Is this some sort of remnant of evangelical puritan protestant ideology?
I don’t understaun this.
If you ask me, it’d make as much sense as Orthodox and Christians… or Shia and Muslim…
I know not all Christians are Catholics but for feck’s sake…
They’re all Christians to me…
Edit:
It’s a U.S thing but this is the sort of things I hear…
https://www.gotquestions.org/Catholic-Christian.html
I am a Catholic. Why should I consider becoming a Christian?
I now know more distinctions (apparently Catholicism requires duty and salvation is process, unlike Protestantism?) but I still think they’re of a similar branch (Christianity) so I just wonder the social factor
As an American who was raised Lutheran, who was taught a bunch of Romance-Euro-centric world history in school, I always considered Roman Catholic to be the “default” flavor of Christianity. Protestantism in all of its forms are hard forks. It’s in the name, even–the Roman Catholic church is what Protestants are “protesting”.
To unironically “-and Zoidberg” Catholicism out of Christianity while leaving Protestant flavors included feels completely backwards. I’ve never heard anyone do it.
But if I did, I could only assume it was due to some No True Scotsman bullshit. “Only we practice the correct way. Everyone else isn’t just interpreting it differently, but interpreting it wrong.” Sounds like an Evangelical line of thought to me.
I have never heard anyone say that. Presumably they say it because they don’t know any better.
I grew up going to various Christian schools as a kid. While it wasn’t a common viewpoint, I did hear of it from time to time.
The reason behind it, to my knowledge, was that Catholic practices would often be significantly different from other denominations’ practices. The biggest thing I can think of is the veneration of and praying to saints.
The biggest thing I can think of is the veneration of and praying to saints.
Which, ironically, is a core part of Abrahamic religions which was abandoned by Protestantism. I.e. Catholicism didn’t add minor gods, Protestantism removed them.
Fun fact: the “-el” at the end of all angel names (except Lucifer and Satan, I guess) means “god”. Not as in “from god”, but as in “the god of-”.
Lucifer’s Hebrew name is Helel!
Well spotted
Genuine question (and I don’t know if you’ve gone down this rabbit hole) but does “el” in the context of Hebrew names refer to the concept of any god generically or was “el” the name of the one monotheistic god (before being combined with the monotheistic god with the other name) and the “els” in the names of the angels meant to be an attachment to the court of the one god in a similar way to “isra-el” being not another god but a kingdom/people bearing the name of the god it served (of course talking about biblical Israel and not the modern state).
The early Abrahamic and general Canaanite religions are super interesting, I absolutely recommend reading on them. Now, considering I’m neither a historian nor a linguistics expert, take anything I say with a grain of salt.
From my understanding and memory on the subject, “El” was used as the noun “god”, as the name of the Canaanite chief god, who would later be usurped by YHWH, and as a title of sorts, meant to indicate gods and important people supposedly affiliated with the pantheon chieftain. I believe the latter is related to the older Assyrian culture, it certainly follows the same pattern. The first and second cases weren’t widely concurrent, however - there is a clear trace telling us the original pantheon leader lost influence over time before being relegated to “just another god” and finally getting absorbed into the figure of YHWH, a bit like how Odinn slowly faded into the background of Nordic religion as Thor became the figure you’d pray to.In short: both of your scenarios are right, but at different points in history (except they weren’t monotheistic at first).
This is true about El.
I don’t remember if YHWH is associated with Assyrian culture though.
But if anyone is interested, I recommend reading Mark S. Smith’s The Early History of God. It’s very dry and dense, but extremely informative.
I didn’t mean to imply a relation between YHWH and Assyria, but rather link the Assyrian culture of appending god names to important figures’ names and the Canaanite culture of appending “-el” to indicate allegiance.
Me neither. Literally never seen or heard anyone say that.
It sounds super weird.
I’m guessing from the other comments in this thread that it’s just a USA thing. Super weird.
I think it has to be. In worldwide terms, Catholocism is the biggest Christian sect/denomination.
I was raised Catholic in a deeply Evengelical town. The little girls were saying out of the blue that I wasn’t Christian. I was like 8, they were like 6. They were absolutely parroting what their parents said, there’s no way the little girls I played with daily came up with that shit on their own, and since then I’ve noticed that’s one of the “protestant culture” things that gets passed around in those circles and occasionally escapes. That Catholics aren’t Christian because saints or whatever.
They get all wound up about the “pagan” elements of Catholicism then turn around and worship their dollar bill golden idols. Hypocrites!
But basically, Catholics get crapped on when there’s no other minority around and they are tired of talking about Jewish folks.
I don’t practice, I’m atheist, but in the USA from a culture perspective Catholics aren’t in the WASP good old boy group, even if you are otherwise white. And WASP types are happy to let you know it, although its less common than it was a few decades back.
