Were you raised with a bias toward.....?

[Bob_Crowley]

I didn’t have a bias towards either side, although I was probably a bit leery of Catholicism due to the occasional negative stereotype or criticism I came across now and again.

But I was raised in a secular household, with a Catholic father who’d lost his faith, and an Anglican mother, who I think still had some sort of “faith”, but she also had reasons for not liking God much (brother who died at age 4, sister who died at age 16, boyfriend who went down on the Sydney in WWII), and married a mongrel, who proceeded to make her life very difficult. Neither of them ever attended church, other than very rare occasions - Christmas, weddings, funeral etc.

I don’t like God myself much for that matter sometimes, but I know He’s there.

So religion didn’t have much relevance in our family life. I did get shunted off to Presbyterian Sunday School for a few years and a (PYF) Presbyterian youth Fellowship, but never felt accepted, and left when I was about 13.

If I gained any wariness about Catholicism, it would have been due to my years as a practising Presbyterian when I did become Christian about the age of 28, and a couple of years as a Wesleyan Methodist. But even then, the church wasn’t particularly anti-Catholic. I learned a lot from my Presbyterian pastor and towards the end of his life, I think he was starting wonder if he’d backed the wrong denominational horse, as per some of his private comments to me toward the end of his life viz. -

“I sometimes wonder if Protestants get into heaven…”

and also when he was dying of cancer, and he was worried about his Westminster Confession of Faith’s declaration about the Pope being the Anti-Christ - “It’s a heresy! That’s what worries me!”

Anyway, God was trying to get me into the Catholic Church for a couple of years, and I resisted due to this wariness, and I’d also married a Baptist lady, which would have meant a divided denominational loyalty.

But I had an argument with a Protestant pastor, so I went.

If the old pastor was correct, and he was prophetic, I’m yet to have “trouble with the Baptists - they’re very much aware of being ‘Baptist’, much more so than Presbyterians are for example”, and “I think you’ll have trouble with a (Catholic) priest. He won’t understand you. He’ll kick himself later, but it will be too late.”

So far neither has eventuated, but I’d be surprised if they don’t, as he was so accurate.

 

[Tommy999]

Catholics Were you raised with a bias toward Protestants?
Protestants Were you raised with a bias toward Catholics?

Not any specific bias toward Catholics growing up, but just an awareness that they were different than us in certain beliefs.

My mother was not prejudiced and taught us to be that way, too. I was permitted to have both non-Catholic and Catholic friends as a small boy. Most of the Catholic ones were Chicanos whose parents came to our town to work in the local factories. Her only stipulation was that any friend of mine had to come from a “nice family”, which meant they couldn’t cuss in our house or have parents or siblings in the local jail, etc.

As a kid, I would feel sad when my Catholic friends couldn’t play at the local playground because they had to go attend ‘Catechism Class’ . They invited me to come but I wasn’t allowed by my mother because she said that that was just for Catholics and we weren’t Catholic.

 

[Della]

That is interesting that your mother would think that. I think there is often a fear of people taking their faith to seriously.

Yes, she knew I had an inclination towards serious spirituality, but funnily enough, it didn’t bother her when I got deeply involved in the Assemblies of God, even going so far as to earn a B. A. in Bible and be involved in many ministries. No, her only real fear was me becoming a Catholic and becoming a nun. Well, I did become Catholic, but the religious life was not my calling. She died before I was received into the Church, but I had married a lapsed Catholic who, at that time, was attending the Episcopal Church with me–yes, I’ve had an interesting spiritual history. While in the AoG I became very anti-Catholicism–not anti-Catholic people, just anti-Catholicism. I prayed hard for all those “lost” Catholics trapped in their idolatry, etc. My intentions were good, but my theology was lacking, which is why God took pity on me and, through Mary’s intercession and aid, led me into his Church.

 

[skeyes]

I was raised Southern Baptist. My parents, mother especially was biased against Catholics. When I announced I was dating a Catholic, she said she had always prayed I would marry a Christian.
Turns out that I as a Catholic, was the only child going to Church for many years.
She died not quite condoning my being Catholic, but was a little more comfortable having seen the difference in me.

In His service,

Stan

 

[FollowChrist34]

Catholics Were you raised with a bias toward Protestants?
Protestants Were you raised with a bias toward Catholics?

