Why is the South So Hostile to Catholicism?

[pipper]

I call 'em “Six Flags over Jesus”

Seriously though, the trend now is to drop the denominational title and loosen up on the theology to get butts in the seats.

Yep they are now calling themselves “Non-denominational” and to that I say nonsense, they are usually very sectarian, usually Baptist or Pentecostal which are both denominations.

Personally before I converted I was a member of a church that called itself THE church of Christ, and beleive me they were as denominational as you can be, they actually belive they are the only Christians in the only church, everyone esle just pretends to be Christians.

Maybe, just maybe since we are Southeners here, some one has actually heard of them. In other parts of CAF everybody draws a blank, no one can beilive how bad they truly are, but fellow southeners know. I have been there and done that.

 

[Walden]

Yep they are now calling themselves “Non-denominational” and to that I say nonsense, they are usually very sectarian, usually Baptist or Pentecostal which are both denominations.

Personally before I converted I was a member of a church that called itself THE church of Christ, and beleive me they were as denominational as you can be, they actually belive they are the only Christians in the only church, everyone esle just pretends to be Christians.

Maybe, just maybe since we are Southeners here, some one has actually heard of them. In other parts of CAF everybody draws a blank, no one can beilive how bad they truly are, but fellow southeners know. I have been there and done that.

Ahhh yes…the “no instruments during worship” group. I, in fact, go to a Church of Christ affiliated school. Since I’m in a graduate program, I’m not obligated to go to their “chapel” program. It’s funny that you mention them because I always thought they were pretty staunch in their particular theology, but there is a Church of Christ in town that dropped the name and turned into a megachurch. They even have gasp a praise band.

The more conservative ones will even look sideways at a CoC across town. I might be wrong, but don’t they rebaptize you no matter where you came from?

They’re big in northwest Alabama in particular.

I’m familiar.

 

[pipper]

Yes they are big in Alabama, kentucky, and especially in Tennesee, Nashville in particular, even tho they claim to have benn founded in Jerusalem 33 AD. There is no trace of their existence until 1906 when they were started by dissadent members of the Disciples of Christ, beleive it or not they went into schism over such “earth shattering” issues as missionary societies, organs in worship, and calling the preachers “Reverend”, they thought those things were “unscriptural”. Even they call us idolators, it is they who are idolators, for they worship the bible as God. During my “cofc” upbringing the preacher would routinely call the bible “God” in his sermons. AS soon as I got away from my parent’s strangle hold on me, I abandoned the “church of Christ” for the real church of Christ, a church that worships God instead of a human written book.

It is true that the campbellites routinely rebaptise everyone who wants to join, even people who have been baptised as believers by submerrsion. Everybody gets redunked no exception.

They really take their “church of Christ” name literally and very seriously. To them they are the one and only church Christ has and everyone else is going to hell and are “non-Christian”

 

[Walden]

I notice also that they have an aversion to displaying crosses. Nearly every CoC I’ve seen has a spire where a cross would normally be. In fact, the school newspaper here is called “The Spire”.

In my hometown, there is one on the main thoroughfare. They have a brick building that had some decorative white siding on the building where it faces the road. The last time I went back home, they were doing some maintenance I guess and I saw that the siding had been taken off the brick. Underneath was a large cross that had been built into the building with white bricks. It was quite dirty. I realized that the siding was there to hide the cross.

While the graduate school I’m in isn’t very connected to the undergraduate main school, there is a very large, antique study desk in our library with a plaque stating that it came from whatever university Campbell studied at. I have some CoC friends at school, and I asked one about Campbell. I figured he was to CoC’ers like John Wesley is to the Methodists. I was wrong, and this guy was reluctant to tell me about him and denied that he started their movement.

“Denominationalism” in the protestant movement is sort of a pet interest of mine. I love learning about the history of it all. It’s what led me “Home”.

I would love to hear about whatever insight you have about this stuff.

