Catholics Were you raised with a bias toward Protestants?

[bones_IV]

I had the understanding that salvation for a protestant was possible. However, I’ve even said a few times that the Catholic Church is the one true faith, and I was accused of arrogance. Lutherans and Catholics do not believe pretty much the same thing. Far from it actually.

 

[Eden]

We didn’t discuss them much. I have Protestants in my extended family and I never heard a bad word about them or their faiths. My dad is Protestant (Church of England) but in name only. I grew up in a very Catholic environment because we lived very close to my mother’s family (all Catholics). The 4 kids who were my age and lived in my neighborhood were all Catholic (just a matter of chance with that) and I went to Catholic school.

The religious teaching at my Catholic school was about our own faith, not others. In fact, one summer I went to 3 bible camps - Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist. My mom didn’t seem to have any problem with that. (As a mother now, I would *never *let my children go to a Protestant bible camp or youth group. My mom just didn’t know what I would be subjected to.) My first real understanding of what Protestants believe about Catholics was when I joined a Presbyterian youth group at 13 and found out that I was “not Christian” and that the Pope was “Satan”. I

 

[Melanie01]

No, although at some of the Catholic schools there was a bit of bias…

My mum was our religious educator at home and we were raised Catholic but mum was Lutheran so the focus was more on Christian principals more than anything else.

 

[chriswilliam]

My father side of the family was Lutheran. At that time if you had amixed marriage you had to sign papers that the children would be Catholic. I wasn’t taught that non-Catholics go to Hell but I did of hear it. Then a priest told me that my Lutheran family is in Heaven like my Catholic ones. He told me that my two families have one thing in common. That we were bapatize Christians. We just worship God differently. I started to respect all religions for we do share some common beliefs and worship the same God.

 

[AmISearching]

I wasn’t raised Catholic - but I think I have something to say that makes a good point - most of us as children do not realize that everyone is not like us. I never learned of Calvinism until I was in highschool, and then I thought at first that it must be some weird cult denomination somewhere (I really thought there must be a denomination called Calvinist based on what my one exposure to one was) - I had no clue that Presbyterians and such believed in predestination - I knew they existed, but since I didn’t really know any I assumed they believed the same things as the church I grew up in!

In a similar vein to speak of the vice versa - other than a few issues my father had with the Catholic Church (he was brought up Catholic) I never really was taught anything about the Catholic Church either - which I am very thankful for that I managed to never end up in any churches or around any people who taught Anti-Catholic ideas…

I just find our childhood ideas of church quite interesting to tell the truth - we all assume that everyone is like us =) (of course I assumed a few other weird ideas as a child too - I thought since we were “giving our money to God” that he must beam the money up to heaven from the offering plates when they were put in the room at the back of the church! hee hee!)

 

[Celia]

I don’t remember ever hearing much about them. I went to Catholic school and like most of you here who did too, I didn’t understand what being Protestant was until, gosh, probably 4th grade, 3rd maybe? My mother is Lutheran but I didn’t really know what that meant - maybe that she had different traditions but I didn’t know she wasn’t ultimately part of the same church. My Dad is Catholic but not an overly strict one so he never really talked to us about the differences.

Plus, I live in a town that’s well populated with Catholics. My friends were Catholic, etc. I knew there was those “other” schools (public) but I didn’t know anyone who had attended one until again maybe 3rd grade-ish. It’s funny how innocent kids are.

So basically, we barely talked about other churches at all, let alone have a bias against them.

 

[Character_Zero]

I did not know what a Protestant was until I was 11 and my best friend and I started talking and when I asked him “what church do you go to,” his church started with the name of a town, and not a saint!
I was pretty much put off towards Protestantism when we were discussing God and all he would talk about was how Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac and Gandhi was definitely in hell, no ifs ands or buts.
Then in college, my roommate was Protestant and he got me to go to his campus Bible study (supposedly “interdenominational” but really Protestant) and my dad, who had left my mom and given up belief in God, became a born again Protestant. I liked the Bible study meetings and they were working on getting me to convert, but then I asked my dad if there was the slightest chance that Gandhi maybe didn’t go to hell, and he said there was absolutely no way… he was definitely burning in hell. So that is when I decided I could never be a Protestant.
Then my roommate’s dad talked with me about Catholicism and told me how the Church invented all these things, which are totally unbiblical, and how Jesus really had brothers, and how Peter wasn’t the first pope, and how people didnt believe in the Real Presence until Aquinas came around, (Later I found out that his “unbiased, historical book” was written by our friend Lorraine Boettner) - anyway, my roommate’s dad spurred me on to investigate these issues and was unknowlingly instrumental in me becoming an amateur Catholic apologist and returning to Confession and the Sacraments. God bless him!

 

[Character_Zero]

AmISearching?:

I just find our childhood ideas of church quite interesting to tell the truth - we all assume that everyone is like us =) (of course I assumed a few other weird ideas as a child too - I thought since we were “giving our money to God” that he must beam the money up to heaven from the offering plates when they were put in the room at the back of the church! hee hee!)

LOL!! I remember in 2nd grade we had to draw pictures of the images we thought of when we said the “Our Father.” So, naturally my first picture was of God in heaven, with a beret, an easel and a paintbrush… Our Father, Who* art *in Heaven

 

[cecilia97]

I was taught nothing about Protestanism as a child, it was hardly discussed…and my mother is even a convert from the Methodist church. Today, most of my adult friends are “mainstream” Protestants. The bad memories and prejudices I have about Evangelical Protestants came from personal encounters during Jr. High school around the time when we were all doing confirmation classes. Some of the churches in our town seemed to be encouraging their students to take a confrontational approach to Catholics, and their informationd always seemed to be wrong. Sadly, to this day I don’t have any close Evangelical friends.

 

[contemplative]

Protestants were pooh poohed in my childhood home. It was a matter of survival…I guess. The town was small, rural and mostly populated by WASP.
As far as I was concerned …Catholicism was the only way to get to heaven.

 

[AmISearching]

cecilia97:

Some of the churches in our town seemed to be encouraging their students to take a confrontational approach to Catholics, and their informationd always seemed to be wrong. Sadly, to this day I don’t have any close Evangelical friends.

I’m sorry to hear that - even though i am converting to the full truth of Catholicism, I still hate that the evangelicals I grew up with and the churches I attended, all of whom never said a single thing anti-Catholic that I heard ever (maybe a few comments about things they didn’t understand - but never anything offensive, never anything hateful, and they NEVER even insinuated that Catholics weren’t going to heaven) they get lumped in with the rediculous Anti-Catholic people I’ve heard tell about since beginning my research of the Catholic church.

Thats not to negate the fact that many of you have had horrible experiences with evangelicals - I hate that you have been treated so badly in the past. I have no clue where in the world these people have come up with these Anti-Catholic views, and I personally wouldn’t have believed that anything that hateful could have come out of the evangelical church (the true fundamentalists - maybe - after all - I have heard stories about Bob Jones University, lol, I know how crazy they can be)

I just feel badly for all of this having happened, and despite the fact that I nor my own churches have never done any of it, I would love to make it up to all of you folks.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Ignatius:

Actually, many of us were raised protestant.

As one of the above, I was not raised with a bias against Catholics: or against any other group of Christians​

 

[jediliz]

I don’t remember - one of my good friends while growing up wasn’t Catholic and one of my brother’s good friends wasn’t Catholic…and before he converted 6 years ago before my niece’s birth, my brother in law was a protestant (specifically a Lutheran).