And while we’re at it, here’s the 1928 Electoral Map.
The anti-Smith, anti-Catholic bashing was certainly not a soley Southern phenomenom. However, it definitely was present in the South - the 1928 election was the only significant break in the Solid (Democratic) South between Reconstruction and Eisenhower. I wrote a paper on Smith and the effect of anti-Catholicism on his campaign back in college, and I concluded that anti-Catholicism cost Smith 50-70 electoral votes. Not enough to swing the election, but definitely significant.
Sua
To the OP:
Don’t worry about what others think. If you love God with you’re whole heart, that’s enough.
Sua-
Clearly, anti-Catholic bigotry was (and is) present in the South to some degree. It also was (and is) present in the rest of the nation. I am only pointing out the tendency of many Northerners to use the South as a scapegoat for bigotry.
I’ve encountered several sources which blame Al Smith’s 1928 loss on anti-Catholic sentiment in the South, an explanation which ignores his failure to win any northern states except Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It also ignores the fact that Al Smith, in spite of the supposedly virulent anti-Catholicism of the South, managed to carry most Southern states, and all of the states of the deep South.
Now why is it that he didn’t win more Northern states? Why didn’t he win even his home state of New York? During the 1928 campaign, anti-Catholic tracts were being published NATION-WIDE. Anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment were common in the North. (Anti-Irish sentiment in the South was virtually unknown.)
But of course, it was the bigotry of the South which cost Smith the election. :rolleyes: We are asked to presume that the Northern voters who rejected Smith in droves did so (I suppose) because of his stand on the issues. Meanwhile, the handful of Southern states that rejected him naturally did so because of their native bigotry. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Three points:
Maybe, just maybe, Smith might have lost a Northern state or two because of prejudice.
Maybe, just maybe, some Southerners in the few Southern states Al Smith lost might have put aside their blinding bigotry long enough to disagree with Smith on the issues – particularly on the hot-button issue of Prohibition. (Did you consider that possibility in your paper?)
Even if Smith had won all of the South, he still would have lost the election, owing to his failure to carry Northern states. Hard to see, in this light, how the presumed Southern bigotry can be blamed for his defeat.
After seeing those shocking images from Belfast where a mob of screaming people are taunting Catholic girls trying to walk to school I have to ask why does religion of all sorts create such hatred amongst people. There have been more wars and cruelty caused by religion than any other reason. if it is not different sects of the same religion hating each other then it is members of different religions at each others throats. From the Crusades , the Thirty years war, the burning at the stake of Protestants and Catholics in Englan to the present troubles in the Middles East , Afgahnistan , between India and Pakistan Etc. Etc. religion has led to so much bloodshed. If there realy is a God (or Gods) they must have a very twisted outlook on life to allow all this unhappiness. Is time to have all religions banned to put and end to all this madness ?
Hey, spoke-, I’m agreeing with you. Hope the rolleyes weren’t aimed at me. 
Of course. I only barely recall the details of my paper, but I recollect that I concluded that Smith lost at least New York and Minnesota due to anti-Catholic bias.
Of course I considered it in my paper. (My turn for a :rolleyes: ). However, weighing against that possibility is the fact that, at that time, the South as a rule did not vote according to issues, but instead on party lines. It was called the Solid South for a reason. The 1928 vote was a distinct abberation in Southern voting patterns, and I concluded that anti-Catholic bias accounted for a large portion of the swing in the vote in Texas, Virginia, etc.
Absolutely right. The true reasons that Smith lost was because was that Hoover was a highly respected figure, and the country was in the midst of boom times after five years of Coolidge. However, in normal times, there is a drop-off in votes for the ruling party after two presidential election cycles, though not always enough to allow the opposition party to win the presidency. Hoover significantly increased the Republican vote, but absolutely and as a percentage, over Coolidge. A decent portion of that was caused by anti-Catholic bias, in both North and South.
Sua
I guess I would be considered a protestant. I was raised Methodist, but i don’t really seem myself as denominational. And, while I don’t nessessarily see catholics as non-Christian, I do see things that may lead people to question the RCC:
1)Saints and Mary. Praying TO or THROUGH…neither has any Biblical basis. God loves us all EQUALLY, so if getting dead people to pray for us works (which the Bible never mentions) then you could basically pray to/through ANYONE. I could see how protestants could see that as idolitry…the RCC lifting up people as special.