 

[pipper]

I notice also that they have an aversion to displaying crosses. Nearly every CoC I’ve seen has a spire where a cross would normally be. In fact, the school newspaper here is called “The Spire”.

In my hometown, there is one on the main thoroughfare. They have a brick building that had some decorative white siding on the building where it faces the road. The last time I went back home, they were doing some maintenance I guess and I saw that the siding had been taken off the brick. Underneath was a large cross that had been built into the building with white bricks. It was quite dirty. I realized that the siding was there to hide the cross.

While the graduate school I’m in isn’t very connected to the undergraduate main school, there is a very large, antique study desk in our library with a plaque stating that it came from whatever university Campbell studied at. I have some CoC friends at school, and I asked one about Campbell. I figured he was to CoC’ers like John Wesley is to the Methodists. I was wrong, and this guy was reluctant to tell me about him and denied that he started their movement.

“Denominationalism” in the protestant movement is sort of a pet interest of mine. I love learning about the history of it all. It’s what led me “Home”.

I would love to hear about whatever insight you have about this stuff.

where to begin, you have a lot of questions/statements and I will attempt to answer them all.

They hate the cross. These people claim to be “sola scriptura” formed by the bible alone. But in reality they look at what Catholics believe and do, and do the exact opposite. When I was a cofc member it was routinely said “we can’t do/say that, it would be Catholic”. In fact the bible comes a distant second place to their fundamentalist bigotry. The churchachrist is based on a “apostacy-restoration” dichotomy very simular to the Mormons. They claim that the church started out following the bible as a strict “blueprint or roadmap” according to them when the church stopped following the bible in such a legalistic manner the church became “apostate” and simply stopped existing until they “restored” it back into existence. They truly think there were no Christians for centuries, and everyone went to hell. Of course that myth comes to pieces becuase there was no recognised bible until ca 390, long after the “apostacy” took hold. They claim the church became “apostate” by not following the bible before the bible even existed.

Actually you were more or less correct. Alexander and Thomas Campbell and Barton Stone started the Christian church Disciples of Christ, and the so called “churches of Christ” broke away from them. That is fact and reality, but the “chruches of Christ” cling to a myth that they were begun in 33 AD, by the bible. That is why csofc hate being called Campellites from their founders, they acknollege no human founder, just agian the bible.

It is odd that you mention denominationalism. They claim they are not a denomination, and are niether Catholic or Protestant, they call everyone else “the denominations” while to them they are just Christians and nothing else. As I said before they take their self-assigned name very seriously. They truly beleive that by calling themselves THE churches of Christ and Christians, they automatically become the churches of Christ and the only Christians. Since others go by names like Catholic, Methodist etc we are only Catholics, and not Christian.

There is a masters thesis on the net written by a man named Paden that goes very deeply into the “historyless” nature of the “churches of Christ” he explains all this in great depth. Ican get the URL if you like.

 

[Walden]

Thank you, pipper, for taking the time to answer my numerous questions!

Other protestants that I know will joke about drinkin’ the CofC “kool-aid”.

Interesting stuff (to me anyway).

Thanks again!

 

[Garland]

Hi walden, I was raised in the mountains of eastern Ky. and in that area the Old Regular Baptist Church was the predominant sect until the cofc came in the late 50s. I knew one young man, raised by his grandfather, who was a preacher in the old regulars, that becamed a minister for the cofc and when his granddad passed away he preach his funeral, he preached him in hellfire forever, because he didnt join the cofc. By the way the old regulars believed they were the only true christians because John the baptist baptized Jesus. If it werent so sad it would be hiliarous the continual break up of every branch of protestantism. A house devided against its self etc. etc. Well I am on my way to MASS this morning so bye for now. His will be done. Garland

 

[Nick_in_MB]

Yep they are now calling themselves “Non-denominational” and to that I say nonsense, they are usually very sectarian, usually Baptist or Pentecostal which are both denominations.

