Why is the South So Hostile to Catholicism?

[JPUSC]

“Does going on Friday count toward your Sunday obligation?” No. “Giggle.”

Hahahaha. I remember getting confused when some Protestants I know said they were going to “worship” on a weekday.

I was like, “Oh, so does that count for Sunday?”

They were like, “Huh?”

I asked, “Don’t you have to attend services on Sunday?”

They replied, “No, we’re not required to do anything”.

And I was like, “Doesn’t the Bible say to keep the Sabbath?”

I forgot the rest…

 

[Disciple96]

Hahahaha. I remember getting confused when some Protestants I know said they were going to “worship” on a weekday.

I was like, “Oh, so does that count for Sunday?”

They were like, “Huh?”

I asked, “Don’t you have to attend services on Sunday?”

They replied, “No, we’re not required to do anything”.

And I was like, “Doesn’t the Bible say to keep the Sabbath?”

I forgot the rest…

Heh heh. That made me giggle. It reminded me of a time when we were talking about salvation–But that’s OT and I’ll save it for another time. Or another thread. Or another thread at another time.

 

[jeanne71350]

Why is the US South so hostile to Catholicism? In the area I live in, not particularly rural, and yet not quite a suburb either, there are at least 250 Protestant churches within 20 square miles… the King James Only anti-Catholic types make up roughly 80% of these. I know of three Episcopalian churches, one large Lutheran group and two Catholic parishes, one of which is fairly large…
Now, all of these churches seem to do alot of advertising, except for the Catholic ones… even one of the Episcopalian churches, based in someone’s house, puts out news paper ads. Not so with the Catholic churches. The only advertising they do is the sign in front of the church. The JWs and Mormons are fond of coming to everyone’s door about once a month, as are some of the Baptists. And yet the Catholics do nothing. One of the Baptist churches is practically a small city, with churches, support groups, a gym, youth groups, a park and pretty much everything you can imagine. The Catholic church is around the same size as this one, and yet the Baptist church puts out bill boards and any other type of ad you could imagine, attracting a large ammount of people…
So why don’t the Catholics do more advertising, and, as the title of this topic, why is Catholicism so small in the South? It seems most people are hostile to it, sadly.

Catholicism is not small in the South. I can tell you I live in South Louisiana and practically everyone here is Catholic. It’s part of our culture.

-Jeanne

 

[Disciple96]

Well, I can tell you that in places that were not settled by the Spanish or the French, the Catholic population is relatively small. I’m surrounded by non-Catholics. Baptist and Methodist and other churches on every corner. Catholic churches? I couldn’t have told you where any of them were before I converted. If you look in our phone book, you’ll see that there are Catholic churches in the cities and surrounding counties, but they are vastly outnumbered by the non-Catholic denominations. Vastly!

Louisiana and Texas have cultures very different from Alabama. This I know from experience. Here we have been shaped more by Protestant influence. Except for Mobile and probably the German Catholics in Cullman.

 

[msugeotech]

Yeah, but once you get north of I-20 it’s pretty much Protestant. Still a lot of French influence in South Louisiana is it not?

Catholicism is not small in the South. I can tell you I live in South Louisiana and practically everyone here is Catholic. It’s part of our culture.

-Jeanne

 

[jeanne71350]

Yeah, but once you get north of I-20 it’s pretty much Protestant. Still a lot of French influence in South Louisiana is it not?

Yes very much. In New Orleans, there is St. Louis Cathedrial which from my Lousiana History classes, I learned is the oldest still operational church parish in the US. There’s a book somebody wrote about South Louisiana called “Who’s Your Mama, Are you Catholic, and Can you make a Roux?”

-Jeanne

 

[msugeotech]

I “think” I have a cousin (kinda distant) that’s getting married there this fall. Hope I get an invite! The book sounds good - I bet it’s hilarious.

Yes very much. In New Orleans, there is St. Louis Cathedrial which from my Lousiana History classes, I learned is the oldest still operational church parish in the US. There’s a book somebody wrote about South Louisiana called “Who’s Your Mama, Are you Catholic, and Can you make a Roux?”

-Jeanne

 

[jeanne71350]

I “think” I have a cousin (kinda distant) that’s getting married there this fall. Hope I get an invite! The book sounds good - I bet it’s hilarious.

It’s a beautiful Church. It makes me feel like I’m in France. I love going to Mass there. What’s kind of odd is right outside of St. Louis, there are fortune tellers, people selling occult remedies, and all kinds of stuff like that.

