What do you think about Protestants?

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If we want to bring more people to the Church we must first love and care for them no matter their Religion. I was a former protestant and converted because the love and patience my now fiancé had with me when discussing Catholicism.

There is nothing wrong with talking/encouraging protestants. And telling them they are wrong and don’t have the full truth etc. is not brotherly love and will make them even more uninterested in Catholics and the Church.
 
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_Crucesignatus said:
Yeah. Protestants are heretics and that’s a fact.

It’s a sad state of affair that so many “Catholics” accept the heretical approach to God’s words these days by the Vatican II Church.
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Well, not quite, at least not always.

Heresy is, according to Aquinas, “a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas." A person who was taught something else as the deposit of faith and either shielded from learning the faith of the Church or hardened against accepting it by those who were responsible for their spiritual formation can hardly be counted as a heretic. It is hardly just to conclude that such a person is personally responsible for corrupting a dogma of the Church; rather, that person’s conscience was formed by corrupted dogma.

So–once someone who was raised as a Protestant sees the truth of the faith as it has been preserved by the Church, that person has the duty to conform himself or herself to it as well as possible. That normally would mean becoming a Catholic. It does not follow that there are not Protestants of good will who are doing the best they can with the formation they have been given.

To be a heretic, a Protestant would have to have possession of the faith and then corrupt it. Just being baptized and then holding false beliefs because one was not formed within the fullness of faith by those responsible for your formation does not make you into a heretic!!
 
cbirtell said:
There is nothing wrong with talking/encouraging protestants. And telling them they are wrong and don’t have the full truth etc. is not brotherly love and will make them even more uninterested in Catholics and the Church.
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This cannot be so, because it contradicts the plain meaning of the Scriptures:
My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back, he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
James 5:19-20

It is a proud mistake to refuse to listen to someone just because they tell you that you are seriously mistaken or to discount someone as “unloving” because they venture into pointing it out when you are incorrect. I don’t mean that those who want to evangelize should never take human resistance to correction into account! I mean that automatically condemning people who tell the truth for their supposed lack of “brotherly love” is rash.
 
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Are you saying that the Catholic Church’s teachings are heretical now, post Vatican II?
 
I understand and that makes sense but as a convert if a Catholic came up to me and told me of all the reasons I’m wrong. bashing what I have known all my life would not want me to be Catholic. A lot of Protestants don’t know any better because that’s all they have known.
 
Protestants are not our enemies!! They are our brothers and sisters
 
You are right ! My story is that I grew up in a household with two parents who had been baptised into the Church of England but who never went to church. You get a lot of that in the UK - people will say ‘I’m Church of England’ but in a practical sense they don’t really live out a Christian faith. I started to go to Brownies (girl scouts) and they were invited to occasional church services which I always loved. I always used to ask my mother to take me to Sunday school but she was too busy looking after the family. Not her fault. When I got older (14,15) I started to go a youth club run by the Methodist church and they always had a little bit of the evening devoted to scripture. At the same time my mother got invited to an Alpha course by the same mother whose daughter I was friends with, and who I went to youth club with. Eventually my mother and I started going to Methodist church and I prayed the classic sinners prayer and powerfully felt the Holy Spirit. Long story short I started off very ‘well,’ ( although now realise we all fall short).got baptised aged 16 into Methodist church. Tee total no sex before marriage, go to church study. All well and good. Before long got mixed up in unhealthy rships with non Christians guys after I moved away to college, started drinking and losing my way. Got into a lot of debt. Eventually moved back home ten years later, met my now husband. Got back on track with my money thanks to my parents helping me and moved in and married my husband. During the time we were dating I poured out all the sadness I felt about my misguided rships and he agreed that we should stop sleeping together and that he would support me moving back to God. Gradually we prayed together regularly. From when we moved in until we got married in the Methodist church we refrained from full sex although there was some slip ups. Once married I got a job in an catholic school and it was like some bit of me was awakened. I hated that I couldn’t have communion and began an RCIA course so I could fully be in communion and be received into the church. During my first confession I said sorry for all the sexual sins I’d committed in my life and came out crying. I’m gradually working on myself and have confessed about once a month since my conversion this Easter. My husband came to mass with me in the last couple of weeks and now prays and tries to follow the Lord. He was also there at the Easter vigil. My maternal grandma was a catholic who married a Church of England man. Her family shunned her and that is the only reason I wasn’t born a catholic. Long story short - I KNOW my Lord has saved me and I am working towards perfection that I will only get after many trials. But he has paid my price. I would not be in this place without the Protestant church. They are our brothers and sisters. Thanks for reading my testimony anyone who does. Xxx
 
Flagged as misleading, inappropriate, and wrong on many levels; not representative of Catholic teaching or Catholic attitudes in general.
 
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One thing I adore about the Church is the loving authority - it’s there in black and white. Honestly once you’re Catholic you can relax knowing that all the toil in terms of what to think about different issues has been resolved for you. Even five years ago I would not have been able to say that
 
Our Blessed Lord desires every single Protestant to come to the fullness of Truth in His Catholic Church. More importantly, He desires that they taste His ocean of Mercy. We are to love them as souls in most need of His Mercy. Love them, love them, love them!
 
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cbirtell said:
I understand and that makes sense but as a convert if a Catholic came up to me and told me of all the reasons I’m wrong. bashing what I have known all my life would not want me to be Catholic. A lot of Protestants don’t know any better because that’s all they have known.
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Totally true. Besides, Protestants are validly baptized and they are Christian. They are the recipients of real grace. This necessarily means they have experience of God and something to say about the Christian life that is worth sharing and worth listening to.