Biden being Catholic, and JFK before him, is basically a dog whistle to certain rightwing groups to make them lose their shit, it’s just less obvious than, say, Obama being black esp if you don’t have a family background that would expose you to that stuff.
I’m aware of the history, but didn’t know it still lingered. Maybe it’s a regional thing. I haven’t run into this in the metropolitan Northeast or metropolitan West Coast regions. But also I’ve been atheist my whole life, so the topic has seldom come up.
I’ve run into it when interacting with folks who grew up in the south. It seems moderately common there. With folks who grew up in the northeast, I haven’t seen this be a thing.
This is alive and well in west coast evangelical culture.
Hundreds of years of infighting
It’s like progressives and liberals 1000 years from now
If any of this recognizably lasts 1000 years I’ll have a better opinion of it, ancient egypt is still smirking at us
Thousands really.
Protestantism hasn’t even existed for a thousand years. Heck, even the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodox and Romans Catholicism churches happened less than a thousand years ago (though that should become no longer true within our lifetimes).
Infighting, as in, within itself.
Sure, but this thread isn’t about infighting among Christians broadly, it’s specifically about the use of “Christian” and “Catholic” in a context where they seemingly mean different things.
To be honest I find most of this thread incredibly frustrating, because so many people are explaining Christian schisms to OP, as though they don’t already know about that. But that’s not what they asked.
I was responding to the thread not the OPs question. May be frustrating for you but that was the context for me.
Think of it as two different tribes
Catholics and Protestants are two different tribes. They’re all Christians.
Because religion is all about dividing people into arbitrary groups. Catholicism is a specific type of dogmatic Christian theology
I’ve never heard someone say this.
It’s a US thing
Because the Anglosphere was so xenophobic that even the Irish and Italians were too culturally exotic to them and thus demonized their entire belief system.
The same can be asked about the Mormons. It’s Christians who have a weird obsession with deciding who gets to be Christian.
For me, if they believe in the divinity of Christ, they’re Christian.
Yes, but no true
ScotsmanChristian…
You are correct, Catholics are a subset of Christianity… But similarly how people assume a “doctor” is a medical practitioner, Christians has become the informal name for “Protestant” or “evangelicals”
Basically “Christians” tend to mean, anything not “Catholic” (which is old school, visibly indistinguible from others in the Christendom)
But if Eastern Orthodox counts as “Christian” while Catholicism doesn’t, that destroys the reasoning. If Eastern Orthodox doesn’t count, then you’re just referring to Protestants.
I don’t think there’s any explanation other than anti-Catholic bias, Protestants just want to claim their way of doing Christianity is the only way.
Wow. Zero information.
Basically “Christians” tend to mean, anything not “Catholic”
This is insanity. This is a purely American thing.
Because America is built by non-catholic faiths composed of heretics that love to burn women alive, abusers that craft abusive personality cults in hills-have-eyes country, false prophet grifters who tell you god’s gonna cure your terminal ilness if you help them get a private jet for their dogs, the hate-worshiping demons that blight the south ‘evangelicals’ that drive modern american politics, and misogynistic polytheistic pagans wearing the Christian mask while dressed in their weird underwear and tell you you’re not allowed to drink coffee but monster energy drinks are a-okay, who all want to be acknowledged as the real Christian faith instead of being labeled as schismatic protestants and chose to go with the common moniker “catholics & christians” instead of “catholics and protestants”
I mean a lot of Christianity in the US is like that, but I don’t like you implying that there’s another type of Christianity (presumably the one you believe in) that’s so much better.
Most of the Christianity outside the USA is not like that. Still bad, but way less bad.
Schism was the very first thing the Christian church learned to do.
Christian was the case that they gave me
Catholics do a bunch of stuff other Christians think makes them not Christina.
The biggest one is the pope, catholic lore says the pope is the literal spokesperson for God on earth all other religions he doesn’t have authority.
Idolatry: other Christian religions don’t have a lot of images of saints or anybody other than christ and basically think catholics are wrong for worshipping Mary and saints on the same level as Jesus. Similarly it’s the difference between catholic crucifixes (has the dead guy on them) vs regular crosses
Transubstantiation: according to catholic lore when the alter boy rings the bell that is LITERALLY the body and blood of christ you’re eating. Pretty sure other religions think this is a step too far.
“You should not have an image if God”
Literally just take “his” “son” and depict him as a white man. Lol.
Christina be cray
other Christians think makes them not Christina.
Love this typo.
Catholics aren’t Christians by many definitions, it is a different religion.
