Why Is Catholicism So Unattractive to Evangelicals?

[AbideWithMe]

So which is it? Is the Catholic Church correct and the pope is the vicar of Christ?

Or is he not the vicar of Christ.

There are only 2 options here.

The Pope used to be called, by the CC, the vicar of Peter, rather than the vicar of Christ, so that’s at least 3 options; plus “a vicar of Christ” and “conditionally a vicar of Christ” are two more possible options.

 

[PRmerger]

The Pope used to be called, by the CC, the vicar of Peter, rather than the vicar of Christ, so that’s at least 3 options; plus “a vicar of Christ” and “conditionally a vicar of Christ” are two more possible options.

No AWM.

What he was called is irrelevant. What he was, his office, his position, his authority, has remained the same.

So either he IS the Vicar of Peter, Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father, the Supreme Pontiff…

or he is not.

Both cannot be true, no matter what the nomenclature.

 

[PRmerger]

I And, as I stated before, I came to CAF after several years on a smaller, lovely, mostly-Catholic forum where we all genuinely got along well.

Did you discuss doctrine?

So did you talk about divorce and re-marriage? No salvation outside the Church? Contraception? Women’s ordination?

 

[AbideWithMe]

Did you discuss doctrine?

So did you talk about divorce and re-marriage? No salvation outside the Church? Contraception? Women’s ordination?

Yes, we did discuss doctrine.

 

[AbideWithMe]

No AWM.

What he was called is irrelevant. What he was, his office, his position, his authority, has remained the same.

So either he IS the Vicar of Peter, Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father, the Supreme Pontiff…

or he is not.

Both cannot be true, no matter what the nomenclature.

Well, yes, the name does make a difference. Is Peter exactly equivalent to Christ Himself? When Paul rebuked Peter over withdrawing from eating with Gentile church members, was he actually rebuking Christ Himself?

 

[PRmerger]

Well, yes, the name does make a difference. Is Peter exactly equivalent to Christ Himself? When Paul rebuked Peter over withdrawing from eating with Gentile church members, was he actually rebuking Christ Himself?

Ok…so do you believe that this Holy Father, Pope Francis, is the Vicar of Peter?

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, we did discuss doctrine.

And what happened when a Catholic offered apologia for the Church’s teaching that divorce and re-marriage is adultery, or saying that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, or saying that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ?

 

[AbideWithMe]

And what happened when a Catholic offered apologia for the Church’s teaching that divorce and re-marriage is adultery, or saying that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, or saying that the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Christ?

We discussed things with respect, affection, and humor. As one of the few non-Catholics there, I usually let the Catholics discuss their differences among themselves.

 

[AbideWithMe]

Ok…so do you believe that this Holy Father, Pope Francis, is the Vicar of Peter?

I don’t know. I was just trying to point out that there were more than the two choices you were offering. Till the 8th century, IIRC, you would have offered “The Pope is the vicar of Peter or not the vicar of Peter” as two choices, but you wouldn’t have offered the statement that “The Pope is the vicar of Christ”.

 

[FollowChrist34]

Suppose that Morton Downey Jr. was German (I’m pretty sure he really wasn’t, of course). If so, does it follow that his show would have a great impact on your opinion of Germans? Probably not, if you’re TV-savvy.

I think about the internet much the same way I think about TV. There are tons – yes, tons – of posts-by-Catholics on the internet that are awful IMO. Do they bother me? Well, yes, but mostly because other people (often well-meaning) give power to them by supporting them (e.g. quoting them, responding to them, and some cases actually praising the authors for being “such good Catholics” or whatever). But if someone has a really awful (let’s say) blog about Catholicism (or Evangelicalism or whatever) that nobody goes to, then he/she has little power, no?

Ok - I agree on this. I personally don’t read blogs just for this reason. Ignorance is bliss. CAF is the only religious internet thing I do except for mainstream Catholic news feeds and websites. Just to avoid what you are talking about.

My basic point still stands though (at least for me) - I think we each have a responsibility to charity especially when representing our Christian faith to a nonChristian or a Christian of another denomination. I don’t take much comfort in the fact that no one is reading the thread or nobody cares because they are too savvy to think I am a “real” Catholic. If one little one stumbles due to my offense…right? (I’ve been sharp more than once - that’s ok if it is focused on the subject at hand or humor and not ad hominem attacking - if you do slip up, apologize, clarify, whatever it takes - my goal is not fake Pollyanna posts. I take offense sometimes where none was intended.)

