Offended at being called Protestant

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Peter_J said:
I won’t – in fact I don’t think I could – give a complete answer to that; but I’ll just say that I see it largely as a matter of convention. Plus it just seems to make sense to me to consider Anglicans and Lutherans to be both catholic and protestant. (Of course, I realize that’s somewhat shaky reasoning since I’m going against another popular convention – namely, that “Protestant” should be written with a capital P.)
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McCartney said:
…and so should Catholic be written with a capital C.
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Well, on CAF we generally only write Catholic if we mean those in full communion with Rome. However, if I were posting on e.g. An Anglican forum where the custom was to use Catholic even when referring to Anglicans and Lutherans, I would conform to their custom.

I hope that helps. 🙂
 
robwar said:
I am assuming you have more of a liberal theological background however, that is more of a minority in Protestantism now and dwindling in numbers. I think you can cut these Catholic apologists that you feel are not being truthful some slack in that the majority are going to be addressing those with an evangelical or fundamentalist type background. Look at Protestant Christian media. Most of it is dominated by those with a charismatic background but that is not a majority of Protestant Christianity. That is likewise true of Christian books which is even influenced more by dispensationists like Tim Lehaye. If your beef again that Catholic apologists speak to a majority of Protestant Christians that doesn’t seem to include where you are coming from or at, what do you want them to say or do?
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It would be very simple for Catholic apologists to simply say “evangelicals” when they mean evangelicals, but they don’t do it. Why not? If you don’t think their tactics are dishonest, what’s your take on it? Why don’t they speak more precisely?

Non-Evangelical, non-Catholics are still a significant grouping in the US (around 40% of non-Catholics). They are not some tiny minority–at least not small enough to generalize about them in this way.
 
Dave_Noonan said:
It would be very simple for Catholic apologists to simply say “evangelicals” when they mean evangelicals, but they don’t do it. Why not? If you don’t think their tactics are dishonest, what’s your take on it? Why don’t they speak more precisely?
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Frankly, I wouldn’t venture to say. Can you?
 
St_Francis said:
While traveling in the Bible Belt, I might easily say, there are a lot of Protestant churches in this town but no Catholic church. Or, there are a lot of Christians here but almost all of them are Protestant; there are few Catholics.

Or, more seriously,

I have learned over the years that there is a lot of variation in belief among the various Protestant churches, but i also see that when they “church-shop,” only other Protestant churches are among their chosen options; they don’t consider Catholic or Orthodox churches.

it seems to me that these would be ok?
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I was “church shopping” when I wandered into the Catholic Church and now I’m in RCIA. Please don’t demean church shopping because many of us have found the Catholic Church because we found our own churches lacking. The fact that there are those looking for better is a good thing.
 
St_Francis said:
In considering the issue of what to call non-Catholic, non-Orthodox Christians, I have a question.

What should we call them? It seems that the main objection is that various non-Catholic, non-Orthodox Christians do not want to have their beliefs ignored in favor of those of another group of non-Catholic, non-Orthodox Christians, so merely calling them something other than Protestant would defeat the purpose.

Is this a question perhaps of etiquette? That if I, a Catholic, am speaking with a Methodist or a Baptist, should discuss the teachings of their particular ecclesial community rather than assuming they share the teachings of other ecclesial communities? This seems reasonable.

However, there are also wider issues at hand. One is that the other ecclesial communities do all seem to have arisen from the same foundation of thought: private interpretation. This issue of authority is common to the various denominations and non-denominations.

The other is that many non-Catholic, non-Orthodox Christians reject the Catholic Faith out of hand. We are considered simply wrong and beyond the pale *in their community’s teaching. *They consider each other within the pale, and us outside it. So in a way, there is a similarity between them which separates them from Catholics.
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Personally, since the term protestant has the word protest as it’s root, and I’ve never protested the Catholic Church, it seemed silly to call me that. Does lumping most of the non Catholic Christians into one group tend to make it an “us vs. them”? I don’t really know.
 
jmcrae said:
It’s multiplied many-fold, though.

You get a Lutheran, an Anglican, a Mennonite, and a Calvinist together in one room - all of whom belong to Protestant organizations that originated with the Lutheran Rebellion dating back to the early 1500s, and a Catholic comes into the room and says, 'Protestants believe ‘x’" the chances are high that only one of those four ground-floor original Protestants (if any at all) actually hold that belief, or go to Church on Sunday with someone who holds that belief.
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Here’s part of the real problem, as I see it. The statement I bolded I believe to be historically inaccurate. The Mennonites come out of the Anabaptist tradition, which at no time was ever, in any way an organization that originates in the Lutheran Reformation. Calvin, while he may have borrowed some from Lutheran thought (more so from the Zwingli reform movement), also was never part of the Lutheran Reformation. Same for Anglicans. Theirs is a completely separate movement, as well.
This one is tricky - I think it means whatever it means to the person who is saying it. There doesn’t seem to be a standard definition, in practice
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It depends on the communion. Lutherans, even with some of their differences, can agree on how the practice of sola scriptura works, as it is outlined in the confessions. It shouldn’t be surprising, ISTM, that other communions, almost none of which having their roots in Lutheranism, would have a different practice.

Jon
 
JonNC said:
Here’s part of the real problem, as I see it. The statement I bolded I believe to be historically inaccurate. The Mennonites come out of the Anabaptist tradition, which at no time was ever, in any way an organization that originates in the Lutheran Reformation. Calvin, while he may have borrowed some from Lutheran thought (more so from the Zwingli reform movement), also was never part of the Lutheran Reformation. Same for Anglicans. Theirs is a completely separate movement, as well.
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They were all founded within ten years of each other, and would not have existed without Luther to open the door for them.
 
jmcrae said:
They were all founded within ten years of each other, and would not have existed without Luther to open the door for them.
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Not worth arguing over, but I don’t believe that to be the case. Huss was 100 years before Luther, so I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that the Anabaptists, for example, would not have formed anyway. Same with the Swiss reformation.

Jon
 
jmcrae said:
Maybe not Luther himself, but the German Princes put the idea into his head, I’m sure.
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Nope.

Closest thing to something giving him the idea was reading Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man.

GKC
 
GKC said:
Luther did nothing to open the door for Hank.

GKC
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Am I not right that Hank was “defender of the Faith”, so named by Pope Leo X, for his stance against Luther, particularly the seven sacraments, and the authority of the pope?

Jon
 
JonNC said:
Am I not right that Hank was “defender of the Faith”, so named by Pope Leo X, for his stance against Luther, particularly the seven sacraments, and the authority of the pope?

Jon
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That was prior to his own rebellion - he was a good Catholic at the time of that writing.
 
JonNC said:
Am I not right that Hank was “defender of the Faith”, so named by Pope Leo X, for his stance against Luther, particularly the seven sacraments, and the authority of the pope?

Jon
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Is this a hint I should post the story of Defensor Fidei, and how it came about, again?

GKC
 
jmcrae said:
That was prior to his own rebellion - he was a good Catholic at the time of that writing.
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Best thing to do, imo, is to drop the word ‘Protestant’ in all talks with them. Then, on your own, go to adoration and say rosaries for their conversion, offer mortifications for their conversion. Do that every week, and do it privately–ask for help from Our Lady Mary. Then, find peace in all this and go love them as Jesus would have you do. 🙂
 
Regarding the OP:

Best thing to do, imo, is to drop the word ‘Protestant’ in all talks with them. Then, on your own, go to adoration and say rosaries for their conversion, offer mortifications for their conversion. Do that every week, and do it privately–ask for help from Our Lady Mary. Then, find peace in all this and go love them as Jesus would have you do. 🙂
 
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