The faith is not all dogma, after all, not any more than the walls of a home that keep out the wind are all needed to make a home into a home. The walls keep the home safe, but love makes it a home. Likewise, anyone hoping to make the Church recognizable as a home has make the hearth visible, not just the walls. From the inside, the soundness of the walls is comforting, but if that is all that is seen from the outside, a home can seem like just a building, and even a forbidding building.

So yes, the door has to be open and the warmth of the hearth has to be palpable before the walls are attractive. Yes, I’m sorry, that is absolutely true.
 
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What do I think about protestants?

I generally feel camaraderie with anyone who practices a faith that is demanding of them. I feel it slightly more with Protestants than say Muslims as we have belief in Christ as the Son of God and savior of the world in common.

The camaraderie falls apart a bit when they try to tell me I’m not a Christian as some Protestants do. The love is still there in those cases, just super strained.
 
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My father and his side of the family were devoted Methodists and he never converted to Catholicism after my parents married. I loved my grandmother dearly and she adored me as her only granddaughter among several grandsons. I was raised Catholic but that never made any difference whatsoever to my father or his family and I never thought twice about having a family with two different religions. I went to mass with my mother’s family and I went to Methodist church services with my grandmother. I never once thought a thing about it and it did me a world of good to be exposed to both sides. We all pray to the same God and all accept Jesus as our savior, so when it comes down to it, we’re much more alike than we are different.
 
What I’m getting from this thread, and from my own experience, is that your interactions with members of a faith color your view of that faith.

If a Catholic interacts with Protestants who are pleasant, kind, tolerant, sincerely try to live their faith, and respect Catholicism and the faiths of others in general (“respect” includes not dissing or insulting faith practices or saying, “why don’t you just do it this way” or “why do you bother to go to Mass when you can find God anywhere” or “The Catholic Church is really messed up on its views about Topic X” etc) then the Catholic will have a good opinion of Protestants, or at least of the faiths represented (as Protestants are a large and very diverse group). Same is true for a Protestant interacting with Catholics.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
What I’m getting from this thread, and from my own experience, is that your interactions with members of a faith color your view of that faith.

If a Catholic interacts with Protestants who are pleasant, kind, tolerant, sincerely try to live their faith, and respect Catholicism and the faiths of others in general (“respect” includes not dissing or insulting faith practices or saying, “why don’t you just do it this way” or “why do you bother to go to Mass when you can find God anywhere” or “The Catholic Church is really messed up on its views about Topic X” etc) then the Catholic will have a good opinion of Protestants, or at least of the faiths represented (as Protestants are a large and very diverse group). Same is true for a Protestant interacting with Catholics.
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What is interesting to me is that people will lump “Protestants” as all one group. The various denominations are so different! What they believe is different, how they view the Catholic Church is different, their leaderships are organized and carried out differently… it is hard to lump them all into one group. Excepting that churches without a valid baptism aren’t usually considered “separated churches” by the Vatican, they have about the least amount in common that any collection of the baptized could possibly have.
 
I agree, they see themselves as each faith being very different from each other. Catholics, on the other hand, tend to see the world as two camps: Catholic and Not Catholic. With the possible exception of Jewish people, who we see as having a strong cultural identity and strong relationship to the Old Testament as well as pre-dating the Catholic faith, every other church is seen as either something that started off as Catholicism and went off down the wrong track later (all Protestants, Muslims) or that is so alien to Catholicism (like Hinduism, Buddhism etc) it’s not even in the same ball park.

I knew almost no Protestants before I met my husband, and I had little interest in understanding the differences between Protestants. It was like if I knew I didn’t like brussels sprouts and didn’t want to eat them, I didn’t particularly care if there were different varieties of brussels sprouts. They were all just filed away in the Do Not Want bin. I still struggle with some indifference towards learning about the differences.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I agree, they see themselves as each faith being very different from each other. Catholics, on the other hand, tend to see the world as two camps: Catholic and Not Catholic. With the possible exception of Jewish people, who we see as having a strong cultural identity and strong relationship to the Old Testament as well as pre-dating the Catholic faith, every other church is seen as either something that started off as Catholicism and went off down the wrong track later (all Protestants, Muslims) or that is so alien to Catholicism (like Hinduism, Buddhism etc) it’s not even in the same ball park.

I knew almost no Protestants before I met my husband, and I had little interest in understanding the differences between Protestants. It was like if I knew I didn’t like brussels sprouts and didn’t want to eat them, I didn’t particularly care if there were different varieties of brussels sprouts. They were all just filed away in the Do Not Want bin. I still struggle with some indifference towards learning about the differences.
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Our Catholic high school had a half-semester required class for seniors that started with theological outlines of the differences among denominations but ended in several weeks of guest speakers from different faiths. The school didn’t want its graduates going out in the world not knowing that there were lots of different “not Catholics” out there with very different views of the world from each other.
 
I think when I was growing up a number of decades ago, there was some hesitancy to be exposing Catholic kids to Protestant ideas for fear that they would decide there wasn’t any difference between Protestants and Catholics and then proceed to leave the Catholic Church. A lot of the parents in my day weren’t real keen on their Catholic kids dating Protestants either, because they thought the kid would leave the Catholic church.
 
Jesus Commands that we show the world that we are His Followers by Loving one another; He also Commands that we Love our enemy and pray for those who persecute us.

So yeah, Protestants, seen as creatures Created in the Image and Likeness of God, as well as being fellow Believers seeking Christ, must be Loved by Catholics.

Scriptures demands this:
20 If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not? 21 And this commandment we have from God, that he, who loveth God, love also his brother. (1 St. John 4)
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But, as the saying goes, ‘love the sinner, not the sin’ there are conflicts that keeps us at bay–some confused zealots mistake rejection of difference of beliefs with rejection of the people who hold those beliefs.

Maran atha!

Angel
 
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