What's the craziest thing a Roman Catholic has said about your faith?

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We all know that being human as we are, it’s rather common for us to have misconceptions of misunderstandings about each other, especially when it comes to religion. I’ve seen a lot of threads about anti-Catholicism for a while, so I thought I’d turn it around so we can all see that no one is exempt from having misunderstandings about other faiths. 🙂

So what is the craziest thing a RC has said about your religion, whether here on CAF or elsewhere. I’m sure we are capable of having a good laugh about it without devouring one another. Play nice!

In Christ,
Andrew
 
Bob Hope once said that he couldn’t get fire insurance because his wife was so Catholic that she had candles all over the house.
 
I’m not Orthodox, but I saw a Latin triumphalist call hesychasm “self-hypnosis” which is a completely uncalled for accusation, especially considering it is a preschism form of monasticism even before the developments made by St. Gregory Palamas.
 
I have many examples of crazy things catholics have said to me…

I had my CCD teacher tell me Obama was pro-life:eek:

I had a man tell me it was no longer a requirement to go to Mass on Sundays…:confused:

and I had a sedevacantist tell me Benedict XVI was an anti-pope…

Thats about it i think…
 
Craziest thing from a Catholic…

The head of the Baptism Instruction Team at my husbands Church. Hands down…

Long Story short…

I was pregnant with my 1st, and shopping at our local grocery store, I was stocking up on formula when a lady, with a really bright red purse, comes up to me, and literally goes BALISTIC about not even trying to breast feed, and how horrible formula was, and how I was lazy to not even try to breast feed. When she finally stopped to take a breath…I looked at her and calmly explained I had a medical condition that required medication that would make my breast milk unsafe, and walked off.

Flash forward to a month and a half after our first was born. We went to my husband’s parrish for the first time. A woman approaches us gushing over our daughter, and telling us that she looked forward to seeing us in the Baptism classes, I explained that I was Lutheran and the kids were being baptizede Lutheran. She smiled and said “That’s wonderful, close enough” and preceded to talk about how kids were such a blessing. I kept looking at her trying to figure out where I knew her from, her husband walked up and said she had left her purse in the pew, and then it hit me…It was the Lady with the red purse from the grocery store.

I laughed all the way home, my husband was a little embarassed (he had gotten a little bit of a lecture from the priest about our kids not being raised Catholic). I just found it humorus that the leader of the Baptism Classes felt that Lutheranism was close enough to Catholicism to be OK, but Formula was poison compared to breast milk. 😃

Other things I’ve heard…Lutheranism is like Catholic Light. :confused:
Lutherans don’t baptise kids
Lutherans don’t believe in the real presence
I’ve been called a heretic…That one’s not really funny

Mainly mixing up protestant faiths and believes.
 
DAAVEED1590 said:
I have many examples of crazy things catholics have said to me…

I had my CCD teacher tell me Obama was pro-life:eek:

I had a man tell me it was no longer a requirement to go to Mass on Sundays…:confused:

and I had a sedevacantist tell me Benedict XVI was an anti-pope…

Thats about it i think…
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Obama is Pro Life??? That’s about on par with Kerry and Pelosi claiming to be Catholic, but not actually agreeing with anything the Catholic Church teaches.

Technically you have to have two people claiming to be Pope to accuse one of being the anti Pope…So if your sedevacantist (what is that anyway) thinks Benedict is the Anti Pope, then who does he think is really Pope?
 
I am Catholic and a Catholic nurse wrongly told me that I sinned when I had a D&C after a miscarriage, and said it was the same as an abortion.

I’ve heard crazy things about Catholicism from non-Catholics such as that Catholics are cannibals since we eat the body of Christ.

A Catholic once accused me of being outside of my faith for voting Republican as her view is that only the Democratic party is consistent with Catholic teachings (I’m thinking - gay marriage, pro-choice…I don’t think so).

And a non-Catholic once told me that people have to be “rich to be Catholic” - hmmm. That would be news to the millions of Catholics in third world countries.

Another non-Catholic told me that the Catholic Church has been “scientifically proven” to have been founded by Satan, and that there is a Bordello at the Vatican. That’s my favorite!
 
I think it would have to be that "Pentecostals prey on people by ‘love bombing’ them. :confused:

Though I think the most frustrating time was being told that Pentecostals believe that you have to speak in tongues to be saved. I corrected this person, stating the orthodox Pentecostal position was that speaking in tongues was the “initial physical evidence of the baptism with the Holy Spirit” which is separate and distinct from the new birth. However, I still found myself arguing with this person because he kept saying that Pentecostals believed evidential tongues were necessary for salvation. I was like dude I’m Pentecostal, I know what I believe! It was very frustrating.
 
formerlysure said:
And a non-Catholic once told me that people have to be “rich to be Catholic” - hmmm. That would be news to the millions of Catholics in third world countries.

Another non-Catholic told me that the Catholic Church has been “scientifically proven” to have been founded by Satan, and that there is a Bordello at the Vatican. That’s my favorite!
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I use to think that all Catholics were rich as a child. I think it comes from television and my limited exposure to Catholics. My cousin is Catholic and when he got married we traveled to Georgia to see his wedding. It was held in this big Catholic church. It was the most fancy church I have ever been in. In my cousin’s case, his wife’s family actually did have money and I remember being a child at the wedding and thinking this must be the kind of church that rich people go to lol.

About the Bordello, in a course on the Reformation I took one year in college I recall reading Erasmus’ Praise of Folly. He wrote that if the Popes lived like Christ and embraced a life of poverty then a lot of scribes, grooms, bankers and pimps would go unemployed. Of course, this was written in the 1500s so this description would not apply to the present Popes.
 
