I was watching the obscure film Impure Thoughts last night. It takes place in a Catholic school during the 1960s. Catholics were screamed at by the public goons as being “Fish Eaters” and Kennedy’s presidential run was considered a huge deal because he was Catholic. I always thought it was more shocking that they elected a Unitarian president ages ago.
Anyhoo…Huh? I was born in 1972 and went to a Catholic grade school. But aside from being derided by the neighborhood public school kids for going to a religious school, I cannot recall a single instance in my life where my being raised Catholic was considered a big deal, positively or negatively.
My grandmother, on the other hand, could remember a day in her childhood when the KKK burned a cross in her family’s yard.
How’s about you somewhat older folks? Had any experiences?
I’m not an older person, only twenty-one, but I’ve been told I wasn’t really Christian before. It was said in a rather hurtful way and bothered me because I try to center my life around my faith. I realize that’s not up there with having a cross burnt in one’s yard, but it was a negative experience for me. I just don’t understand how someone who believes that Jesus is the Christ wouldn’t be Christian. Isn’t that pretty much the most basic definition?
I didn’t see this happen to my now-husband, but knowing some of my relatives on my mother’s side, I can easily believe it. We got together at a family gathering, back when he and I were engaged, and I gather a few of my cousins confronted him, saying they didn’t want him to marry me. His being Catholic, Italian, and from Chicago were apparently their gripes about him. :rolleyes: He pretty much drew himself up to his full imposing height and told them that (I’m spacing out here on what was said, but this is the general idea) he didn’t think they had any say in the matter, nor did he particularly care what they thought, stared them down, and walked off. They’re from a very conservative area of Wisconsin, and conservative branch of Christianity, that doesn’t really like Catholics (for starters). Decades prior, on the other side of the family but the same region of Wisconsin and same religion, my paternal grandmother didn’t attend the wedding of one of her daughters because she was getting married to a Catholic.
I’m tempted to start an ‘have you ever been treated negatively because you are an atheist’ thread (considering some of the things R Dawkins mentions being directed at him in ‘The God Delusion’), but I sense there are already a lot of atheism related threads on the board at the moment…
Also… I’ve never really been treated negatively for being an atheist… not that I remember.
I was raised and schooled in the joys of Catholicism. ( None of which I subscribe to these days, but that’s not the point.) My mom, I like to tell everyone, is an ex-nun. Yeah, it doesn’t get much more guilt driven than that.
I never encountered any derision about my faith when I was in it because everyone I knew and associated with was Catholic. All in the same boat. Same school. Same neighborhood. Same Everything. Very whitebread.
If someone shouted at me, " Fish Eater!" I probably would have muttered, " But only on Fridays!" and now as an adult I’d retort, " I’m not a lesbian."
Yes quiet a bit actually. Going to catholic school all my life I was sheltered and didn’t know that catholics were thought of as idol worshipers and cult members by most other religons in the area I live in (Southern Bible belt). When I went away to college I got a rude awakening. I’m no longer a practicing catholic, and and very glad about that.
Our best friends had enormous family fights with the husband’s family when they became Catholic. Bitter, and very angry. They were accused of apostasy, idolatry, abandoning Christ, and a whole bunch of other things. It was several years ago and there’s still a lot of tension.
I’ve only been Catholic for two months, I don’t have any post-Easter anti-Catholic bigotry to report yet.
In college, an acquantince of mine, upon learning that I was Catholic, casually told me that her father believes that Catholics are “the scourge of the earth.” She didn’t mention whether or not she shared that viewpoint.
I have also been told a bunch of times that I need to “become Christian.” :rolleyes:
Never - I was born and raised Catholic, and never had any derision towards me or my family for being so. Granted I do not practice now, and haven’t for 20 years…but still, I’ve never encountered it.
That being said: I do remember being at a function with my best friend who was at the time [25 years ago] living with his mother, a staunch fundy christian. One of her friends said to my mother… "Well I used to be Catholic, then I became a Christian.
