I'm no expert on the subject, being non-religious myself. One thing I had always percieved as a fairly major difference, is that Catholics would revere and pray for the intercession of the various Saints, and from what I have seen the other Christian religions mostly ignore them or flat out disavow the concept of Sainthood.

Then again, maybe the other Christians pray to the Saints too and I just didn't know because I've never been taught the secret handshake. Anyone want to straighten me out on that issue if I'm wrong? :D

I asked the difference when I was still religious... and it was we Roman Catholics have Saints. I asked "Why do I have to learn about saints?" My grandmother's explanation, "Because you do." And that became the explanation for every theological question I ever asked...

This thread reminded me of Umberto Eco's famous MAC vs. DOS column...


As good as any to define the difference in simple terms.

As far as I know (and I'm hardly an expert on all the various sects of Christianity), all Christians believe in saints; in fact, they all believe in the sainthood of all believers (even the RCCs). But the Catholics like to extend special, official recognition to a certain subset of those saints, whom they officially call 'saints'. Protestants merely have a number of historical figures they consider important (Augustine in the case of my denomination).

I'm baptised as a catholic and had my communion (spelling?) as a protestant nad consider myself as an athiest today. Only ignorant people are unaware of the mutual history of all christian fractions.

Saints are people that the R.C.C. believes made it into heaven. To prevent false positives, the R.C.C. requires alot of evidence (up to and including miracles). Or this is how I understood it.

The idea of praying through saints is that it can be easier to talk with someone who was merely a human. Less intimidating, ya know.

I do know the Anglicans have Saints, although not all of the ones the Catholics have. (when visiting London, they showed us the largest collection of medieval saint-icons. A good percentage of them had been destroyed during a time of Anglican fundamentalism.

Yeah, 'praying to saints' is viewed (technically, at least) as being the same sort of thing as when you ask your friends to pray for you.

charletan....as a loyal Mac user since forever, and a baptist....that excerpt has got to be the funniest damn thing i've seen all week.

i think it's coming to my Reformation Thought class tonight.

:)

On one of the first jobs I had as a draftsman my boss came up to me after a few weeks and asked "you're not a Catholic are you?". I told him I was raised as a Lutheran but really wasn't very religious at all now. He said "good, I didn't think you were one of those". That's the first time I even thought it mattered to anyone but apparently there are some Protestants to whom it does (in his case Baptist).

I have never heard of anyone differentiating between "Catholic" and "Christian". This must be an American thing.

One could look at it several ways, but basically the differences between Catholics (usually meaning Roman Catholics) and Protestants (usually meaning those that do not recognize the Pontificate) is one of doctrine and interpretration. Another way of putting it would be that they are all different sects within the one religion.

It is analogous to the differences between the Sunni and Shi'te muslim "sects". They are both Islam, but have differences in opinions with regards to particular dogmatic issues. And then you have the smaller sects like Wahibists.

Indeed, I believe the Jewish faith has several sects or branches too, all the way from lapsed or "everyday" Jews to hardline haredi ultra-orthodox Jews.

Why is this an issue? Every faith has sects and Christianity is no different.


Mr Mephisto

They were all originally derived from the same whole number? :confused:

Sorry to poke fun, but that particular word transposition had me laughing out loud. It instantly conjured up images of Islamic fractions and Christian fractions refusing to add up in new math. I know, I'm a bit odd. ITYM "faction." :D

In response to what someone else said about referring to Christianity and Catholocism as two seperate things, that does indeed seem to be an American trait. It probably has something to do with the fact that our Protestant founders didn't get along too well with the Pope.

Exactly. I think a lot of it stems from ignorance. People consider Catholic seperate from "Christian" because believe it or not there are actually some people out there stupid enough to believe that Catholics worship The Virgin Mary. It's true. Got into a heated debate with an ex girlfriend of mine and her stupid friend who were convinced that Catholics worship Mary. Whats worse is her friends mother is Catholic and she still didn't know. She claimed her mother worships a small statue of the Virgin Mary every night :rolleyes:

Thats what it is. I'd love to be harsh and say it's stupidity but it's just ignorance.

Asta!!

I was baptised Catholic, received the sacrament of Communion in the Catholic Church, went to Catholic School every Sunday for 2 hours for years, and last year I was finally Confirmed. I go to Mass every week with rare exception.

When I was a kid I didn't really enjoy going to church that much. Now I have really learned to be proud of being a Catholic, and while I still don't really enjoy sitting through 10:30 Mass as much as I would enjoy sleeping in on Sunday morning, I feel like I get something out of it.

I have a Rosary in my desk drawer, a pin of Saint Matthew (my name) my Grandmother gave me, and little remenants hanging on my shelf from my first Communion and my Confirmation. I am not a hardcore bible thumper... Catholics tend to be more reserved I have noticed. We are much more spiritual than other Christion faiths and less... "vocal" I guess you could say. We like people to join our faith, but we don't go knocking on peoples doors.

