Can Catholics pray with Protestants?

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You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s hard to engage in discussion with a poster who repeatedly makes sweeping generalizations. Almost all my husband’s and father’s families were and are Protestant, several different denominations, and they wouldn’t appreciate being generalized about in this way. Think I’ll bow out now.
 
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The sharing of spiritual activities and resources, therefore, must reflect this double fact:
  1. the real communion in the life of the Spirit which already exists among Christians and is expressed in their prayer and liturgical worship;
  2. the incomplete character of this communion because of differences of faith and understanding which are incompatible with an unrestricted mutual sharing of spiritual endowments.
    Directory … Principles and Norms of Ecumenism 104
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This is the official language. I do not think it says much beyond what has already been said here.
 
I wasn’t aware that Baptists don’t consider themselves Protestants. But aren’t there different kinds of Baptists? Would this apply to all Baptist groups?
 
meltzerboy2 said:
I wasn’t aware that Baptists don’t consider themselves Protestants. But aren’t there different kinds of Baptists? Would this apply to all Baptist groups?
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There are indeed different kinds of Baptists, and that is putting it mildly.

I don’t know of any Baptists who call themselves Protestants, but I could be wrong. Here are two articles:



It might be accurate to say that Baptists could regard themselves as “Christians who later became Protestants, when Protestantism became a thing”. Some of them, anyway. The Baptist world is a big place.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s hard to engage in discussion with a poster who repeatedly makes sweeping generalizations. Almost all my husband’s and father’s families were and are Protestant, several different denominations, and they wouldn’t appreciate being generalized about in this way. Think I’ll bow out now.
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Generalizations are just that — generalizations — and I fully recognize that there can be exceptions to any rule. When I generalize, I am saying nothing more than “trait X is almost always encountered”, “trait X exists and while there can be exceptions, they are rare”, “trait X is just common knowledge”, and so on. I do not accept the proposition that “you cannot know how many people have trait X unless you go to each and every person and ask them if they have trait X”. Without being able to generalize, things such as opinion polls, market research, business planning, and so on, would be impossible. I have seen too many businesses fail because someone was realizing a lifelong dream, or selling what they thought was the next big thing, or what have you, without stopping to consider “yes, but am I going to be able to get enough business to keep the place open?”.

I am going to open a new thread on the topic of “why do Protestants and evangelicals choose their specific church or denomination to the exclusion of others?”.

Peace.
 
St Paul VI, St John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI have prayed with Protestants. I think that answers the question.

Of course, it does not we mean we can pray with all Protestants for the same things they may pray for. For example, in Northern Ireland there are many Protestant sects that are vehemently anti-Catholic and we would do well not to pray with them and certainly not for what they would pray for.

However, I do not believe there is a hard and fast rule, as previous popes have clearly demonstrated, that Catholics and Protestants should not pray together. We humans fractured the Church and I think we should do everything we can to restore its unity. Praying with non-Catholic Christians is not a bad way to start.
 
I think the majority of Protestants aren’t praying for things completely antithetical to your faith, at least most of the time.
 
If it is for something good, I see no issue. For example, if you were to have dinner with a Protestant and thanked God for the meal and all of your blessings. Or if there was a tragedy, and you and a non Catholic co worker pray for the safety of those involved.
 
This one is a no brainer.

Catholics and Baptists have been praying and protesting together outside abortion clinics for many years.
 
Lenten_ashes said:
Catholics and Baptists have been praying and protesting together outside abortion clinics for many years.
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The “protesting together” business in the 1950s and 1960s, when a lot of Catholic clergy were joining with Protestant clergy for civil rights and anti-bomb/ anti-war marches, was a big ecumenical driver in the USA.
 
When I was in the Navy, I was lucky enough to be on ships large enough to have both a Catholic priest and a Protestant chaplain on board. While on deployment, they would take turns saying a nightly prayer just before lights out. They prayers were always “non-denominational,” typically praying for safety at sea, the troops on the ground or for loved ones back home.

Catholics prayed when the Protestant chaplain led, and the Protestants prayed when the priest led. Even the folks who didn’t believe in anything particular or something completely different, or nothing at all, took that minute of the day to silently reflect.
 