:eek: - Mom stood up, pointed at the woman and said something to the effect of…" I have never been more insulted in my life, you call yourself a Christian, and you openly denounce the faith of another human being? Expletive, Expletive, Expletive…
Horrified, my mother walked out of the birthday party, closely followed by her best friend - whose fundy friend it was made the remark - apologising and asking her to come back.
Being the bigger person she did come back. Needless to say, the air in the house was different after this instance.
I was born in 1971 and attended a Catholic grade school, and only had a negative experience during the 2 years that my family lived in England (the equivalent of junior high). Catholics were definitely the minority, at least in the Yorkshire town where I lived and went to school, and some of the C of E kids would make jokes – which I now know were borne of simple ignorance, but didn’t realize at the time. It only happened a few times, though, and never really bothered me much.
I’ve never experienced any in-person anti-Catholic treatment in the States, though I haven’t been a practicing Catholic since about 1998.
It’s obviously a basic observation from the evangelical Christian side. I’ve had similar said to me, even though I’m no longer a practicing Catholic.
I once had a friendly argument with a coworker who was “saved” a few years ago that touched on this topic. I tried to get him to nail down exactly as to why Catholics, in their eyes, aren’t Christian.
“Because you Catholics aren’t a bible-based church,” was his reply. “The Bible is the Truth. We aren’t led around the nose by others.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true, but we still believe in Jesus Christ.”
“That doesn’t matter. You don’t follow biblical teachings.”
Suffice to say I dropped the topic because there was no way I could get him to see my side.
While growing up, I was often treated negatively because I was not Catholic. Then again, I grew up in the United States’ second most Catholic metropolitan area.
I’ve run into the “you aren’t Christian” or “you are going to hell” or “you added stuff to the bible” from time to time. In the last 30 years, such comments have tended to come from people who would generally induce me to laugh, anyway, so it hardly counts as persecution.
As a kid (in the time period of the movie) I ran into a lot more of what was depicted in the movie with kids claiming that it was “proven” that Catholics were most of the criminals in the country, that Catholics could not be good citizens because they owed fealty to the Vatican, that Kennedy could never be a good president because he was Catholic, etc.
Earlier, (late 1940s) my MIL was nearly disinherited for marrying a Catholic (and her father said some fairly nasty things to try to get my FIL to back out of the marriage), and before that, (1920s - 1930s) the land for the two parishes where I lived as a kid had to be purchased through anonymous brokers because (even in Michigan that was very heavily Catholic near Detroit) the communities tried to prevent the purchase by the Catholic Diocese. Until the Open Housing laws were passed in the late 1960s, a number of cities had point systems to allow one to buy a house, with so many points for level of income, level of education, level of hierarchy in a corporation, ethnic background, etc. Being Catholic was one way to lose points. (Being black, of course, lost nearly all the points that a double doctorate millionaire CEO might have accrued; being Catholic was not as much of a detriment as that.)
I heard occasional comments, including the not being Christian idiocy, but it didn’t happen a lot. I went to Catholic schools for more than half of my grade school & high school experience so I was around other Catholics more.
My mother who grew up in the 30’s heard a lot of nasty comments about being Catholic.
I’ve not run into any outright hostility, but then again, I live in an extremely Catholic area of an extremely Catholic city, and went to Catholic grade school and high school. I was 18 years old before I even knew more than one or two people who weren’t Catholic.
I did have one roommate in college who was a borderline-fundamentalist Protestant. He wasn’t above telling a close non-Christian friend, to her face, that she was going to hell. I’m sure he wasn’t too thrilled about Catholicism, but he never gave me any trouble about it.
I did have a serious girlfriend abruptly break up with me because I didn’t belong to the same religion as she did. Religious differences can be a legitimate reason to break up with someone, of course. In this case though, both of us were willing to deal with the issue, or at least take more time to examine it and come to a mutual decision together-- until her minister suddenly started putting heavy pressure on her to end the relationship immediately. I don’t know whether he had a problem with Catholics specifically, but it wouldn’t have been a surprise.