In all, I appreciate and like the Catholic Church. We are very traditional, and I feel proud to be a part of that tradition. I plan on, when I someday have kids, raising my children similar to how I was raised in the Church. It, in my opinion, teaches good morals and values that I feel are important in a healthy upbringing.

I have been all over, born and raised lutheran, attended catholic services rarely with friends, attended a baptist church in college and now in grad school i'm attending multiple non-denominational (fundimental) churches.

Are catholics christains? I'd say some are. All it takes to be a christian is a belief that you are saved by God's grace through Jesus Christ. If you believe this then you are saved.

The other day I invited a catholic who said they wern't attending church here at grad school to one of my churches and they said they couldn't, that the catholics aren't allowed. That proceeded me to ask why? Wouldn't god be happy if you were worshiping him and it doesn't matter where the service is?

My problem with big churches is they get to big, they think they have all the answers, and have figured it all out. The church as a whole gets proud and tells their memebers not to seek god without their guidence. My friend also said they are not supposed to read the bible. This completly blew my mind. How is it that we are not supposed to read gods word? These churches that focus purely on tradition and dogma need to reevaluate what God is about. God is not about how many hail marries you say, how many people you helped to day, how many times you prayed, or how many people you dicipled. None of that matters. All that matters is God's love for us is greater than all of our love for him combined. And because of this we are saved despite our sin and flaws. There is no scorecard for heaven (just one true or false question, is jesus your lord and personal savior). We should not legalize religion (see galations), it only leads to problems and halftruths.

Living in Utah now I get exposed to the LDS (Mormans) all the time. They have great zeal but yet many of their beliefs are contradictory to the bible (see galations again). The bible is all we have, we need to go to that first when we want to know what God want's from us.

FWIW, RCCs are allowed to attend protestant services, they just can't take communiion; my roommate's a PhD Theology student, so he should know, and he's come to church with me before.

(threads merged)

just to be clear...

RCC's are permitted by many (most?) Protestant denominations to take communion (common practices are open table eucharist that's for anyone, or simply restricted to baptized Christians).

But...if the RCC person is being serious about Catholic teaching, they are told not to take it by their church.

Just to be clear where the actions were taking place.

Just a pet peeve of mine: Catholicism is strictly called "Catholicism," not "Roman Catholicism." Roman Catholicism is to Catholicism as Jesuit is to the monastic order. There are many different areas of Catholicism (where there is agreement on theological issues but not necessarily administrative issues such as the marrying of priests).

Explanation/more info: http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/c...d_churches.htm

I guess I just feel bad for all those other Catholics who get shafted by our habit of referring to everything as ROMAN Catholicism :p

I live in a very very Italian Cathlic area in NJ (Much of the opening credits of The Sopranos is shot within 2 miles of my front door) Practically every other house has a shrine to Mary somewhere on their front lawn or in the house (the obligatory statue with a candle or two)

I can understand why people might think Roman Catholics worship Mary. It's not true, but I can see why people make that mistake.

Praying to Mary is important, as it was explained to me by Sister Maureen (who has since left the convent) in 8th grade. You want something, you ask the momma, because no boy is ever gonna say no to his momma. So, praying to Mary was the most direct route to Jesus (Ya see Jesus was pretty busy with all the other religions calling upon him, so Mary was a little less busy)

Since, as a protestant, I also believe in the one true Catholic church, I use the term "Roman Catholic" to describe those Christian which consider themselves under the authority of the pope. This describes Eastern Rite RCs as well as Western Rite.

And, yes, I meant not allowed to take communion by the RCC. The CRC doesn't care who takes communion, as long as they "believe in the lord Jesus Christ and trust in him alone for their salvation."

As far as worshipping Mary, I would be very surprised if there was not at least one person who professed to be RC and actually worshipped Mary. But indeed, this is not the official teaching of the RCC.

Catholics are permitted to attend whatever religious observations they'd care to, but aren't allowed to actually take part in worship that differs from Catholic teaching. We can go to a mosque but can't prostrate ourself to al'Kaba, we can walk through a Hindu temple without actually worshipping the concept of God as the worshipping Hindus understand it.

At a Protestant service it becomes a little more complicated. We sing to God as we understand him and we pray to Jesus just like we would at Mass, and this is all good and fine. The Catholic and Protestant understanding of the sacrament of communion, though, are fundamentally different. Catholics believe that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ just as he himself transmuted the bread and wine at the Last Supper. Protestants typically believe that communion is a remembrance of the Last Supper and an observance of Christ's command to 'do this in memory of me', but do not typically think that the material actually transubstantiates in the way that Catholics do. For that reason, we Catholics will typically either bow our heads and ask for a blessing from the minister or kneel in prayer during the communion portion of the service, and we invite our Protestant bretheren to do the same at Mass.

As for Mary, she is revered for her role as the mother of God as well as her complete submission to his plans for her. While devotion to her is typically much more visible in a Catholic setting than in any other, worship is an act reserved for God alone. The idea that Catholics secretly worship Mary when nobody's looking is malarky.