Yup. The church my parents go to, the pastor says they’re non-denominational. Once you go to their special meeting and sign up to officially join the church, you find out they’re Baptist.

 

[Rolltide]

I just found this article today and thought it was especially appropriate to the discussion:

Time Magazine
Bible-Belt Catholics
By Tim Padgett/Charlotte Monday, Feb. 07, 2005

Eight years ago, a handful of Roman Catholic families in Huntersville, a suburb of Charlotte, N.C., started a new parish. The home of their church, St. Mark, was a bowling alley. Our Lady of the Lanes, as they jokingly called it, was an apt symbol of the scarcity–and supple ingenuity–of Catholics in a region known as the buckle of the Protestant Bible Belt. Soon St. Mark was gaining a family a day. Now its almost 2,800 families hear Mass in a cavernous gymnasium as they await completion of a new church. Among the newcomers is Ben Liuzzo, 54, a financial-services manager who a few years ago moved his family from New York to North Carolina. He had thought Catholics in the area might be as outnumbered as Jews or Muslims–and that the meager church life that did exist wouldn’t engage his 14-year-old son. Instead, the Liuzzos are attending standing-room-only services like St. Mark’s teen Mass, complete with a pop-music ensemble that could be mistaken for one of the area’s rollicking Christian rock bands. “This I was not prepared for,” says Liuzzo, who flashes a smile at a recent service as an altar girl marches a crucifix past 1,000 parishioners.

Yankee transplants like the Liuzzos aren’t the only ones helping fill the pews in the Charlotte diocese. Mexican immigrants are the fastest-growing group, and Hispanics as a whole make up half the diocese’s 300,000 Catholics. Thousands of Vietnamese and Filipino Catholics are settling in too. “I’ve wondered often how bishops in the Northeast handled the waves of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries,” says Bishop Peter Jugis, 47, who took over the diocese in 2003. “It’s exciting.” It also transcends demographics: the newcomers are practicing a more conservative Catholicism than their brethren in many other parts of the country.

That more orthodox approach is proving as popular as a revival meeting. Priests and lay people in traditional Catholic strongholds in the Northeast and Midwest are distressed by a plunge in regular Mass attendance to just 30% of the registered congregation in many parishes, by a chronic shortage of priests and by the financial burden of paying off settlements for sexual-abuse cases. But Catholics in places like Charlotte say the church is being born again in the cradle of born-again Christianity–the South. The Catholic population in Charlotte is growing almost 10% a year, and the ratio of newly ordained priests to parishioners there is 1 to 7,000, more than seven times as high as Chicago’s. Bishop Jugis last year blessed five new churches in the diocese…

continued at link…

time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1025176,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-nation-related

 

[Walden]

Thanks for the article Rolltide. Enjoyed it.

Do you think some of the walls are coming down nowadays? It seems like I know of more and more people going through RCIA lately.

 

[RDJ]

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.”

Not to get off topic, but how long does it take to get an annulment?

 

[HollyDolly]

Here in Texas Catholicism is pretty strong; lots of parishes, even in small towns.

Other parts of the South aren’t quite so open, though; I was in a smaller city (won’t say where) that was so full of Baptist churches that the one Catholic parish church in town looked as out of place as a ham in a mosque.

I’m here in Texas too, around San Antonio.Texas is kind of different than say Alabama.
To start with,it was once part of Mexico, and the Franciscans established missions around this area as most spainards are Catholic. The Church was a constant presence.
You had Henry,Count Castro who brought Alastians to settle the area of D’Hanis, Quihi,
and Castroville, west of San Antonio.You also have the French, Germans, Poles ,Czechs and Hungarians who were also catholics, though you can find protestants among them too.
Also, in many places in the south, the KKK are still around, I think another factor why catholic churches in the Deep South don’t advertise much, except for around here and Louisiana, which was owned by France and again mainly Catholic,with perhasp some Hugenonts thrown in .

