The main general difference is that the Protestants don’t follow the Pope. They broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reformation. IIRC the main conflict in Ireland is centuries old beginning with the attempt by Protestants to drive out Catholics.
Here’s a short history that looks moderately neutral, at least up to the last hundred years or so.
The conflict actually predates the religious differences between the two groups:
I just wanted to point out that Catholicism and Protestant are not two faiths. Catholicism is a faith, the Protestants are any other Christians who broke away from the Catholic church (ie. Lutherans, Baptists, Church of England, Presbyterians, etc.)
So pointing out the differences between Protestant faiths and Catholicism can can a loooong time.
Yes, Protestants are still considered Christians. AFAIK, Anyone whose religious beliefs include believing Jesus died and rose from the grave to pay for human sin is a Christian. The term “Christian” refers to anyone who believes in Christ as the Savior, including Catholics and Protestants. The term “Protestant” refers to any Christian who is not Catholic, including Jehovas’ Witnesses, Quakers, Mormons, etc.
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If there was a distinction I don’t think the Romans cared, but Christianity as a religion was still in its infancy then, and not splitered off into dozens of recognized groups as it is today.
I’ve found that CNN.com does a good job of summarizing the history of a conflict whenever the conflict makes headlines.
Here is their site on the conflict in Northern Ireland. It’s got a historical summary, discussion of major events, maps, timelines, political figures and a list of organizations.
It’s one of those things where you wish you could go back in time and tell someone, “big mistake; you really should not do that”. As I understand it, aprox. 800 years ago, the British shoved some Irish people out of their territory, yanked some people out of Scotland and put 'em in the freshly-emptied space in Ireland. As it happened, the transplanted Scotts people were Protestants, and the people they were imported to subjugate were Catholics. But I think the decendents of the two groups would hate each other even if both groups had been Shintoists.
I always thought it was more of an ethnic dispute (“Protestant” Scotch-English vs. “Catholic” Irish Gaels) than it was a dispute over theological matters.
Sorry to be a stickler here but any other Christians would imply that Eastern Orthodox and Egyptian Copts are Protestants too. Obviously this is not true, as both Eastern Orthodox and the Copts pre date the Roman Catholics. They could hardly be protesting against a non-existent faith.
What started the fighting between the two groups has little to do with religion, and now, it has little to do with religion. In general, Catholics in Northern Ireland want the North to join with the Republic of Ireland, and Protestants want the present situation to continue, with Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. However, the majority on both sides want to acheive their goals by peaceful, democratic means. Unfortunately a minority on both sides figures The Cause is too important to waste time on peaceful, democratic solutions. And therein lies the trouble, and The Troubles.
As for the differences in faith between Catholics and Protestants, the issue of the Pope is just one of them, even if it’s the one everyone knows. They also disagree for instance on the question of how one obtains salvation. For Catholics, it’s all about how you live your life, what you do - and if you’re Catholic that includes participation in Mass and in the Sacraments. Martin Luther disagreed and said that faith was the only way to salvation. Many Protestant churches have followed Luther’s principles in this (and other) areas. Catholics and Protestants also disagree about the eucharist, the question of saints, the number of books in their scriptures… it goes on. But the differences are fairly fundamental, it’s not a tomayto/tomahto sort of difference.
How much time did you spend watching quote peace unquote talks on television news in the last 3 years? How much wasted time watching the Irish and the Israelis and Palestinians try to work out their sordid little problems? How many times have you been convinced that that’s what they are actually doing? What a fucking waste of time. When I was at school teachers made every effort to turn kids into news junkies. We were made to believe that an up-to-date knowledge of current events was a necessity. Now I’m wondering if people should be morally obligated not to watch the Irish, Arabs and Israelis destroying themselves. Would CNN have devoted 56 hours a week to the Hatfields and McCoys? Could a warring family in your neighbourhood get away with the same sort of thing the Protestants and Catholics get away with year after year? Or would they be ostracised or boycotted until they behaved? There must be some way that ordinary people can influence violent conflict by refusing to watch or by boycotting the problem countries’ exports.
The northern peoples are very hostile people who have been fighting since there were enough of them to mobilize two gangs with sticks. There was not much food, not very many women, not very much arable land, and every square inch had to be struggled over, bled over, conquered, and defended. What you see now in Northern Ireland began at the end of the last ice age and will probably continue until the next ice age. The current squabble is about who may walk down what street with protestants demanding the right to march around lording their superiority over the catholics who live there. The catholics feel their dignity in question, so they riot. The government sends in troops to protect the right of the protestants to lord their superiority over catholics. The catholics then attack the government troops.
The difference between catholics and protestants is that catholics believe in the primacy and inerrancy of th epope. All communication from human to God must perculate through layers of bureaucracy until it reaches the pope, who passes it on to God. Then God speaks to the pope and the pope makes his unerring statement, such as that the earth is the center of the universe or that a penis is an absolute necessity if you are going to burn incense and lead prayers. Protestants believe a human being can speak directly to God and that the Catholic church, though once an organization devoted to protecting the faith and winning souls, is now primarily concerned with enriching itself. Eastern Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and other orthodox churches are basically alternative catholic churches that consider some individual other than the Pope of Rome to be the true ear and voice of God.
The specific protestants engaged in Northern Ireland are–I believe (do I have to ask you to correct me if I’m wrong?)–directly related to King Henry the Eighth’s inability to sire a male heir (penises were also considered essential for adminstering a nation in those days). He believed he needed to have a string of six wives in his attempt. He killed some; some died; but some refused to die and so he had to divorce them. The pope wouldn’t allow him to divorce. So Henry invented a new protestant church–the Church of England (known as Episcopalianism in the U.S.)–so he could have a new wife. The sex of the child is determined by the sperm donor, not the wife, so his quest was in vain. Queen Elizabeth I (who defeated the Spanish Armada) became the first nonpenile chief administrator as a result. More trivia: King Henry VIII wrote the Christmas favorite “Greensleeves” to assist in his seduction of a chambermaid. Henry died of syphilis.
Do a web search for Martin Luther, Diet of Worms, Mennonite, Anabaptists, Moravian to learn more about early protestantism.
Few quick things. First of all, most of the Northern Irish Protestants, I believe, aren’t Church of Ireland, but instead Presbytarians, who take their theology from Calvin and Knox, instead of the split made by Henry. Secondly, Henry’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon, while it did cause the split and form the Church of England, happened before the wife killing and dying. She was his first wife. Also, Henry did have a surviving male heir, Edward VI, who unfortunately didn’t survive him for very long. Edward was then followed by his half sister, Mary, who was the “first nonpenile chief administrator”. Also, it’s an open question as to whether or not Henry wrote Greensleeves or not. He was an accomplished poet and musician, but there are a lot of people who believe he did not write it…that it just got attributed to him. It’s also heavily debated whether or not Henry died of syphilis. For a long time, many people have suggested so, based mainly on popular attitudes portraying him as a lecher, but that’s heavily debated, and there’s a growing school of thought that suggests he died of something else…possibly diabetes or chronic scurvy.
Ah, gabbyhayes, how kind of you to come along. Otherwise this discussion might have turned into a reasonable exchange of facts and true information :rolleyes: