Why do other Christians "hate" Catholics?

[benhur]

Lets stick with the present century…or at least modern period.

OK. How about the “Come Back Home” campaign that you see in advertized, promoted in many places by CC ? Do you assume they are only targeting lapsed Catholics who are at presently unchurched ? If so my apologies but if not, can’t blame them for pulling at hearts that are also presently at “other churches”.

 

[Peter_J]

OK. How about the “Come Back Home” campaign that you see in advertized,

Such things most definitely do exist. Indeed, if I seem a bit blaise toward “apologetics” (polemics) such as

Actually I thought Evangelicals don’t proselytize. They preach the gospel with hopes of conversion to the body of Christ, the Kingdom of heaven here on Earth. This is above joining any particular denomination.

and others that you use, it is partly because Catholics could use the very same kind of polemics. In fact, it’s not just a matter of could, because there are some Catholic “apologists” (polemicists) who do use those polemics, especially toward the Eastern Orthodox. If you haven’t seen them, then you aren’t reading enough () blogs.

 

[Per_Crucem]

OK. How about the “Come Back Home” campaign that you see in advertized, promoted in many places by CC ? Do you assume they are only targeting lapsed Catholics who are at presently unchurched ? If so my apologies but if not, can’t blame them for pulling at hearts that are also presently at “other churches”.

Yes, that’s very true. However, you must be able to distinguish between the Coming Home efforts and going to someone and saying repent of your Catholic beliefs or you’re going to suffer for eternity. Yes, the papal people have sheep stealers, too. A lot of the Coming Home stuff is directed toward non-practicing Catholics, however. They also do treat Protestants as actual Christians.

 

[deanofmac]

The counter-reformation was loaded with Catholic effort to convert Protestants.

St. Peter Canisius, my Confirmation Saint when I attended RCIA!

 

[benhur]

However, you must be able to distinguish between the Coming Home efforts and going to someone and saying repent of your Catholic beliefs or you’re going to suffer for eternity.

There is also the middle ground where you are trying to preach your convictions and you must address any obstacles of religion. Much of Jesus’s obstacles were that of religion, His own (Judaism and the practice thereof). What you describe above is a matter of tactics because otherwise we agree that it is a matter of eternity.

 

[Per_Crucem]

There is also the middle ground where you are trying to preach your convictions and you must address any obstacles of religion. Much of Jesus’s obstacles were that of religion, His own (Judaism and the practice thereof). What you describe above is a matter of tactics because otherwise we agree that it is a matter of eternity.

I don’t approach it as a matter of eternity. If I am having a disagreement with a Catholic and attempting to persuade him or her of the truth of my beliefs, I do not approach the Catholic as if he or she is any less a baptized child of God than me. If there’s a tactic issue there on the part of evangelical missionaries, it’s approaching Catholics as if they aren’t.

 

[benhur]

I don’t approach it as a matter of eternity. If I am having a disagreement with a Catholic and attempting to persuade him or her of the truth of my beliefs, I do not approach the Catholic as if he or she is any less a baptized child of God than me. If there’s a tactic issue there on the part of evangelical missionaries, it’s approaching Catholics as if they aren’t.

Well preaching is for unsaved usually and teaching for brethren. Evangelizing is bringing one to Christ. Discipleship is something else as is discussing differing doctrines /practices. But yes, evangelicals probably offend if they don’t take for granted that a Catholic, even a Lutheran and last but not least a Baptist is saved because they are such. Part of it is differences in belief of baptism being effective,that if you are baptized, especially as an infant you must be born again. An evangelical hopefully looks at what the other says and does…But I am with you, discussing aspects of ones faith is not usually evangelizing nor a matter of eternity.

 

[KarenBernadette]

I’m sure many of you have had some of the same experiences I have regarding many Protestants. I’m not sure what it is that makes them so hateful, judgmental, and rude towards Catholics. What is it? I feel that a lot of it is ignorance about who we really are, but what is their reasoning for their opinions?

your feelings are a good answer. Now reverse the catholic and protestant in this question and the answer will still be the same

 

[KarenBernadette]

I’ve heard that many times and fully believe it.

However, I’m curious WHY they despise us so much.

My take is that, in general, pure truth frightens people when it comes to religious belief because with this truth comes the implied obligation to be held responsible according to it . People tend to hate what they fear Being that the RCC is the true church this is why many “hate” it - but that hate is really from fear…

 

[spina1953]

I think it is more fringe denominational groups that seem to have a tendency to promote hate of the Catholic Church and Catholic’s in general. There are those who are anti-Catholic but then again they are also anti-Jewish too. They like to think that Catholic’s are not Christians. I think it is due to how they are taught and how they are brought up believing what they are taught.

 

[Lilla321]

I read several posts, but not all 13 pages, so forgive me if I am repeating what has already been said…

I am currently converting to Catholicism. I have previously attended a few Protestant churches, including Fundamentalist Baptist churches.

There is a culture of anti-Catholicism for sure! There is preaching about how Catholicism is wrong, and a general arrogance about how lost Catholics are.

There are disagreements on several fronts, ie. Tradition, infant baptism, veneration of Mary, praying to the Saints, etc. But perhaps the biggest disagreement is over salvation. They believe that once you are saved you are always saved and can’t lose your salvation, and take great offense to the Catholic view of salvation.

It irks me like crazy that there is this culture of, lets say disdain rather than hatred, toward Catholics. But it is certainly an accepted and expected part of some Protestant denominations. Some people will throw out all kinds of misunderstandings about the Church to tell you why Catholics are wrong. I try my best to represent the Church well when dealing with people who are rude toward me, especially when they find out that I am converting. I think somehow they think that gives them the right to spew at me. It makes me sad. I don’t know why people just can’t be respectful. But hey, I know I am in the right place now and what other people think won’t change what I believe.

 

[spina1953]

I read several posts, but not all 13 pages, so forgive me if I am repeating what has already been said…

I am currently converting to Catholicism. I have previously attended a few Protestant churches, including Fundamentalist Baptist churches.

There is a culture of anti-Catholicism for sure! There is preaching about how Catholicism is wrong, and a general arrogance about how lost Catholics are.

There are disagreements on several fronts, ie. Tradition, infant baptism, veneration of Mary, praying to the Saints, etc. But perhaps the biggest disagreement is over salvation. They believe that once you are saved you are always saved and can’t lose your salvation, and take great offense to the Catholic view of salvation.

It irks me like crazy that there is this culture of, lets say disdain rather than hatred, toward Catholics. But it is certainly an accepted and expected part of some Protestant denominations. Some people will throw out all kinds of misunderstandings about the Church to tell you why Catholics are wrong. I try my best to represent the Church well when dealing with people who are rude toward me, especially when they find out that I am converting. I think somehow they think that gives them the right to spew at me. It makes me sad. I don’t know why people just can’t be respectful. But hey, I know I am in the right place now and what other people think won’t change what I believe.

Hi Lilla: Glad you found the truth. You are correct in your assessment. I think that most do not really know anything about the Catholic Church or its beliefs and teachings. They are taught what they are taught and grow up believing what they have been told. There are those Catholic’s who have left the Cc and have an axe to grind so will tell all sorts of lies which many believe to be true without wondering if it is really true or not, they just accept it as true. Each person has to come to the truth as they see it and when they really begin to know and understands what the CC teaches, most generally become Catholic’s just as you did. God bless and may His peace be with you.

 

[Hogwaump]

Viewpoint from another angle – I grew up in an fundamentalist holiness church, became a bit of a bible scholar out of self defense, abandoned that church as soon as I was old enough to know better, joined the wave of atheism that was trendy at the time. Now I am pushing 60 and realize that I know very little about anything.

I also dated a Catholic girl, to the expressed horror of both our families, so perhaps I had a better view of this up close. First I should say that the Catholic family was more tolerant and eventually accepted me, I think always with a conviction that I would convert eventually.

Personally I can get along with Catholicism far better than with fundamentalism. At least priests tend to actually read the Bible and try to understand it before they get up to talk about it publicly. A lot of what goes on in fundamentalism is somebody echoing something that somebody said, who was echoing something from somebody before him, and so on, ad nauseum.

There is a lot of misinformation about Catholics floating around. The number one complaint is that Catholics are not Christians because they pray to the Virgin Mary (or saints, take your pick) instead of Jesus/God. With all the Hail Marys everybody has heard from a distance or in the movies, I can understand their error. They know little else about Catholicism, except that it is bad for some nebulous reason, and there are censers and robes involved.

I have heard people refer to the practice of praying to saints, relics, statues or other depictions of saints or Mary, what have you, as a form of Idolatry – a very big no-no in fundamentalist thought.

The Pope is the Antichrist, a particularly ignorant claim.

There are others, but they all boil down to rationalizations to justify their prejudices. The bottom line is that early Protestants were willfully misinformed by people they trusted, people that they were taught were as infallible as the Church sees the Pope. It started with the king of England and the Anglican schism, and proceeded apace from there.

Some of the things we have been taught or “everybody knows” about Catholics will turn your stomach. They boil children for dinner. They sacrifice “real Christian” children (meaning their preferred flavor of Protestant) so they can use the blood in religious ceremonies. Plenty of true and not so true references to The Inquisition. All kinds of ignorant nonsense has been handed down generation after generation and accepted blindly. This was mostly by design, on the part of Anglican and Protestant powers, in an effort to sway people away from Catholicism.

I grew up thinking “papist” was a curse word, because of the way I heard it used. But I must say things have improved. The other day I heard one of my Holiness preacher cousins opine in a hushed whisper that a good Catholic probably could get into heaven after all. Mirabile visu!

 

[SteveVH]

Viewpoint from another angle – I grew up in an fundamentalist holiness church, became a bit of a bible scholar out of self defense, abandoned that church as soon as I was old enough to know better, joined the wave of atheism that was trendy at the time. Now I am pushing 60 and realize that I know very little about anything.

I also dated a Catholic girl, to the expressed horror of both our families, so perhaps I had a better view of this up close. First I should say that the Catholic family was more tolerant and eventually accepted me, I think always with a conviction that I would convert eventually.

Personally I can get along with Catholicism far better than with fundamentalism. At least priests tend to actually read the Bible and try to understand it before they get up to talk about it publicly. A lot of what goes on in fundamentalism is somebody echoing something that somebody said, who was echoing something from somebody before him, and so on, ad nauseum.

There is a lot of misinformation about Catholics floating around. The number one complaint is that Catholics are not Christians because they pray to the Virgin Mary (or saints, take your pick) instead of Jesus/God. With all the Hail Marys everybody has heard from a distance or in the movies, I can understand their error. They know little else about Catholicism, except that it is bad for some nebulous reason, and there are censers and robes involved.

I have heard people refer to the practice of praying to saints, relics, statues or other depictions of saints or Mary, what have you, as a form of Idolatry – a very big no-no in fundamentalist thought.

The Pope is the Antichrist, a particularly ignorant claim.

There are others, but they all boil down to rationalizations to justify their prejudices. The bottom line is that early Protestants were willfully misinformed by people they trusted, people that they were taught were as infallible as the Church sees the Pope. It started with the king of England and the Anglican schism, and proceeded apace from there.

Some of the things we have been taught or “everybody knows” about Catholics will turn your stomach. They boil children for dinner. They sacrifice “real Christian” children (meaning their preferred flavor of Protestant) so they can use the blood in religious ceremonies. Plenty of true and not so true references to The Inquisition. All kinds of ignorant nonsense has been handed down generation after generation and accepted blindly. This was mostly by design, on the part of Anglican and Protestant powers, in an effort to sway people away from Catholicism.

I grew up thinking “papist” was a curse word, because of the way I heard it used. But I must say things have improved. The other day I heard one of my Holiness preacher cousins opine in a hushed whisper that a good Catholic probably could get into heaven after all. Mirabile visu!

Great post! Welcome to CAF.

 

[spina1953]

Viewpoint from another angle – I grew up in an fundamentalist holiness church, became a bit of a bible scholar out of self defense, abandoned that church as soon as I was old enough to know better, joined the wave of atheism that was trendy at the time. Now I am pushing 60 and realize that I know very little about anything.

I also dated a Catholic girl, to the expressed horror of both our families, so perhaps I had a better view of this up close. First I should say that the Catholic family was more tolerant and eventually accepted me, I think always with a conviction that I would convert eventually.

Personally I can get along with Catholicism far better than with fundamentalism. At least priests tend to actually read the Bible and try to understand it before they get up to talk about it publicly. A lot of what goes on in fundamentalism is somebody echoing something that somebody said, who was echoing something from somebody before him, and so on, ad nauseum.

There is a lot of misinformation about Catholics floating around. The number one complaint is that Catholics are not Christians because they pray to the Virgin Mary (or saints, take your pick) instead of Jesus/God. With all the Hail Marys everybody has heard from a distance or in the movies, I can understand their error. They know little else about Catholicism, except that it is bad for some nebulous reason, and there are censers and robes involved.

I have heard people refer to the practice of praying to saints, relics, statues or other depictions of saints or Mary, what have you, as a form of Idolatry – a very big no-no in fundamentalist thought.

The Pope is the Antichrist, a particularly ignorant claim.

There are others, but they all boil down to rationalizations to justify their prejudices. The bottom line is that early Protestants were willfully misinformed by people they trusted, people that they were taught were as infallible as the Church sees the Pope. It started with the king of England and the Anglican schism, and proceeded apace from there.

Some of the things we have been taught or “everybody knows” about Catholics will turn your stomach. They boil children for dinner. They sacrifice “real Christian” children (meaning their preferred flavor of Protestant) so they can use the blood in religious ceremonies. Plenty of true and not so true references to The Inquisition. All kinds of ignorant nonsense has been handed down generation after generation and accepted blindly. This was mostly by design, on the part of Anglican and Protestant powers, in an effort to sway people away from Catholicism.