Besides, I am speaking in part from personal experience - not Internet stuff. I volunteered at a Lutheran food bank (in my neighborhood). Most people were great (one ex-Irish Catholic ). But a few were pretty anti Roman Catholic (Benedict was anti gay, etc.). It did make an impact and was actually part of why I quit. My last volunteer partner was quite hostile (and left me on my own without notice for several very busy shifts). I got over it and still love my Luther, but it presented a challenge. If you can avoid being negative, I would say do it. (And, yes, I realized that he was not being a good Lutheran…)

 

[St_Pancake]

Can you list what these few churches are, plus your source?

And can you make sure that this list includes this church:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=20805&d=1411060938

As well as this church:

http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/1344975466-storefrontchurch-01-528x427.jpg
.
They are not related. They don’t have any central authority. They can teach what they want. They are independent churches.

So make sure you count them in your list.

And all churches that are independent and answer to no one else save their pastor who started this church.

Thanks.

Yet another good example of what makes the Catholic Church Unattractive.

 

[FollowChrist34]

But I also try to stand back and realize the fluctuating nature of my assessments, and, seeing the bigger picture, ultimately realize the importance of reserving judgment, and reserving judgment, and reserving judgment again and again, 99 times out of 100.

I presume Catholics on CAF, even those with whom you disagree, receive the benefits of this wisdom and patience (with which I concur 100%). Such as myself?

Tolkien, First Things magazine, Il Divino Michelangelo’s pietistic devotion (I’m a professional sculptor so he’s one of my heroes), Merton, John Michael Talbot, Julian of Norwich, St. Teresa de Avila, St. Juan de La Cruz, St. Francis of Assisi—that’s how I used to think of Catholicism. And then I met you guys…

I find it sad that Jesus Christ and the Gospel didn’t make this list. I hope the Catholic Church isn’t just a cool, positive, peace-loving alternative to Goth. Seriously, I am totally with you on most of this if not all. I would list the Bible first (…and all that it entails). Try Richard Rolle too - Augustine, Aquinas, St. John of the Cross. Merton I can take in small doses - one of two paragraphs a day is about right. The Seven-Story Mountain just about killed me…who knew Buddhist monasticism could be so smug…?

 

[St_Pancake]

The reason that more Evangelicals and protestants haven’t converted to the Catholic Church is because their current beliefs haven’t been insulted enough yet.

 

[Peter_J]

Ok - I agree on this. I personally don’t read blogs just for this reason. Ignorance is bliss. CAF is the only religious internet thing I do except for mainstream Catholic news feeds and websites. Just to avoid what you are talking about.

My basic point still stands though (at least for me) - I think we each have a responsibility to charity especially when representing our Christian faith to a nonChristian or a Christian of another denomination. I don’t take much comfort in the fact that no one is reading the thread or nobody cares because they are too savvy to think I am a “real” Catholic. If one little one stumbles due to my offense…right? (I’ve been sharp more than once - that’s ok if it is focused on the subject at hand or humor and not ad hominem attacking - if you do slip up, apologize, clarify, whatever it takes - my goal is not fake Pollyanna posts. I take offense sometimes where none was intended.)

Besides, I am speaking in part from personal experience - not Internet stuff. I volunteered at a Lutheran food bank (in my neighborhood). Most people were great (one ex-Irish Catholic ). But a few were pretty anti Roman Catholic (Benedict was anti gay, etc.). It did make an impact and was actually part of why I quit. My last volunteer partner was quite hostile (and left me on my own without notice for several very busy shifts). I got over it and still love my Luther, but it presented a challenge. If you can avoid being negative, I would say do it. (And, yes, I realized that he was not being a good Lutheran…)

Oh I agree with all you say there. It seems to me that point was different than, but not contradictory to, your point.

 

[Tomyris]

Yet another good example of what makes the Catholic Church Unattractive.

I don’t think that my reaction to these pictures of impoverished churches is what was intended by the poster.

My first reaction is that here is more Catholic contempt for non-Catholic churches: we have the Vatican, you have a steel door church. We have wealth, you have poverty. We have it together, you are impoverished scum, which is the viewpoint commonly expressed by many Catholics. Spiritual pride runs deep in those waters, and Protestants are finely attuned to tasting it from Catholics. It is expected and this just confirms that here it is again. It does not tell me of the disunity of the Protestant world as much as it does of the contempt Catholics have for Protestants.