 

[Disciple96]

I call 'em “Six Flags over Jesus”

Ha! I just saw that, Walden. How apropos, especially when I think about the ones with the big screens, you know, the full theater treatment, surround sound, theater seats, the whole nine yards. I fully expect to see vendors selling popcorn and sodas and milk duds. Oy ve.

Seriously though, the trend now is to drop the denominational title and loosen up on the theology to get butts in the seats.

Ya know, I have no objection to wanting to get butts in the seats. But I find that I can’t quite forget the reason I want butts in the seats to begin with. And that would be to truly worship the Lord in accordance with His desires which He made known to us. And to receive the Body and Blood of my Lord in Holy Communion, which can only happen at Mass. Loosening up on the theology, as you point out, may get those people in there, but, ironically, it deprives them of the very thing they are there to seek: Knowledge of God. What sadness. What a travesty.

I am not knocking Protestant worship, I am referring specifically to loosening up on theology in order to attract numbers. Protestants are definitely not the only ones to have made this tragic error.

 

[idpatel]

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.

I was born and raised in Georgia as a Hindu, and converted to Catholicism later. A huge part of what sent me to the Catholic Church was the fact that they weren’t constantly leaving brochures in my mailbox, or coming to my door, or putting up billboards saying that their church was the only place where one could fully repent and be saved. Call it instinct or guidance from the Holy Spirit, but those churches always came across as less interested in my relationship with God, and more interested by my money I would give them. I LOVE that the Catholic Church doesn’t feel the need to go out and “recruit.” I think the Holy Spirit will guide those who are called to His church. I know He did that with me!

 

[PastGrandKnight]

Not to get off topic, but how long does it take to get an annulment?

It really does depend on the individual case. I applied one full year after the divorce was final, and it took two years after that before the annulment was granted.

Of course, if you are Ted Kennedy, you can just donate some money to the Boston Archdiocese, and VOILA! It’s a done deal!

 

[curiousgirl26]

Eh, come visit Louisiana. Very Protestant but also Very Catholic.

 

[PastGrandKnight]

Eh, come visit Louisiana. Very Protestant but also Very Catholic.

I’ve been to New Orleans a few times (all before Katrina), but am not so sure about going back, in case another major hurricane hits while I’m there!

They’ve also got one GREAT Jazz Festival in N.O., and I visited that back in May of 2005. What a great time, with great Jazz being performed everywhere. While there, I also visited what may be the oldest Roman Catholic Church in that area, located in the town of Gretna (where a friend of mine lives, in fact).

Now, if they can only clean up the political corruption from Mayor Nagin, the governor, and the rest, it might be a nice place to live!

 

[curiousgirl26]

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be in N.O either. Thankfully there are much better places to live in Louisiana(try N. LA it’s gorgeous). I don’t like Nagin either but the governor just passed strict ethics laws. We’re working to clean it up, unfortunately it’s in our history.

 

[pipper]

As I understand Northern Louisiana is mostly filled with Baptists, Pentcostals, member of so called “non-denoiminational” denominations, IOW the people in the South that are hostile to us Catholics.

It is Southern LA where the Catholics and Cajuns are located.

 

[Arkguy]

I hate to admit that I’m not sure which denomination you’re talking about. I almost thought JW but you threw me when you mentioned “mostly based in Tennesee, Kentucky, and Texas where I am.” So…I give up, which group is it? (I have a dear friend who is a former JW. Her mother doesn’t like her daughter hanging out with Catholic me at all and she doesn’t make any bones about it. My friend is currently a Wiccan. Oy.)

As far as the abuse and pain you’ve suffered…I’ll keep you in my prayers. Forgiveness isn’t easy, you’re right. The Sacraments and prayer will really help there. The Rosary will help too. (You probably already know all that.) Welcome Home!

I guarantee you he’s talking about the Church of Christ, they are strong in Arkansas too, and he has described them perfectly.