I never said it was an offense to call a non-Catholic a Christian. That is fine because they are Christians. It’s when you don’t include Catholics into the Christian Category that it is a problem.
It might be because the non-Catholics **she knows **
don’t belong to any one denomination, or they don’t want to identify themselves with say, Methodists, Baptists or whatever. So when asked what religion they are they say Christian. My daughter’s response should be, “Well, I am Christian too. I go to St. Brigids”
If someone asks me what religion I am, I say Catholic. Christian should be implied. If some says they are Christian my first question would be, “What church do you attend? Oh, so you are ‘Baptist’. We are Catholic.” I won’t say they are Baptist Christian, because the Christian part would be implied.
Should I just let it go and say, “
Just be glad she is in with the right crowd?” No, I won’t do that. I don’t want her to think she is better than everyone else because she is Catholic, at the same time I don’t want her to be ashamed of it. It is a good point of discussion for a father and 15yold. So, next time it comes up we can talk about saying, “Non-Catholics Christians” when referring to the other Christian friends. (She first made the separation between Christians and Catholics, not me)My friend, I think it is definitely worthwhile to sit down with your girls and get into this whole thing and make sure that they have good answers for all that and can at least make an essential apologetics case concerning this, because as you can see based upon the n-C responses that you have witnessed here, regardless of what you and your kids do, you will still run into the rhetoric and propaganda in opposition to the truth.
If you don’t do anything but get them each a copy of
San Juan Catholic Seminars Beginning apologetics # 1 it will better equip them than most all of their n-C friends.
To be honest, I would not encourage any Catholic youth to participate in n-C youth activities. If your parish doesn’t have them, maybe you are the persons that God is calling to help fill that need.