Nope. Devout Catholic when very young child (+ my maternal grandmother who I saw every summer was devout her whole life). My family fell away from the Church pretty violently, landing in what I can honestly call thoroughly radical secular liberalism. But one thing I will say for my father, he always stressed a tolerant attitude toward all Christians (they mean well, believe in love, but are naïve and many are going through the motions: “real” Christians are ok); he somehow managed to see himself as Catholic in spite of falling away into atheism, culturally I guess, but also in some weird way, religiously. (Fellini, Flaubert, etc. etc. - Catholic world view in spite of one’s best efforts).

I am so thankful I was not raised to hate anyone. The closest I get to that is suspicion and fear of fundamentalists. In my darkest moments, I see them as tending to illiteracy and cruelty in the name of faith. And that did come from Dad, also a few experiences though. Fortunately I am also friends with them, so have mellowed on that quite a bit. And somehow I managed to learn how to clearly distinguish mainstream Protestantism from fundamentalism. Always very positive to mainstreamers. Dad again.

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

I grew up with a bias towards Catholics. My dad is a cradle Catholic, but he doesn’t consider himself Catholic. My mom is a cradle Episcopalian. I was raised Episcopalian.

My dad has issues with the church (not sure exactly what). My mom told me recently that they went to a funeral at a Catholic church and the priest made a statement about how only Catholics were allowed to receive Communion. I tried to explain to my mom why Protestants aren’t allowed to receive Communion, but she didn’t want to hear it.

When I told my parents that we are looking into getting married in the Catholic Church, my mom said that they both thought it was a good thing. And no, my husband and I aren’t married in the church yet. It took me MONTHS to get the paperwork from the church I was baptized in. We are working on it (he’s Catholic, I’m Episcopalian).

 

[Potter]

I was raised in a Pentecostal sect that did not consider itself Protestant. To it, the entire world is going to hell; Protestants, because of error, ,and other religions because of demonic inducement. Catholicism fell into the latter camp because of some so-called end-times prophecy.

 

[kaneata]

I was raised Catholic attending Catholic schools till 5th grade. When young, I remember being surprised when I found out a friend of my parents was not Catholic, I thought everyone was.

While older we moved to an area with many Jews, and as with Protestants, I never really gave other peoples’s beliefs a second thought. They were who they were.

 

[LaughingBoy1503]

Raised protestant with slight bias againt The Catholic Religion. Not Catholics, because I never even knew a practicing Catholic. Catholics to me were people who did not even practice their faith and who never read The Bible and put too much emphasis on Mary. My interactions with Catholics did not help my bias at all because not a one could defend their beliefs when I questions them about it. Not to mention I remember my sunday school teacher teaching us (we were Calvary Chapel Christians at that time) that The Catholic Church use to sell tickets into heaven and that they changed The Bible every 10 years or so (YES, we were taught that) Both those things sounded outrageous to us even as children and further developed my bias against Catholics.

 

[Robyn_p]

No. My dad was Protestant when I was young, but he would still come to Mass with us, so I didn’t notice a difference, and I don’t remember my mom saying anything about it. The only thing I knew is for some reason he stayed with me in the pew at communion when all the other parents went up. He converted to Catholicism when I was nine, but I still didn’t quite get what he was converting from. All I knew was now he could receive communion with me.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Catholics Were you raised with a bias toward Protestants?
Protestants Were you raised with a bias toward Catholics?

Baptists not because I was particularly religious and in fact a lot of my mom’s family is Baptist. They just seemsed really judgemental. Now that being a child one of my closest friends is a Baptist and if I knew Baptist like her growing up I would not have held that opinion. Of course there were good Baptist here and there but again though I see things differently now

 

[TK421]

There’s one memory that stuck in my head, which has come back to me in recent years, where my dad commented that Catholics “were the Pharisees”, but other than that, Catholicism was never discussed in my home and my parents (at least visibly) didn’t flip out when I became seduced by the Papists and crossed over. I’m 29 now and was 27 at the time and so by that point I was pretty well independent and my parent’s knew it. My dad is an elder at his church and I can sense he’s more uncomfortable with it than my mother, but he hasn’t been vocal.

Growing up, what I thought about the Catholic Church was pretty much absolutely nothing. My parents had coworkers and acquaintances here and there that were Catholic. We had the impression that they didn’t know the Bible very well, and that impression hasn’t really changed since then, from any of us.

