Protestants (and former protestants) - How do Catholics treat you?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JGC
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

JGC

Guest
Protestants (and former protestants during your time as a protestant), How do Catholics treat you? Is it with respect? Disdain? Ambivalence? Inferior? Fellow Christian?

If you have asked questions about Catholicism, were these answered charitably? Or were you informed everthing outside Catholicisism is a lie and you have to join to be saved? Were myths dispelled or what you believed reinforced?

What were the effects? Did it set you on the road to being Catholic? Or quite happy where you are but better informed? Or did attitude of Catholics put you right off?

Thoughts / Comments? :hmmm:
 
I was blessed to have had a call via Holy Spirit and an answer to a prayer,because of aprayer. I told the Lord I was raised in a church that makes you look mean unloving and unjust and if you are like what I was taught I will have nothing to do with you,if you really did start a Church and you are really loving and just,I will be there. About three months later I was pulled for lack of a better description to the Cathdral in Memphis,TN.Most Catholics are very kind to me and others. Some though are very judgemental of protestants and their conversations go in a very ugly direction. I believe I was given a special grace an answer to a prayer,but alot of non-catholics by no fault of their own hold misconceptions and outright lies about Holy Mother Church and should not be yelled at or told they are going to hell. God Bless
 
lisa lisa… i dont think anyone is advocating yelling at protestants, certainly not I, and telling them they are going to hell… what i have said was that in our discussions with them the fact the the risk of damnation is a possibility and that our discusssion is not just an intellectual exercise … that there are real consequences to not entering the catholic church—charity sometimes involves telling someone the hard turth for their own good
 
40.png
marineboy:
lisa lisa… i dont think anyone is advocating yelling at protestants, certainly not I, and telling them they are going to hell… what i have said was that in our discussions with them the fact the the risk of damnation is a possibility and that our discusssion is not just an intellectual exercise … that there are real consequences to not entering the catholic church—charity sometimes involves telling someone the hard turth for their own good
Click to expand...
In order for them to be open to even listening to you,there has got to be myths dispels.Don’t you understand that alot of protestants think we might as well be a satanic church?We are blessed to have the Truth in fullness.Okay, let me try to take this in a different direction, if a vodoo priest said to you if you don’t practice vodoo you will go to hell,we know that is crazy,we also know that vodoo is evil.Now some protestants have been taught and believe that we might as well be vodoo,so the best thing you can do is first let them know what we believe and after they struggle and try to get rid of fears a false bigotry you can go into further loving dialog.The possibility of hell is for Catholics to.God Bless
 
Lisa,
I completely agree with you and you’re right about the misinformation that is spread about the Catholic Church.

As for the questions that opened this thread: It seems a bit on the negative side. Why didn’t you just ask how we were treated and leave all the leading questions?

As a re-vert to the Faith, I have been treated beautifully by my fellow Catholics. There have been non-Catholics who have treated me like some apostate heretic and required answers of me that I have learned to answer. The highest compliment they’ve paid me was when one guy (after a discussion about an anti-Catholic segment of the video series “How Shall We Then Live” by Franics Schaeffer) told me “You’re the most Catholic guy I’ve ever met”. I thanked him. :whacky:
 
Hi,

This thread is actually built on the premise that Catholics are actually Catholic, and not Protestant Catholics. I am a cradle Catholic and my family in california would say they are Catholic. They have totally rejected me. It’s just as hard for a cradle Catholic to be in the Catholic Church as it is for a Protestant to enter the Catholic Church. If everyone loves you in todays Catholic Church you are in big trouble!!! If you even DARE to open your mouth, and speak the truth, you’ll be persecuted. Jesus promised that.

EXAMPLE: Ask the people at Catholic Answers how many times any of their apoplgist have spoke at St. Columbans, in Orange County, California, in the last (HOW MANY YEARS HAVE THEY BEEN IN EXISTENCE) years?

I am NOT NICE! Thank You , sweet, loving, kind, Jesus!

John
 
Church Militant:
As for the questions that opened this thread: It seems a bit on the negative side. Why didn’t you just ask how we were treated and leave all the leading questions?

.
Click to expand...
Well, they happen to be some the answers I have had from protestants. They were put there as prompts, not ‘leading’. As a teacher I am well aware that an open question without some prompts will often get you nothing. Give some options and you get more response. People might start from them, but then provide you with the detail. Or thinking of the prompts reject all of them and give you their answer.
 
40.png
john654:
Hi,

This thread is actually built on the premise that Catholics are actually Catholic, and not Protestant Catholics. I am a cradle Catholic and my family in california would say they are Catholic. They have totally rejected me. It’s just as hard for a cradle Catholic to be in the Catholic Church as it is for a Protestant to enter the Catholic Church. If everyone loves you in todays Catholic Church you are in big trouble!!! If you even DARE to open your mouth, and speak the truth, you’ll be persecuted. Jesus promised that.

EXAMPLE: Ask the people at Catholic Answers how many times any of their apoplgist have spoke at St. Columbans, in Orange County, California, in the last (HOW MANY YEARS HAVE THEY BEEN IN EXISTENCE) years?