I grew up thinking “papist” was a curse word, because of the way I heard it used. But I must say things have improved. The other day I heard one of my Holiness preacher cousins opine in a hushed whisper that a good Catholic probably could get into heaven after all. Mirabile visu!

 

[spina1953]

Viewpoint from another angle – I grew up in an fundamentalist holiness church, became a bit of a bible scholar out of self defense, abandoned that church as soon as I was old enough to know better, joined the wave of atheism that was trendy at the time. Now I am pushing 60 and realize that I know very little about anything.

I also dated a Catholic girl, to the expressed horror of both our families, so perhaps I had a better view of this up close. First I should say that the Catholic family was more tolerant and eventually accepted me, I think always with a conviction that I would convert eventually.

Personally I can get along with Catholicism far better than with fundamentalism. At least priests tend to actually read the Bible and try to understand it before they get up to talk about it publicly. A lot of what goes on in fundamentalism is somebody echoing something that somebody said, who was echoing something from somebody before him, and so on, ad nauseum.

There is a lot of misinformation about Catholics floating around. The number one complaint is that Catholics are not Christians because they pray to the Virgin Mary (or saints, take your pick) instead of Jesus/God. With all the Hail Marys everybody has heard from a distance or in the movies, I can understand their error. They know little else about Catholicism, except that it is bad for some nebulous reason, and there are censers and robes involved.

I have heard people refer to the practice of praying to saints, relics, statues or other depictions of saints or Mary, what have you, as a form of Idolatry – a very big no-no in fundamentalist thought.

The Pope is the Antichrist, a particularly ignorant claim.

There are others, but they all boil down to rationalizations to justify their prejudices. The bottom line is that early Protestants were willfully misinformed by people they trusted, people that they were taught were as infallible as the Church sees the Pope. It started with the king of England and the Anglican schism, and proceeded apace from there.

Some of the things we have been taught or “everybody knows” about Catholics will turn your stomach. They boil children for dinner. They sacrifice “real Christian” children (meaning their preferred flavor of Protestant) so they can use the blood in religious ceremonies. Plenty of true and not so true references to The Inquisition. All kinds of ignorant nonsense has been handed down generation after generation and accepted blindly. This was mostly by design, on the part of Anglican and Protestant powers, in an effort to sway people away from Catholicism.

I grew up thinking “papist” was a curse word, because of the way I heard it used. But I must say things have improved. The other day I heard one of my Holiness preacher cousins opine in a hushed whisper that a good Catholic probably could get into heaven after all. Mirabile visu!

Hi Hogwaump: Great post and welcome to CAF!

 

[Hogwaump]

Thanks, all.

I forgot my favorite bit of amazing ignorance: “real Christians” hate Catholics because they killed Jesus. I suspect it is because some of the same hate speech has been said about Jews.

 

[spina1953]

Thanks, all.

I forgot my favorite bit of amazing ignorance: “real Christians” hate Catholics because they killed Jesus. I suspect it is because some of the same hate speech has been said about Jews.

Hi Hogwaump: I had not heard that one before.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I’m sure many of you have had some of the same experiences I have regarding many Protestants. I’m not sure what it is that makes them so hateful, judgmental, and rude towards Catholics. What is it? I feel that a lot of it is ignorance about who we really are, but what is their reasoning for their opinions?

Fulton Sheen commented on this phenomenon this way:

"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing. These millions can hardly be blamed for hating Catholics because Catholics “adore statues;” because they “put the Blessed Mother on the same level with God;” because they “say indulgence is a permission to commit sin;” because the Pope “is a Fascist;” because the Church “is the defender of Capitalism.” If the Church taught or believed any one of these things, it should be hated, but the fact is that the Church does not believe nor teach any one of them. It follows then that the hatred of the millions is directed against error and not against truth. As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do.

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned.

Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because he called Himself the Truth.

Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is other-worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. … the Catholic Church is the only Church existing today which goes back to the time of Christ. History is so very clear on this point, it is curious how many miss its obviousness…"

–Bishop Fulton Sheen

 

[Hogwaump]

Hi Hogwaump: I had not heard that one before.

Possibly you did not grow up in the heart of fundamentalism, the deep dark booger-woods of Appalachia? When simple folks start hating things they tend to all run together, I think. I’m not saying this of all fundamentalists but among the most willfully ignorant of them it seems they make little distinction between Jews and Catholics. It’s a lot easier to just hate them both collectively.