Why is Catholicism so unattractive to Evangelicals? History. The attitude towards Protestants. Rome and Milan and Naples are notoriously dangerous cities in the Catholic heartland. The recent Irish church scandals, which is probably why Ireland recently voted against Catholic positions on issues. Salvation by works as expressed by Catholics, and downright ridicule of Protestant beliefs. For example, the common cliche around here that in Calvinism we are only robots, or that Luther was simply a mad monk. There is a dearth of charity and an overemphasis on authority and submission: Catholics are overly fond, it seems to us, of words like obedience and submission, obligation and binding. Very legalistic.

There is beauty and depth in Catholicism but there is the seeming steadfast refusal for those responsible to teach to actually teach what the Church says it teaches. They will, it seems, teach anything else except that. Instead of charity we get contempt, instead of mercy judgement, and too many Catholics are interested in telling us what is wrong with what we believe and not at all interested in telling anything about what they believe. So Catholicism comes across as very, very negative.

Then there are newbie-Catholic converts who really should not be posting because they are simply so odious in their moral superiority to cradle Catholics and their intellectual superiority to Protestants in that they figured it out, in their back-patting way, that they are better than anyone else because they converted. It is absolutely disgusting but you see it many times here, and the stench lingers even with some converts who have been Catholic a long time, as if they have some guilt they are still dealing with or something so that they have to go negative on Protestants or Protestant figures in post after post and thread after thread until the Mods deal with them.

 

[Peter_J]

Ok - I agree on this. I personally don’t read blogs just for this reason.

Although we’re already in agreement here, it thinks it’s also worth tying this in with something I shared earlier in this post to TC3033 (emphasis added):

Two thoughts …

First, thank you for talking about Catholicism IRL – it’s amazing how tired I can get of people saying "Well, somebody called CatholicPerson1234 said such and such on such and such webpage, so what that tells us about Catholicism is … "

Second, fwiw, there’s a parish where I live that I now make a point not to go to, because of judgmental/triumphalistic/whatever comments that I have heard the priest (yes, the priest) make when I have been there in the past. I’ll grant you that’s rather troubling (imagine if there were, oh say, a kindergarten class where the worst behaved person in the class was the teacher ) but the thing is, that’s one parish out of about a dozen in the area, so we can hardly conclude that it is representative.

Hope this helps.

While it saddens me that even one parish in my area is like that, it also strikes me that: If instead of a parish that I’ve been to, it was a blog I found on the internet that was “like that”, it would hardly be worth giving a second thought to, because then it wouldn’t be “one out of my area” but rather “one out of the whole internet”.

But it’s not just about ratios either. If I might piggy-back a little bit, it is about taking personal responsibility, like you said.

For example, most weeks I spend a good deal of time reading what Protestants say on the CA forums … but I’m not really interested in reading what Protestant say on Protestant forums (and I’m talking about good forums, not really bad ones like CARM) because, quite frankly, I don’t think very much of that stuff is worth reading. I realize I’m showing my own bias here, but I tend to think that the “cream of the crop” of Protestant posting can be found on places like CAF.

I don’t want to go too far off-track with that example, but in terms of personal responsibility the point is this: I can’t control what others post on the internet, but I can control what I choose to consume. Hopefully by consuming e.g. Protestant-posts-on-CAF I am both benefiting myself and also supporting the good (and, by extension, refusing to support the bad since I’m not reading it).

 

[Peter_J]

I don’t think that my reaction to these pictures of impoverished churches is what was intended by the poster.

My first reaction is that here is more Catholic contempt for non-Catholic churches: we have the Vatican, you have a steel door church. We have wealth, you have poverty. We have it together, you are impoverished scum, which is the viewpoint commonly expressed by many Catholics. Spiritual pride runs deep in those waters, and Protestants are finely attuned to tasting it from Catholics. It is expected and this just confirms that here it is again. It does not tell me of the disunity of the Protestant world as much as it does of the contempt Catholics have for Protestants.