-
Papal infallability. Saying that the pope is infallable makes him perfect…and only Jesus is perfect. If any man were capable of perfection, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus in the first place.
-
Confession. Only through Jesus can you be absolved of sins. No man has any power over that.
-
Mortal Sins. I used to have a link to these. God already gave us a list of sins.
There are plenty more. I think any protestant that has problems with Catholosism basically has problems with all the EXTRA things that the RCC has added that have little to no Biblical basis (or even contradict).
If you have ever asked a friend to pray for you…then you have done what Catholics do…see here
Nope…papal infallability does NOT imply perfection…please familiarize yourself with the concepts of infallibility and the magesterium
see here
Catholics believe that God is the only one who forgives sin…the absolution and reconciliation act connect the forgiveness act with the entire Catholic community.
see here
see above link
I suspect most of your “plenty more” are addressed here as well. Or, you could do yourself a favor and look for previous postings on this topic…tomndeb has hit on most of these extensively in previous threads (search for Catholic in Great Debates, for start)
**
[/QUOTE]
I would like to reply quickly to the links offered by beagledave. The link says many times that “catholics are fully aware” of this or that. I would like to point out that, that is a fairly broad statement.
When I was growing up, most of my friends were catholic. They fully believed that Mary and the saints had POWER to do things for them. They believe that saying hail marys took away sin.
As a adult, I have spoken to many catholics who truely believe that the pope can do or say no wrong…they believe he is infallable in general, not just by the specifications set forth in the link.
Perhaps this is why some protestants have a problem with catholisism. Not with the ideals with which their beliefs are based, but what the beliefs become when the average joe picks them up.
Now, maybe I am an ignorant catholic magnet, but of the dozens of catholics I know, only one or two know any of the basis for which the RCC’s beliefs and traditions are held. I sent a few of them an email with those links, and they all said that it was basically news to them. One even said he dissagreed, and that the pope was totally infallable at all times.
But this thread isn’t about “Are catholics wrong”. The OP wanted to know why some Protestants may think Catholics are not Christians. I was poiting out some reasons that I could see.
Sua-
No the :rolleyes: wasn’t directed at you, but was more of a general :rolleyes: directed at those who have deluded themselves into thinking that bigotry is strictly a Southern phenomenon. (But hey, that’s a whole other thread, so I’ll stop my hijack now.) Looks like you and I are pretty much in agreement, as you say.
Getting back to the OP,
Having been raised in the church of Christ, I know that this was not their teaching, at least. The way they looked at it, the Catholic church had added so many adornments to Christianity over the centuries that it had drifted away from the Christianity practiced by early followers of Jesus. The idea behind the church of Christ (and many other Protestant faiths) was to get back to Christianity the way it was practiced in the years following the death of Christ. The way to do this was to review the scriptues carefully for guidance, since they are the best source material available to determine how Christianity was practiced in those days.
In short, the idea is to get back to the fundamentals (which is why the term “fundamentalist” gets applied to some Protestant religions – though they rarely, if ever, use the word themselves).
There are many Americans who are clueless about the basic tenets of a representative democracy…that does not, by itself, invalidate our system of representative democracy.
Likewise, followers of Jack Chick do not necessarily represent “Christianity”…
And Catholics who are not informed about their faith do not necessarily represent “Catholicism” (in terms of the beliefs of that particular religion)
Your initial point addressed the beliefs of Catholicism…and included several fallacies. If your friend really believes that the Pope is infallable at all times, he is truly uninformed about the papacy.
Ahhh… the tried and true “back to basics” argument. This is perfectly ok, don’t get me wrong, but every time a someone has told this to me, I notice to basic fallacies in their reasoning. One may be my opinion only, but here goes:
-
“The way to do this was to review the scriptues carefully for guidance, since they are the best source material available to determine how Christianity was practiced in those days.” This is true. The Bible IS the best source of Info on those days. Unfortunatly, many don’t like all the info it contains. EVERY Protestant Bible i have seen in my life is different than the Catholic Bible. How? It’s shorter. Many faiths take out whole passages, and even entire BOOKS, that disagree with their ideals. While translation is very cumbersome, and interpretations differ on factual information, the Catholic version is the most complete version, because it was basically unedited. So, how can you say you rely on scriptures when you toss out those that disagree with you?