I think that book is a Cajun cookbook.

-Jeanne

 

[Incomplete]

On the question of why Catholic churches are not more evangelical I am in agreement with your wonder about it. They simply aren’t very aggressive about bringing people into the fold. The RCIA paradigm is a huge entry barrier, too, especially compared to the welcoming ease that happens in Protestantism where you simply have to walk down the aisle and profess your faith at any given time. This contrast in welcoming practices and various focus on evangelism explains our difficulty to a large degree. The Catholic conversion and welcoming model is simply a vastly different bird than the Protestant one, for better or worse. We do need to work harder at getting people in RCIA and keeping them there, this is true.

I don’t really have a problem with RCIA being required. To become Catholic is to agree to the teachings of the Church. That makes us quite a bit different from Protestant denominations.

I have more of a complaint with the number of poor RCIA programs, as well as the poor CCD classes. Too many leave the Church not really understanding it.

A close friend of mine who is Protestant complains that most of her Catholic friends can’t answer basic questions she asks us about Catholicism. She has a good point. Most (at least in the area I live in) have not been taught well at all.

At the same time, when I asked her about the teachings of her Church, I learned there aren’t many clear teachings. You’ll find a wide diversity of beliefs among members of the church she belongs to. The believe in the divinity of Jesus, and Bible alone, but I’m not sure there is really any other commonality. It becomes more of a choice of worship style preference than teachings. It makes it much easier to enlarge your congregation this way, but it doesn’t lead to truth.

I also agree that it would be good to be more evangelical, though not necessarily as aggressive about it as some churches are. I’m not a big fan of door-to-door, but I’m a huge fan of letting your love for God and the Church shine through in everything you do.

 

[musicality]

Walk into a Baptist Church & tell the Minister you want to become Baptist.

“HALLELUJAH BROTHER! Welcome to our Church! Lets go do an alter call! Praise be to God!”

Walk into a Catholic Church, tell the Priest you want to become Catholic.

“Well you need to go thru RCIA. That starts in September, takes 9 months. Many times longer. Oh, you’re divorced? You’ll need an annulment. That will take several years. And your children? They need to enroll in our classes when they’re 7 years old. Until they’re 16, and then they’ll be Confirmed.”

I think that this is the biggest reason that the Church fails to attract new young members as well as Prostestant churches. The second biggest reason in my experience is the public hypocrisy that many young devout protestants see in the leaders of the Church, and the parishioners.
I wish I knew what to do about it…

 

[mystagogia]

I think that this is the biggest reason that the Church fails to attract new young members as well as Prostestant churches. The second biggest reason in my experience is the public hypocrisy that many young devout protestants see in the leaders of the Church, and the parishioners.
I wish I knew what to do about it…

Yeah, there are troubling entry barriers to the Catholic Church. This despite Christ’s own admonition that you should never, ever, in any circumstance, become a stumbling block to a child coming to God.

On the other hand RCIA and other impediments to joining the Catholic Church have good grounding on why they are necessary.

We are charged to be proactive and to be aggressive at spreading the gospel, we need to teach the Word to the World. It is an essential component of our role.

So the challenge laid at our feet is the care we take for new members. We’ve simply got to do much better with getting folks into RCIA, and with keeping them in there, and with working with them once they finish.

Got to. It’s imperative. For each one of us.

 

[Disciple96]

Well, we’re drifting from the topic, but I just want to say that instruction in the faith is not an impediment to becoming Catholic. I think a real obstacle to becoming Catholic would be the refusal of instruction or settling for poor instruction and not bothering to find or to demand better. The RCIA is not the only way one can become Catholic, but I definitely agree that it needs some serious work. What I’ve seen over the years has been pathetic.

Back to the topic. The South, where I’ve lived for nearly half a century (plus a few years in another part of the country), is not as hostile as it once was…mainly because it isn’t as Christian as it once was. The Protestant stronghold has weakened, you can see it and feel it. The culture is more and more secular and less and less Protestant Christian. There are still gigantic Baptist churches and some sprawling Methodist ones too, and the non-denominational churches are growing by leaps and bounds. But it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish any of them from their secular surroundings, and I’m referring both to the buildings and to the assemblies of people within.