Why is Catholicism so unattractive to Evangelicals? History. The attitude towards Protestants. Rome and Milan and Naples are notoriously dangerous cities in the Catholic heartland. The recent Irish church scandals, which is probably why Ireland recently voted against Catholic positions on issues. Salvation by works as expressed by Catholics, and downright ridicule of Protestant beliefs. For example, the common cliche around here that in Calvinism we are only robots, or that Luther was simply a mad monk. There is a dearth of charity and an overemphasis on authority and submission: Catholics are overly fond, it seems to us, of words like obedience and submission, obligation and binding. Very legalistic.

There is beauty and depth in Catholicism but there is the seeming steadfast refusal for those responsible to teach to actually teach what the Church says it teaches. They will, it seems, teach anything else except that. Instead of charity we get contempt, instead of mercy judgement, and too many Catholics are interested in telling us what is wrong with what we believe and not at all interested in telling anything about what they believe. So Catholicism comes across as very, very negative.

Then there are newbie-Catholic converts who really should not be posting because they are simply so odious in their moral superiority to cradle Catholics and their intellectual superiority to Protestants in that they figured it out, in their back-patting way, that they are better than anyone else because they converted. It is absolutely disgusting but you see it many times here, and the stench lingers even with some converts who have been Catholic a long time, as if they have some guilt they are still dealing with or something so that they have to go negative on Protestants or Protestant figures in post after post and thread after thread until the Mods deal with them.

Without getting too much into nitty gritty, this argument turned around would be a very good explanation of something I mentioned in my last post, namely my reluctance to go to Protestant forums.

 

[Starwarsfan2]

I don’t think that my reaction to these pictures of impoverished churches is what was intended by the poster.

My first reaction is that here is more Catholic contempt for non-Catholic churches: we have the Vatican, you have a steel door church. We have wealth, you have poverty. We have it together, you are impoverished scum, which is the viewpoint commonly expressed by many Catholics. Spiritual pride runs deep in those waters, and Protestants are finely attuned to tasting it from Catholics. It is expected and this just confirms that here it is again. It does not tell me of the disunity of the Protestant world as much as it does of the contempt Catholics have for Protestants.

Why is Catholicism so unattractive to Evangelicals? History. The attitude towards Protestants. Rome and Milan and Naples are notoriously dangerous cities in the Catholic heartland. The recent Irish church scandals, which is probably why Ireland recently voted against Catholic positions on issues. Salvation by works as expressed by Catholics, and downright ridicule of Protestant beliefs. For example, the common cliche around here that in Calvinism we are only robots, or that Luther was simply a mad monk. There is a dearth of charity and an overemphasis on authority and submission: Catholics are overly fond, it seems to us, of words like obedience and submission, obligation and binding. Very legalistic.

There is beauty and depth in Catholicism but there is the seeming steadfast refusal for those responsible to teach to actually teach what the Church says it teaches. They will, it seems, teach anything else except that. Instead of charity we get contempt, instead of mercy judgement, and too many Catholics are interested in telling us what is wrong with what we believe and not at all interested in telling anything about what they believe. So Catholicism comes across as very, very negative.

Then there are newbie-Catholic converts who really should not be posting because they are simply so odious in their moral superiority to cradle Catholics and their intellectual superiority to Protestants in that they figured it out, in their back-patting way, that they are better than anyone else because they converted. It is absolutely disgusting but you see it many times here, and the stench lingers even with some converts who have been Catholic a long time, as if they have some guilt they are still dealing with or something so that they have to go negative on Protestants or Protestant figures in post after post and thread after thread until the Mods deal with them.

good explanation, we should forgive them, however many are not like that, and newbies should be posting.

 

[AbideWithMe]

Without getting too much into nitty gritty, this argument turned around would be a very good explanation of something I mentioned in my last post, namely my reluctance to go to Protestant forums.

I can understand that perspective by use of my imagination to be compassionate (IOW to imaginatively speculate that some of us appear just as snotty to Catholics as some of you do to us) but, as a lifelong Evangelical of pretty wide experience, it still feels to me that are larger number of Catholics are way more holier-than-thou towards Evangelicals than most of us (particularly those under about 50 years old) are in reverse.

A person wearing shoes doesn’t realize the pain he/she is causing to the one whose toes are being squashed/sacred boundaries are being trespassed. That works both ways.

 

[Michael68]

Without getting too much into nitty gritty, this argument turned around would be a very good explanation of something I mentioned in my last post, namely my reluctance to go to Protestant forums.

You’re not missing much. Their forums are terrible to Catholics, imo