I might quibble about the Catholic Church being the “original” church since Catholicism only came about after Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman state in 380. You could argue that Catholicism started a bit earlier under Constantine I at the First Ccouncil of Nicaea in 325, which is when the Roman state started to consolidate the various early Christian beliefs under an official “catholic” orthodoxy. The word “catholic” literally means “including a wide variety of things”. The point being that there was already a wide variety of Christian sects prior to the Council of Nicaea.
The Protestant argument against Catholicism boils down to the belief that the Catholic Church is a corrupted Christianity, not that it is non-Christian. And there is some truth to that. The pre-Nicaean churches were free-wheeling spiritualists with a wide variety of beliefs, but that all changed when the Roman state decided to create an orthodox, singular religion under its control. Protestants argue that this adaptation of religious belief to the needs of maintaining state power is the original corruption of the Catholic Church.
Now, two key facts influenced the early history of Roman Catholicism:
-
The Roman state recognized the descendants of Caesar, the Emperors, as the Pontifex Maximus, or head priest, of the Roman state. They also required that everyone adhere to the cult of the Emperor. This was purely ritualistic and was meant as a bulwark to the power of the state.
-
The vast majority of the Empire’s citizens were pagan.
Because of #1, the Roman Emperor became the head of the newly formed Catholic Church, which was a unification of Church and State. This is called Caesaropapism, and is also why the Catholic Church retains a hierarchical structure to this day and its seat is still located in the heart of the Western Roman Empire. The Pope is the spiritual successor of the Western Roman Emperor.
Because of #2, Catholicism is highly ritualistic, like paganism, and early Catholicism adopted the worship of saints, which are basically small gods. Saint worship was the bridge between paganism and Christianity.
During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Luther and others made the point that the union of state power with Christianity was a corruption of “original” pre-Catholic Christianity, which was more spiritually-oriented and valued personal conviction over state orthodoxy. Interestingly, the split between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe also more or less follows the geographic outline of the Western Roman Empire, with southern Europe largely retaining Catholicism and northern Europe largely adopting Protestantism. This implies a political dimension to the schism, not just a religious one. England is the odd man out here because their response to the schism was to create the Church of England, which is basically Catholicism without the Pope, substituting the English monarch as the head of the Church and toning down the saint worship.
The great irony of any Protestant movement that craves Christo-fascist state power is that they are advocating to become the very evil they swore to destroy back in the 1500s.
-
Roman Catholic is the original Church, so you tell me
Fucking bingo dude. The original church was Catholic*. The Christian church came later.
This sounds like a semantic backflip.
Catholics themselves see themselves as Christian and since they are the largest Christian denomination, saying they aren’t is just No True Scotsman.
Ask a catholic what religion they are and they answer Catholic, while protestants say Christian.
Maybe in your part of the world, not in mine. Christians normally just say Christian unless they’re trying to recruit you (they are less than half the population).
Anyway that’s like saying if you ask me what my meal is and I say “steak” that means it’s somehow not meat because I was specific about the kind of meat.
Try it sometime
Mystery solved, see OP’s edit.
That is totally new to me.
Can you give me one or two of those many definitions for my understanding?
Many protestant churched consider themselves churches of Christ, Catholicism is the church of Paul, and isn’t strictly monotheistic, trinitarianism and unitarianism aside. They pray to beings other than God as a matter of course. Anglicanism and Orthodox are the same religion as Catholicism. Most of the protestant churches are not. Then you have stuff like Mormons and Jehovahs Witnesses which are a different thing again, if you call those Christian, then Islam is Christian (Jesus is an important prophet in Islam) but no one would say that.
Catholicism is the church of Paul, and isn’t strictly monotheistic, trinitarianism and unitarianism aside.
That is just plain wrong, no two ways about it.
To me it sounds like you listened to some protestant that doesn’t care much for the catholic church and just repeat his rant without questioning it much.
And don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t care less about christian infighting. I was just curious about the reasoning how the catholic church, which is one of the oldest and most “original” christian churches, could be considered not christian at all.
After your post I don’t believe there is much basis to this claim at all.FFS read a book. I am Catholic, btw.
So by your own claim you are part of the polytheistic church of Paul?
That just is not catholicism.
Which is so easy to prove because the catholics love to write down their many rules.So I honestly would just answer right back at you:
FFS read a book.
And btw, while I have been an atheist for many years now, I was raised strictly catholic in a highly religious area by my catholic family that included a catholic nun and the headmaster of a catholic school and I intensively studied christianity before I made my break with this religion.
You can’t bullshit me.
Oh look. An atheist that thinks he’s clever but doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. How original.
Care to share these definitions?
because historically lumping protestants and catholics together has not ended well.
You won’t find me using this dichotomy—I just use the blanket term “Assholes.”