So I suppose a mild bias, but nothing extraordinary. I never believed the CC were idolaters or non-Christians or intrinsically evil or anything of that nature. As a protestant, they were always perceived as Christians in my mind, even if I thought they were misguided on some things here and there.

 

[Thom18]

I was raised mostly Catholic, but we were Episcopalian for a few years.

I wasn’t raised with any kind of bias. I was just told that we (as Catholics) were more old-fashioned and Protestants had “all the fun stuff”. If you want your kid to stay Catholic, that’s no way to sell our faith ������ I went to church with a Protestant friend once and REALLY wanted to go there at the time. Birthday cake, a live band- I didn’t even really pay attention to the service itself. We just ate food in the back, I think. That was around eight or ten years ago.

I still don’t have any real bias since I’ve experienced three different denominations, but now that I’m older and know more about Catholicism, I’m more comfortable practicing.

 

[cath4alltime]

I remember anti Catholic bias when I was growing up, they were bad, bad people. When I became a Catholic I went the opposite way. Now I have an anti evangelical streak going on

 

[Michael68]

My parents are both Catholic. My mother converted from Baptist and her side of the family is still Baptist. I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and never seriously questioned why some of my relatives went to a different church. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens I started to question this. I was being told at the time by Protestant students at my high school that I was not saved because I was Catholic. My relatives, of course, do not feel this way!

 

[andrewstx]

I was raised by an Ulsterman. He hated the church [think Ian Paisley. He had the nerve to call himself Iriish]. The man was such a bigot that I turned against his Baptist sect. Very soon after finishing High School I became Catholic.

 

[TC3033]

Raised Non-Denominational, and never had a bias towards anyone.

I’ve had a bias develop within the passed 3 or so years with how “our” last and current Parrish’s view of non-Catholics.

Working my way through that for myself, wife, and kids.

 

[Stilldreamn]

I had a grandfather who was vehemently anti-Catholic, and his attitude colored my Dad’s thinking for sure. Mom’s side of the family was wary of Catholics but never said anything overt against them as I grew up. When I was young we were just about the only non-Catholics on our block I was exposed to the Catholic faith daily through playing with my friends and sleeping over at their homes. Those were good experiences with the exception of a little friend crying one day and telling me I was going to hell (yes really - I cried with her, because I KNEW she was mistaken and it was actually HERSELF who was in jeopardy).

The prejudices that fermented under the surface bubbled up when I chose to go to a Catholic college. Forty years later, my Mom still lives in fear that I will abandon the faith and convert. I consider myself as a practicing Lutheran, with a Catholic heart.

 

[Upgrade25]

Nope. Half my friends are Protestant, heck, my best friend is!

 

[Tommy999]

Catholics Were you raised with a bias toward Protestants?
Protestants Were you raised with a bias toward Catholics?

I was not raised with a bias. My father was raised Lutheran but wasn’t very devout. He changed to Presbyterian when he married my mom, who was devout in that faith.

We were taught to respect every ethnic group and faith. We had a black Baptist family on one side as neighbors and a white Pentecostal family on the other. I hung out with friends who were of different Protestant backgrounds and some who were Catholic.

One of the first kids I met in Little League baseball who wasn’t from my neighborhood was a Catholic kid who was the son of one of my father’s buddies at work. We became good friends and went to school together through high school and played on the same sports teams.

The only stipulation my parents gave me on having friends was that they had to come from a law-abiding family.

My mother and father had nine kids. On account of the size of his family, a couple of my father’s Catholic co-workers made him an honorary Catholic – a story which he enjoyed relaying at the dinner table one time.

My first encounter with religious prejudice ironically came in high school (10th grade) when a different Catholic buddy of mine and I made a deal to attend the other person’s church just to see what it was like. I was supposed to attend his Catholic church one Sunday and he would attend my Presbyterian one the next.

Although she wasn’t thrilled with the arrangement, my mother allowed me to attend Mass with my friend Kevin the first Sunday per our arrangement. It was definitely different from what I was used to but I felt God’s presence there.

When the following Sunday rolled around, Kevin was a no-show at my church. I even waited for him in the narthex until they started the last hymn. I later found out that he wanted to come but his mom didn’t allow him to visit my church, which I thought was odd because she liked me and let me come over to their house often and hang out with Kevin and his siblings there. I was disappointed and it hurt my feelings but I didn’t form a bias from that experience, though, because I knew Kevin wanted to come but wasn’t allowed.