When the region was stronger in its Protestantism, folks would notice my crucifix and pounce on me. Or they’d see me reading my Catholic Bible or studying my Catechism and then they’d pounce. Or they’d see me make the Sign of the Cross and then they’d pounce. Now they barely notice. Because they’ve gotten used to it? Because they’ve grown more tolerant? Perhaps in a few cases, but mostly it’s because they’ve grown more indifferent. And indifference is not tolerance.

The South ain’t what she used to be. In some ways, of course, that’s a wonderful thing. We needed to change. But we didn’t need to become lukewarm. The Catholic Church here (in the South in general) is still in the minority, but it is growing. We get a lot of Methodist and Baptist converts and from other churches too. More of more of us are hearing the call and finding our way home.

 

[Sara_Marie]

I watched a History Channel special once on the KKK. The show said that at one time Catholics were targeted by the Klan, along with the other groups that traditionally come to mind when one hears “KKK.” I’m a Catholic from birth who lives in the South and had never heard any such thing. I asked my DH, who is a Southern Baptist, and he affirmed that the KKK was strongly against the Catholic Church in the past.

He told me that when he was a child he rememember Southern Baptist preachers speaking against Catholicism. I’ve attended a handful of serivces (just so see what it’s like, and no thanks!) and now the preachers seem to talk about Buddhists and Hinduists needing to be saved.

 

[Walden]

I watched a History Channel special once on the KKK. The show said that at one time Catholics were targeted by the Klan, along with the other groups that traditionally come to mind when one hears “KKK.” I’m a Catholic from birth who lives in the South and had never heard any such thing. I asked my DH, who is a Southern Baptist, and he affirmed that the KKK was strongly against the Catholic Church in the past.

He told me that when he was a child he rememember Southern Baptist preachers speaking against Catholicism. I’ve attended a handful of serivces (just so see what it’s like, and no thanks!) and now the preachers seem to talk about Buddhists and Hinduists needing to be saved.

fathercoyle.org/Father James E. Coyle. Check his memorial site out. He was a victim of Klan violence. Thank God this stuff has (mostly) disappeared.

 

[ccolley2]

Why is the US South so hostile to Catholicism? In the area I live in, not particularly rural, and yet not quite a suburb either, there are at least 250 Protestant churches within 20 square miles… the King James Only anti-Catholic types make up roughly 80% of these. I know of three Episcopalian churches, one large Lutheran group and two Catholic parishes, one of which is fairly large…
Now, all of these churches seem to do alot of advertising, except for the Catholic ones… even one of the Episcopalian churches, based in someone’s house, puts out news paper ads. Not so with the Catholic churches. The only advertising they do is the sign in front of the church. The JWs and Mormons are fond of coming to everyone’s door about once a month, as are some of the Baptists. And yet the Catholics do nothing. One of the Baptist churches is practically a small city, with churches, support groups, a gym, youth groups, a park and pretty much everything you can imagine. The Catholic church is around the same size as this one, and yet the Baptist church puts out bill boards and any other type of ad you could imagine, attracting a large ammount of people…
So why don’t the Catholics do more advertising, and, as the title of this topic, why is Catholicism so small in the South? It seems most people are hostile to it, sadly.

Hi!
I think it was Fulton Sheen who once said that “There are not 10 people who hate the Catholic church for what it really is but there are millions who hate it for what they think it is…” He also said that the Catholic Faith is like a caged lion…all you have to do is open the cage door". I always try to keep those things in mind when talking to people of other faiths.

We tend to think of evangelization as something that someone ELSE does…but the truth is that all Catholics have a calling to evangelize. How often do we tell people that we ARE Catholic? How open are we to answering questions about our faith? Do we really have a clear understanding of what the Church Teaches?? If we do then why not let the lion out of the cage…if we don’t, then we need to find out what the church teaches so that we CAN clearly point out the misunderstandings that people of other faiths have about our faith. I am a convert, so I have heard all the misconceptions…most of my family members are NOT Catholic. I have let then know that if they have questions about why Catholics do certain things then they can always ask me. I then give them a clear, simple explanation…ie…Why do Catholics worship Mary? Simple answer…we don’t! We worship God alone…however, we venerate or honor Mary because of her role in salvation history and the fact that she is a great Christian role model. It also helps if you can back up your facts with scripture. As one Catholic apologist(John Martignoni put it…there is nothing contrary to scripture in the Catholic faith, and there is nothing in the Catholic faith that is contrary to Scripture.
CC:thumbsup:

 

[Disciple96]

I watched a History Channel special once on the KKK. The show said that at one time Catholics were targeted by the Klan, along with the other groups that traditionally come to mind when one hears “KKK.” I’m a Catholic from birth who lives in the South and had never heard any such thing. I asked my DH, who is a Southern Baptist, and he affirmed that the KKK was strongly against the Catholic Church in the past.

