The suit was summarily dismissed, but it shows what kind of mind-set is out there, at least at the extreme (wacko!) verge.
A Catholic publication once said that Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t Christians. Lots of people hold that view regarding Mormons. Is it really our place to say?
There isn’t any real definition of “Christian” that will cover all cases. There are trinitarians and anti-trinitarians. Arianism is not dead. I met a neo-Montanist not long ago. There are even a handful of atheist Christians, and you’d think that should be impossible!
It’s best to let people call themselves what they want, and let God sort it all out if and when he sees fit.
As a (former) Roman Catholic who lived in the Bible Belt, I’ve heard these claims all my life. Here’s a few of the high points, as I understand them.
Catholics take their orders from the Pope, instead of directly from the Bible.
Catholics “worship” Mary, who, after all, was only a human.
Catholics pray to saints and ask them to intercede with Jesus, when the Bible tells us that there are no mediators between individuals and God.
Catholics perform all sorts of strange rituals and call them sacraments, when the Bible tells us the only sacrament is Baptism (or, some denominations claim, Baptism and the Eucharist.)
Catholics (i.e., the Pope) keep reinterpreting what the Bible says, rather than accepting it as the inerrant, literal word of God.
The real Church of Jesus Christ was hijacked hundreds of years ago, and the Roman Catholics (and those “daughter” churches that sprang from the Reformation) are just later iterations of earlier corrupt, non-biblical cults.
ETA: Oh yeah, that whole thing about Catholics buying their way into Heaven!
The Christian church was more or less monolithic (mostly less, actually) until the Great Schism broke it into the western church based in Rome and the Eastern Church based in Constantinople.
In the hundreds of years following, mainly during or following the reformation, several large movements broke away - the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, and Anglicans (from whom emerged the Methodists) and of course innumerous other groups split off or sprung up on their own. Anti-Catholicism waxed and waned over the centuries in different periods and locations.
Today you mostly see it in the extreme fundamentalist wing of Christendom, although I’ve known Evangelicals to be skeptical of the Roman church as well.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone condemn Presbyterianism for being a daughter of the RCC, though. Most denominations outside the Eastern Orthodox Church, and certainly the mainline ones I mentioned, can trace their tradition back to the RCC in one way or another.
My suggestions: stop reading those comments. That person is an idiot.
Nearly every Christian church regards themselves as the “original”. Luther, for instance, didn’t regard himself as founding a new church, but as reforming the existing one, and unfortunately most of the existing church didn’t follow his reforms.
But I really have to wonder what sect the person behind that quote follows, if even the Calvinists aren’t Protestant enough for him. I’ve heard the Anglican and Lutheran branches referred to as “Catholic Lite” before, but this is the first I’ve ever heard it of the Presbyterians.
I think it’s perfectly possible to live your life through the example of Christ as he is portrayed in the Gospels without believing any of the supernatural stuff. Whether they should be called Christians given that most of such people with that label believe in at least some of the religious stuff is another matter, but I could imagine people claiming that they’re being a true Christian simply by giving all of their excess income to charity and living as austerely as possible.
It probably descends from the time when European countries were either officially Catholic or Protestant, and being pro one and anti the other was part of patriotism. The USA being most closely culturally related to protestant Great Britain adopted anti-Catholicism from there.
There was never a monolithic Christian Church. Never.
There was Arianism, Gnostic Christians (which consisted of many different groups itself), Ebionites, Nestorians, Jewish Christians, and on and on.
There are a lot of places in the New Testament where people were arguing over major aspects of the developing religion. Matthew 16:13–14 indicates the early drive to split while Jesus was still alive. Pauline Christianity is basically a breakaway sect from the original Jerusalem church.
(There is a trace of the survival of the Jerusalem church among some of the Melkite churches.)
If it was so monolithic, then why did so many people die in Christian-on-Christian religious wars before the so-called Great Schism. (Things had already been schismed, as it were, long before that for all practical purposes.)
BTW: The Arians came very close to winning in the West.
First, it’s best not to try and learn about religions from the comments section of an on-line article.
Second, it’s probably also not the best way to learn about religions from a message board.
I would recommend starting with Wikipedia on the varying different protestant denominations and also looking at the Roman Catholic Church…
If that wets your appetite, then go to the library for more in depth study.
Likewise – I’ve heard plenty of weird stuff from “fringe” Christian outfits, but “Presbyterianism a daughter of the Roman Catholic Church” is a new one on me. It suggests a novel way of committing suicide: go and say that in an especially fervently Presbyterian area of Northern Ireland…
Some Protestants of the fundamentalist variety believe that Catholics aren’t really Christians because they “worship” saints and Mary as if they were gods. We don’t, of course. We believe in intercessory prayer, but we don’t worship them.
As to the Bible, the Catholic Church has approved some translations of the Bible that those Protestant sects don’t like (some of them believe that the King James version is divinely inspired, and is the only “true” translation into English).
Also, Catholics include some books in the Bible as canonical (the “deuterocanonical books”) that Protestants do not. Memory fails me here, but Wisdom, Sirach, Judith and a few others are among them.
Those Protestants are also uncomfortable with the Catholic love of images, considering that statues and icons in a church fall afoul of the second commandment.
Also, there’s the Eucharist – most (but not all) Protestant denominations do not believe in the Real Presence (i.e., that the bread and wine miraculously become the actual body and blood of Christ at consecration), and believe transubstantiation to be extra-biblical, and perhaps inspired by ancient pagan rituals.
Depends on who you ask. I would say that anyone who puts Christ at the center of his or her life (or at least near the center) is a Christian, even if that person doesn’t believe in the Resurrection, or in Christ’s divinity.
IMO, most of these reasons are more window-dressing than anything else.
What I see is that there are people who are so invested in being right, that not only must they be doing what they think is right, but everyone else must do it their way as well. It’s bad enough when the person has to be right about the computer or car they bought - it’s far worse when the person has to be right about the nature of God.
Unfortunately, I’ve known far too many people who are more readily swayed by the certitude that these people project than by any rational discourse. (I’ve used this to win arguments IRL, it’s often how certain that I appear to be, not how reasonable I appear to be)
The fringe groups are more likely to take to this as well. The fewer people you have to convince that you’re right, the less likely you are to hit that one person who can demonstrate that you’re full of it. And if you can isolate your group, it’s less likely that one of your group members will have to deal with the cognitive dissonance between “Those people are evil” and “That person I work with who is a member of that group volunteers at a soup kitchen every week”
Huh? As someone who spent 16 years immersed in Catholic education (long enough to cure me of it), I have to say - I always thought the problem was that Catholics were the only true Christians, everyone else was a heretic, either a heathen or a bloody splitter from the One True Church.