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…
Because religion is all about dividing people into arbitrary groups. Catholicism is a specific type of dogmatic Christian theology
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
Care to share these definitions?
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.
Catholics see themselves as the root form of Christianity that other versions forked from. Whilst it’s not technically true, as there are many versions of Christianity that pre-date Catholicism, in most countries where the term “Catholics and Christians” is used, it’s accurate enough
Growing up in a “non-denominational”, independent fundamental Baptist house I was always taught that Catholics weren’t Christians because they worship idols. Now that I’ve left the faith I would easily classify them as being Christian.
While I think many people actually do classify them as Christians they do have some significant differences in their beliefs and practices than most Protestant denominations; and being themselves the largest Christian denomination by far it can be useful in some analysis to treat them as a distinct entity (the answer to “percentage of global population that subscribe to a particular religion” is much more interesting when broken into “Christian Catholic: %” and “Christian Other: %”).
What does “non-denominational” mean? Isn’t Baptist the denomination?
In this context it was meant as a joke. Several Baptist institutions incorrectly label themselves as being “non-denominational” even though they are completely ideologically aligned with the independent Baptist movement.
All the non-denominational churches are just a denominational church in denial. Pentecostals use it a lot too, but it’s pretty obvious once you know
Oh shit! Independent Fundamental Baptist! I had to deal with living with that shit, too. At the end of the day, if the king james bible was good enough for Peter and Paul, it’s good enough for me. Also, rock music is the devil.
I went to Bob Jones. There was a kid there got in trouble playing the guitar cause what he was strumming had “that sound.” No lyrics, just him strumming it wrong was sinful. Ain’t no way that kinda teaching gonna fuck someone up for life.
I went to a small private Christian high school too. Our Junior year we did a “college tour” to check out Christian Colleges. We visited Bob Jones, and I was blown away. That place is fucking wild. I’m glad I settled on Penn State in the long run.
If anything Catholicism is much more traditionally Christian, as it’s the stablish status quo outside of the anglosphere.
That’s seen as a negative. “Holy tradition” is seen as an extreme departure, although most Protestants wouldn’t even know the term because opening the catechism is nearly as bad as the satanic bible (especially among evangelicals).
They have the next outgroup to eliminate lined up in case they run out of minorities to discriminate against.
Catholics are one of America’s og boogeyman. They used to fear the idea of a catholic president who could be influenced by the pope. I’m not sure when that went away.
There was (manufactured?) outrage when Tony Blair converted after his premiership. I don’t think the topic of the current UK prime minister’s religion even came up when he was appointed. I guess that’s progress.
I don’t think the topic of the current UK prime minister’s religion even came up when he was appointed.
oh it came up, along with worse.
there’s are reasons why Rishi Sunak is an unfit bastard to be PM, but it’s the same reasons as Boris Johnson and Theresa May.
I guess I didn’t notice in the coverage I watched. Was it the daily mail or just the dreges of the internet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPYdzIt7p7s
and it got worse after he became PM, then the storm blew over.
didn’t help that there was a Hindu celebration that of course he participated in soon after he became PM. I’m not saying it was bad that he did it, I’m saying that it made his standing worse.
Random racists is just background noise these days. I was comparing media coverage and comments from panelists on things like question time. It was certainly an area of comment for Blair and less so for Sunak from my recollection.
Catholics are Christians, but Christians are not necessarily Catholic. For example, Orthodox Christians are not Catholic. Being Catholic requires, at the bare minimum, agreement with the Holy See and implicitly the dogma he endorses. Even this “minor” difference can be used to find non-Catholic Christians.
Precisely, Catholic ⊊ Christian.
The reason why this is the case has to do with the history of Christianity, specifically the various schisms throughout the ages as the Christian faith evolved. That’s an incredibly complicated topic which I’m not qualified to discuss.
Catholics are Christians, but Christians are not necessarily Catholic. For example, Orthodox Christians are not Catholic. Being Catholic requires, at the bare minimum, agreement with the Holy See and implicitly the dogma he endorses. Even this “minor” difference can be used to find non-Catholic Christians.
I know that, but if you ask me, it’s like saying Sunni and Muslim, one kinda emphasizes, if not “otherizes” (orientalize or occidentalize) the other… usually in a not good way…
One kinda emphasizes, if not “otherizes” the other… usually in a not good way…
Yeah. People have been killed over being Catholic in a non-Catholic Christian society and people have also been killed over being a non-Catholic Christian in a Catholic society.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t differentiate at all between the dogmas of Catholics and the wider practice of Christianity.
(orientalize or occidentalize)
I mean there are lots of non-Catholic Churches with European origins, for example Lutheranism and Anglicanism. So I think it’s a bit more complicated than “otherizing” with respect to that specific dichotomy.
Platypuses and mammals.
Platypuses are mammals, but they’re weird enough that you can’t usefully generalise from them to anything else, to the point that lumping them in together could be actively misleading.
Same deal.
Platypuses are mammals, but they’re weird enough
We probably wouldn’t consider them nearly as weird if they were more numerous than any other mammal species and lived all over the world. So their comparison to catholicism is weird.
Platypuses are mammals, but they’re weird enough that you can’t usefully generalise from them to anything else, to the point that lumping them in together could be actively misleading
I would argue that they’re “lumpable” with other monotremes :)
Wait do you randomly drop “and platypuses” when you’re talking about mammals??
Kind Sir, please never drop a platypus. I thank you kindly.
(Insert smirk for my dumb joke)
Please never drop a platypus
for that could make it flat-ypus
They mean Catholics and Protestants but they’re morons and their religious leaders have convinced them that Catholics are somehow not Christians.
just about every christian I know sees other sects and offshoots as a separate religion. it’s very sneech-like.
Cocaine and crack are different, technically, but they come from the same shit.
That distinction comes from racism though, which is probably not too different than Catholics and Christians.
The distinction between cocaine and crack does not have anything to do with racism. It has to do with the way the drug is processed and consumed.
The criminal distinction is absolutely about racism as crack users are historically urban minorities while cocaine users are primarily wealthy white people so crack gets 10x harsher penalties when compared to cocaine. If we compare this to other drugs, would you consider weed edibles different from flower? They’re processed differently and consumed differently much in the same way.
I still argue that it’s not a racial thing. You can find cheap cocaine in urban areas. And you can find expensive rocks in rich neighborhoods.
I don’t make any distinction between edibles and weed. I’ve known rich people who smoke tons of weed and poor people who love to make weed brownies.
I know rich people who have used meth and poor people who used ecstasy.
Where are mushrooms in your book? I know rich artists who swear by it and fast food employees who never go to work without tripping—and I don’t blame them.
The specific drug isn’t about race. The quality could be about income status, but there are plenty of poor white people using shitty drugs cut with law knows what.
Would you feel better if he said “it’s like squares and rectangles, but they’re still both shapes”. Hopefully that’s not racist, too.
Yes, in the context of the 1980s and 1990s when discussing the criminality of cocaine and crack cocaine use, there is a racial component. But it was you who took that leap here in this thread, not the person who made the comparison of two products derived by the same source (hence his point in the first place).
Hundreds of years of infighting
Thousands really.
Protestantism hasn’t event 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.
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
Catholics believe in a religious hierarchy, Cardinals, bishops, Pope e.t.c.
Christians USUALLY think hierarchy in religion is almost blasphemous. But really it’s just so they can kinda just do whatever the fuck they want and not worry about the Pope excommunicating them.
some sort of remnant of evangelical puritan protestant ideology?
Yes. It’s weird.
Discrimination and division are like 99% of what religion is about.
same shit different pile?