He told me that when he was a child he rememember Southern Baptist preachers speaking against Catholicism. I’ve attended a handful of serivces (just so see what it’s like, and no thanks!) and now the preachers seem to talk about Buddhists and Hinduists needing to be saved.

I’m assuming you must be from a younger generation than I am. The KKK would have to hate the Catholic Church, since the KKK wanted to keep slavery and the Catholic Church denounced it back in, I believe, the 1400’s and said that anyone participating in such an atrocity would be excommunicated. I can’t imagine that the Klan has become enamored of the Church now.

And I know Baptist preachers still preach against the Church. I’ve attended Mass at a parish where we’ve often had visitors from the Baptist congregation down the street. They came to see what things were really like, ie, were we really worshiping Mary and were we really cannibals? One couple I talked with loved what (or Who) they found (that’d be Christ), loved the sense of community, and left with a stack of books and tapes and the assurance they’d be back. I think they joined the RCIA soon afterward. I don’t go to that parish any more, it’s way across town, but I know they kept getting new members from the church down the street.

Guess all those books and tapes by Scott Hahn in the little glass cabinet in the vestibule helped, huh? The priest there had all of his catechists studying Scott’s work and teaching from it and the Catechism. My kinda priest!

 

[Disciple96]

fathercoyle.org/Father James E. Coyle. Check his memorial site out. He was a victim of Klan violence. Thank God this stuff has (mostly) disappeared.

He was shot on the front steps down at the Cathedral of St. Paul, wasn’t he? I missed most of the mayhem here in the Magic City when I was a kid in the 60’s; I saw it on TV but I wasn’t in it. May we have real peace here one day and live as brothers and sisters. Lord, hear our prayer.

 

[Disciple96]

Hi!
I think it was Fulton Sheen who once said that “There are not 10 people who hate the Catholic church for what it really is but there are millions who hate it for what they think it is…” He also said that the Catholic Faith is like a caged lion…all you have to do is open the cage door". I always try to keep those things in mind when talking to people of other faiths.

We tend to think of evangelization as something that someone ELSE does…but the truth is that all Catholics have a calling to evangelize. How often do we tell people that we ARE Catholic? How open are we to answering questions about our faith? Do we really have a clear understanding of what the Church Teaches?? If we do then why not let the lion out of the cage…if we don’t, then we need to find out what the church teaches so that we CAN clearly point out the misunderstandings that people of other faiths have about our faith.

I have to admit…I’m an evangelist/apologist who is generally raring to let loose. I love to talk about the faith and my crucifix and babyfeet pins are easy enough to see, I bless my food before I eat and I make the Sign of the Cross in restaurants. I’m always reading Catholic books (including my Bible which is The Catholic Book). I’ve got Catholic art on my laptop and screensaver. I’ve got Catholic books on my dash, rosaries hanging from my rearview mirror, an EWTN magnetic sign on my bumper…

I’m bettin’ most people don’t have any doubt that I’m a Catholic. I do talk about it and I do share what the Church teaches. I’ve made it my business to know and I’m constantly learning more and going deeper into her doctrines. I’ve had people tell me that I’m the only Catholic they know who has been willing to talk to them about the Church. And this is from people around the country, not just here. We really do need to wake up and speak out. People are hungry, and if they’re not getting fed, we need to feed them!

 

[ccolley2]

Hi!
As one Catholic apologist(John Martignoni put it…there is nothing contrary to scripture in the Catholic faith, and there is nothing in the Catholic faith that is contrary to Scripture.
CC:thumbsup:

OOPS! I misquoted Mr. Martignoni. I meant to say…There is nothing in the Catholic faith that is contrary to Scripture and there is nothing in Scripture that is contrary to the Catholic Faith. That’s what I get for not reading the reply before I post it.
CC

 

[Lemonpoptart]

I am a Southern, born and bred, and I am a Catholic. The only Catholics I’m hostile to is my kids if they don’t do their chores

Admittedly, I am a convert. And some of my family seems to think I’ve joined a cult… you know, since we “pray to statues” and all that. rolls eyes

Most of my neighbors are baptists. Some are “cooler” about it than others. But, I’ve not met one yet who has treated me hostilely for being a Catholic. Yet.