Harpazo said:
We all know that being human as we are, it’s rather common for us to have misconceptions of misunderstandings about each other, especially when it comes to religion. I’ve seen a lot of threads about anti-Catholicism for a while, so I thought I’d turn it around so we can all see that no one is exempt from having misunderstandings about other faiths. 🙂

So what is the craziest thing a RC has said about your religion, whether here on CAF or elsewhere. I’m sure we are capable of having a good laugh about it without devouring one another. Play nice!

In Christ,
Andrew
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Hi Andrew,
There’s a fellow on the Apologetics side who has claimed over and over that, essentially, Protestants are not Christian because they reject Jesus, because they reject what scripture says. 😦

Jon
 
JonNC said:
Hi Andrew,
There’s a fellow on the Apologetics side who has claimed over and over that, essentially, Protestants are not Christian because they reject Jesus, because they reject what scripture says. 😦

Jon
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Ugh, I’ve heard that one too, and they get mad when people ask Catholics if they are Christian.😦
 
Then there’s that thing about girls and women wearing skirts are not allowed to wear patent leather shoes.
 
A local Catholic priest is one of the smartest and most human people I ever met. He has a sense of humor that is very dry and very quick. One of his parishioners, and a friend of mine owns a winery. Another friend, who is Baptist, likes to go over there and help, especially when it comes to quality control (and so do I for that matter). Anyway, Father visited the winery one day when David was helping. In the introductions, Father asked David what church he went to. When David said he was Baptist, Father said," So, you don’t believe in anything!" Sadly, David was offended, thinking Father was making light of his beliefs. The owner and I thought it a hoot, since we both understood that Baptist are not a creedal church. To this day, David still does not get the joke that Father was making.
 
JonNC said:
Hi Andrew,
There’s a fellow on the Apologetics side who has claimed over and over that, essentially, Protestants are not Christian because they reject Jesus, because they reject what scripture says. 😦

Jon
Click to expand...
I read lots of variants on that here on CAF, and right here in the Non-Catholic Religions forum too, since this is the only one I frequent. There are some “You can only be saved if you’re Catholic” diehards here too. 😦
 
I either am seen as a Roman Catholic with an Orthodox Liturgy, I am not truly Catholic, or I am nuts for being a non-Ukrainian in a Ukrainian Church.
 
I don’t know if it’s considered “crazy” because it’s common, but there’s: “Pagans made it all up,” and “If Pagans don’t like what they believe; they can just change their beliefs to suit them.”
 
A lot of RCs don’t seem to understand the point of having a Pope of he isn’t infallible. It makes for some interesting conversations. And then there’s the whole “you guys don’t believe that Christ was human” idea, though that is unfortunately not just found among RCs.

Also, not really about the faith per se, but this topic reminded me about the time that one of our now missing posters once PMed me to suggest that maybe I am attracted to the Coptic Orthodox Church out of some affinity for Middle Eastern culture, and remind me that I could go to an Arabic-speaking church and still be in union with Rome. I thought that was pretty funny, since the use of Arabic is definitely a sore point among some Copts (yes, even a millennium after its introduction into Egypt), and the Arab identity is by no means uncontested by the people, to put it mildly. 🙂
 
Dzheremi, I attended a Coptic service with my wife. The priest grew up and was educated in Cairo. His English was so accented that the only time I could follow along was when the service was in Koini Greek.
 
I am sorry that you could not follow the service, Oldtimer 7. I have heard similar critiques of the Coptic Orthodox Church, both in America and in Europe. I’m not entirely sure how to respond to this. On one hand, the experience of the Coptic Church in the United States and elsewhere outside of the Middle East is still very new, and evolving to better serve both the expanding Egyptian diaspora and converts from the new lands. The first Coptic Orthodox church in the USA (Saint Mark’s, Jersey City NJ) was established only in the late 1960s. In my own area (Albuquerque, NM) does not even have enough Oriental Orthodox people – only 6 or 7 families total – to sustain an actual church. Instead they meet in an individual’s home twice a month for liturgy. (I haven’t been yet; I’m still in the process of unpacking from my move.) The point is: The church is still very much in the process of being planted, so obviously many in it (priests and laypeople) are also in the process of adjusting to life in the West, accented English and all. This will naturally change over time. In fact, the younger Copts who I have talked to (younger than me; in their late teens and early-mid 20s) generally speak English natively (or at least fluently), do not have as good a grasp of Arabic as the previous generation, etc.

On the other hand, the fluency or intelligibility of any particular individual’s English (or any other language) is of course variable. If you watched the video I linked in my last post, Bishop Thomas speaks quite clearly (to my ears, anyway). There are also a lot of Copts in many English-speaking nations who are producing clear English-language sermons, liturgies, praises, etc. For instance, Bishop Suriel (of the Diocese of Melbourne) speaks very clearly (and strongly!) with a beautiful Australian accent. 🙂 And then of course there are a growing number of “ethnically”/culturally Western converts, some even with their own churches (e.g., the British Orthodox Church, the French Orthodox Church). Fr. Bishoy Brownfield of the Los Angeles Diocese (I can’t remember his exact church at the moment) is wonderful, with his almost Byzantine-style chant and very powerful sermons, of course in perfect English (being an Anglo-American and all). And I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Fr. Peter Farrington of the British Orthodox Church, a man who is greatly admired by me.

Long story short: In time, the Coptic Orthodox Church will naturally “nativize” and stories such as what has happened to you and others will become less and less frequent. In the meantime, I am very happy that you and your wife went to the liturgy anyway.
 
Oldtimer_7 said:
Dzheremi, I attended a Coptic service with my wife. The priest grew up and was educated in Cairo. His English was so accented that the only time I could follow along was when the service was in Koini Greek.
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St. Mary’s? Our parish and theirs have slowly been growing closer. 🙂

In Christ,
Andrew
 
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