-
“The way they looked at it, the Catholic church had added so many adornments to Christianity over the centuries that it had drifted away from the Christianity practiced by early followers of Jesus.” Let’s just assume, for the debates sake, that this is true. The catholics HAVE gone astray. Why hasn’t anyone tried to change that from the inside? The RCC is capable of change. Vatican II proved that. 20 of the 96(?) issues raised by Martin Luther have been resolved. There are 1 billion RCC’s in the world right now. If some of them are indeed doing something wrong, shouldn’t their fellow Catholic friends bring awareness to them to change the Church for the better? How does it help for a few thousand to leave and do their own thing? how will the other Catholics be helped? What gives people the authority to found an entirely new church because they dislike the standing up and sitting down in Mass, or they dislike a head Bishop as a church leader, Or they dislike having the Priest walk up and down the aisle? No - if you disagree with the Catholic church, work to change it in unity.
P.S. I am always curious about the different churches ideas of the RCC’s unneccesary “adornments” You’ll find that most of them are mearly results of misinterpretation, ignorance, and focus on trivial details.
Well, actually, the Protestants are pretty consistent in what they “removed”: everything from the Old Testament that was not found in the Jewish Scriptures. We can discuss the validity of the exclusions/inclusions (and, certainly, Luther’s view of the Faith informed his decision regarding what to remove), but it has not been a matter of simply multiple groups discarding pieces-parts at whim.
The response from those groups, of course, is: since the Deutero-Canonical works are not in Jewish Scripture, what right did the RCC have to insert them? This leads to other long discussions, of course.
The point I am making is that we’ll all get closer to understanding each other if we treat the other guy’s viewpoint with respect, even when we disagree. I don’t think you’re being overly hostile, here, martinez, but your statement regarding the selection of Scripture could easily raise the hackels of someone who genuinely believed that the RCC erred in “inserting” new texts to the Jewish Scripture. (Note that II Maccabees is not kept with the New Testament.)
As to the additions and adornments: the concept of Purgatory and praying for the souls of the departed are directly related to a passage in II Maccabees–which is a Deutero-Canonical/Apocryphal work. Once they have set aside that book as non-Scriptural, they are quite well grounded in their opinion that Purgatory and intercession are “add-ons”. It is not a misperception; it is a genuine disagreement on a fairly central issue of faith.
The issue of intercessory prayers and saints is a similar issue. There are Protestants who do not understand the RCC teaching, but there are many Protestants who fully understand it and disagree. In that context, a statement such as
is liable to come off as more than just a bit patronizing. If we would like them to not mischaracterize our belief, let’s work to not mischaracterize theirs.
Again, I don’t think that you are trying to be hostile or condescending, but I think you could be a bit more careful how you approach the other guys’ beliefs.
The sword that cuts both ways…
I reread my statement, and looked at it from several different viewpoints. I do not sound nice at all do I? Even i admit i was rather patronizing and condescending. bitterness at work, perhaps? tomndebb, you make a good point about how many learned Protestants know about the RCC religion and still disagree with it, and with(at least to them, anyway) good reason. However, youlle find that they are much more amicable than most. Every question or scorn addressed to me were made of ignorance, and these statements were made of personal experience. Who knows… maybe where YOU live, the only Protestant Churches are well established churches with moderate views and little missionary zeal. Not so where i am. While the Lutheran, LDC, Anglican, etc churches are there, we have mabey 100 churches funded in the past 50 years, and 18 FOUNDED in the past 5 years. Lacking many members, they often go about with only conversion on their mind, and no listening capability. References to Jack Chick made by me do by no means represent all Protestants, merely the “Founded 5 years ago” type, even though some older churches, while not very convertive, are very conservative (like Southern Baptist). They all annoy me, and even my Protestant friends, to no end. These churches DO throw out whole books of the new testamet, And in many the only difference is What the Priest is called, where the priests walk, etc. These people are very ignorant and misinformed by their own MINISTERS about RCC, and they are the most vocal.
Oh, I’ve known my share of the utterly ignorant (and frequently hateful). I once worked with a Southern Baptist lady whose particular church was apparently quite taken with the Jack Chick school of theology. She never missed an opportunity to explain to her seven co-workers, six of whom were Catholic, that they were all going to Hell. I often wonder what she did when the Catholics and Southern Baptists began issuing joint statements of respect a couple of years ago.
The point, however, is that within the halls of the Straight Dope, you will encourage better discussion with mutual respect than with vitriol. (And since we papists do want to pretend that we’re Christian, acting as if we love those who hate us is probably on our task list, as well.)