It’s a wisdom thing. It depends on the respect towards each other and your knowledge of the Catholic faith. We both believe we’re saved by grace and that we have a relationship with Jesus. Some Protestants coexist well with Catholics while some unfortunately attempt to convert Catholics.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I don’t know of any Baptists who call themselves Protestants, but I could be wrong.
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I grew up Southern Baptist. I never didn’t think of myself as Protestant, and I never heard anyone I knew in the churches I attended say anything about Baptists not bring Protestant. Also, I spent 5 years as a student in a Methodist seminary with a significant number of Baptist students and several Baptist faculty members. I never heard anyone there suggest Baptists aren’t Protestants.
 
RyanBlack said:
I don’t know of any Baptists who call themselves Protestants, but I could be wrong.
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Well, perhaps I stand corrected. I am not one to defend my opinion or assertions to the bitter end, when not to do so would be having to say “I wasn’t completely right”, “I failed to consider certain facts and arguments”, or even simply “I was wrong”. Happens all the time. To all of us.

My understanding was that Baptists consider themselves heirs to a two-thousand-year history of persecution, martyrdom, simple Christian witness, and a pure Christianity that, in their eyes, Roman Catholicism is not — in other words, “there have always been Christians who were essentially just like us, and who were no more conformed to Roman Catholicism than they were forced to be by an all-powerful church and state — then, in the fullness of time, the Reformation came and we were finally free”. Paulicians, Waldensians, Cathari, Albigensians, Montanists — the list goes on. As I said above, it makes more sense to think of Baptists as Christians who, according to their own history, later became Protestants, or at least were grafted into it. From a Catholic standpoint, this is a sort of revisionist history, but be that as it may, it is a bit too facile to say that “all Christians were either Catholics or Orthodox until the Reformation”.

The Waldensians still exist today and even founded a village (Valdese) in the North Carolina piedmont near Charlotte, which has a fascinating history and is well worth stopping by and spending the afternoon visiting. They later became Presbyterians as they reckoned this the American denomination closest to their beliefs.


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It depends, really. That certainly is one view among Baptists (and from the perspective of a neutral observer, it’s a flawed view IMO), but they’re such a broad group (since you can apply the term to any credobaptist) that it really does differ.
The SBC call themselves Protestant on their website, and I’ve never met a 1689 Baptist hold this view either.
 
oxford said:
is there anything scandalous in Catholicism about praying with Protestants? Or is it fine? I could have sworn the current Pope gave the pass to do it.
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NO…

Saint Pope John Paul II - attended a Lutheran Service in 1983

Pope John Paul II made a historic religious breakthrough tonight when he spoke in Rome’s Lutheran Church and urged that the 462-year-old dispute between Catholics and Lutherans be healed. He said he had come “in the search for full Christian unity.”

Speaking in German to a congregation of about 400 Lutheran worshippers at the Christuskirche on Via Toscana, John Paul said that in the year of the 500th anniversary of Luther, it was possible “to see in the distance the dawning of the advent of a recomposition of our unity and of our community.”

Lutheran Pastor Christoph Meyer, dressed in a somber black robe with a stiff, wide ruffled collar, addressed John Paul as “your holiness,” but he stressed before the visit that the pope had been invited as the bishop of Rome and not as head of the Catholic Church.

The two prayed together before the altar, blessed the congregation simultaneously, and together intoned a credo based on a 15th century text that in some countries is used today by both Roman Catholics and Lutherans.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
Waldensians
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Have you read the original Waldensians statement of faith?

It’s very Catholic. They were just a group who did not like Papal authority.

Protestors have been around from the beginning with heretical beliefs…varying beliefs that would make baptists puke if they saw them. So those claiming a continuation with these groups over the centuries really need to further investigate it because it’s absurd. Some believed you could lose your salvation, other’s believed in 2 Gods(Jesus/Father) etc, etc.
 
I would say that if you love and serve Jesus, that’s a pretty big similarity. I have many, many Catholic friends who are my brothers and sisters because we love and are thankful for the mercy of our great King.

It’s true - we have many theological differences and some are serious. But when you’re standing side by side building and repairing homes, serving in soup kitchens, handing out blankets to homeless folks, and generally taking care of His sheep, it’s awfully hard to focus on what makes us different. After all - everyone uses a hammer and a soup ladle pretty much the same way 🙂
 
Most our families are Baptist…Methodist…or Agnostic…we (wife and myself) are often asked to say grace…one of us will…the only thing we do differently in their company is we don’t say…“in the name of the Father… the Son and the Holy Spirit”…before and after the blessing as it tends to confuse them because they don’t say that with their grace…but we will still cross ourselves
 
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