I am NOT NICE! Thank You , sweet, loving, kind, Jesus
John
Click to expand...
Code:
This is an excellent piece of work. It is true that if everyone likes you, than, you are in big trouble. To remain Catholic within the Catholic Church is harder because of the ‘attacks’ from our own. A lot of Catholics continue to be Cafeteria Catholics and continue to pick and choose. A lot of Catholics are into New Agie kinda stuff…this is the hardest…as they do not see anything wrong with it because the results are positive. For example: taichi, yoga, etc, etc.

Jesus did not ask us to be nice. He asked us to spread the Good News with truth in a charitable way. (I hate the word ‘nice’). Nice is so saccharine it gives me cavities. There is nothing charitable about being ‘nice’. It is just a good cop-out.

You may get 'persecuted ’ by our protesting friends, but we will get it worse from our own fellow Catholics (priests included).

Blessings,
Shoshana smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/8/8_2_62.gif
 
I was raised a Baptist where I remember an “ecumenical moment” :rolleyes: when we were shown a series of films about other religions–Catholicism being one (among Hinduism, Buddism,…). The “factual” information provided said that Catholics literally worship Mary–that they put flowers and food at the foot of her statue and truly believe that the next day when the food is gone that the statue ate it–that Mary was a female God to whom Catholics pray to receive salvation??? This was not presented angrily, but rather so that we could be on gaurd against the Church–never referred to as the Whore of Babylon, but I have come to understand, that was the line of thinking…My 12 year old head could see there was something “not right” there–and shortly thereafter I refused to go to church at all and basically dropped God altogether.

Years later I went to Midnight Mass with a boyfriend and cried my eyes out–it was an epiphany–it was home. I dropped the boyfriend, but kept the Church. It took me a while to actually make it here–and specifically a problem I encountered in my RCIA class was when I was trying to understand Mary’s perpetual virginity–When I asked “why it was an important doctrine that Mary be considered a virgin AFTER Christ’s birth” the instructor had no answer. Eventually after pressing the issue further she snapped at me saying saying “Because that’s what Catholics believe and if you don’t believe it, maybe you shouldn’t be Catholic!” Well, THANK-GOD I just decided to shut up and continued with the program–this HAD to be a grace from God because (especially then), I was sooo reactionary. I can see now, that the instructor didn’t really know and apparently felt that admitting it was something she couldn’t do.

People are people–some are charitable and some are not. People act VERY often out of ignorance. I just find it is so much easier to be charitable, patient, and generous with a rightly formed conscience which I believe can only be fully developed in the one true Catholic church.
 
Former protestants - How do Catholics treat you?

I am in RCIA (converting to Catholic). This is what I find amazing. There is every reason for Catholics to not like me.

a) As a Protestant, I also had strong anti-Catholic ties. I used to order Jack Chick tracts (in boxes of 1,000). I still have some receipts. Jack Chick had drawn pictures for my best friend’s tracts. I even asked a priest “How do you know? For all you know I could be undercover and still trying to help Jack Chick.” They trust that God has been working with me.

b) I am White and my wife is Black (and I live in Virginia – the heart of the south). Yet I have not detected any racism in the Catholic Church. My wife and our children have sometimes come with me to the Catholic Church and nobody has looked at us funny.

c) I have been unemployed. And I have been unemployed before. Years ago, in some churches I did not look forward to the typical question “Where do you work?”. While attending my Catholic Church, nobody asks “Where do you work?” What a relief. And if they find out that I’m currently out of work, I don’t feel bad about it. Because nobody makes me feel inferior because of it.
 
40.png
JGC:
Well, they happen to be some the answers I have had from protestants. They were put there as prompts, not ‘leading’. As a teacher I am well aware that an open question without some prompts will often get you nothing. Give some options and you get more response. People might start from them, but then provide you with the detail. Or thinking of the prompts reject all of them and give you their answer.
Click to expand...
:hmmm: Okay…just wondered.
I agree that they are all pretty much the same rhetoric that we hear every day. Your tactic ceratinly worked w/me didn’t it? 😃
 
jmm08 said:
Former protestants - How do Catholics treat you?

I am in RCIA (converting to Catholic). This is what I find amazing. There is every reason for Catholics to not like me.

a) They trust that God has been working with me.

**b)**nobody has looked at us funny.

c) Because nobody makes me feel inferior because of it.
Click to expand...

We Catholics are only nice because we have some of the greatest saints and some of the greatest sinners and sometimes its hard to tell the difference!😉 :rolleyes: (I’m only kidding) I too have found the Catholic church to be the most welcoming church–it’s the kind of welcoming that is not necessarily on the surface, but it is in it’s blood (pun intended).

WELCOME HOME!👍 :dancing: :love:
 
They are very nice people just like any other people on this planet. The parish I attend are friendly when we greet eachother and so forth. However, if I do convert, I will still love the Protestant people too. They too are our brothers and sisters in Christ!

blessings,

Nicole
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top