Why do people say "Catholics and Christians" in (USA) when Catholics are also Christians, as if they refer to it as a different religion.

If anything Catholicism is much more traditionally Christian, as it's the stablished status quo outside of the anglosphere.

Oh shit! Independent Fundamental Baptist! I had to deal with living with that shit, too. At the end of the day, if the king james bible was good enough for Peter and Paul, it's good enough for me. Also, rock music is the devil.

What does "non-denominational" mean? Isn't Baptist the denomination?

They all generally affirm the same things though, it's just the Bible doesn't say exactly how to practice Christianity, so add two thousand years and weird theological technicalities like real presence (and how much real is the presence, it's a spectrum), church structure and organisation, authority, etc, then you have a bunch of different denominations. Most of them though do actually respect each other in an ecumenical fashion. The "Catholics aren't Christian" sect would be a fringe minority, the same type who would believe the world is 8,000 years old and that the KJV is the only proper English translation.

There may be an earlier version, but I know this as an old Emo Phillips joke

All the big (and probably small) schisms happened primarily for political reasons (i.e. material interests, power struggles). It's just that lots of other issues (including small differences) tend to align themselves along the same lines, because I guess that helps with the polarization. Doesn't mean this "narcissism of small differences" doesn't exist, just that it's not the cause, but rather part of the dynamic.

And yet what a actually happened is that Catholics ended up generally more liberal and Protestants ended up becoming evangelicals and causing a lot of the problems currently faced in, for example, the US.

Edit' Catholicism continues to try to bleed any kind of support by protecting pedophiles in case you feel like I am being too lenient toward Catholicism.

I view Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as three branches of one religion since they are clearly very similar. But that is the view of an outsider.

nah, they're grouped together under the umbrella of "Abrahamic religions", and at least muslims regard the other two as "people of the book".

obv your mileage may vary from person to person, I'm not saying the terrorist idiots don't call people infidel left right and center don't exist, but people who are a bit better than that generally see christians and jews as peers.

Don't forget Catholicism spent centuries converting with a sword and their missionairies destroyed all remnants of native cultures history once they were converted. That's an awful lot of discrimination from Catholics.

In Austria, when people say "Christian", I'm convinced that 90% of people only think of the Roman Catholic Church. Even though the term includes all groups.

It's really a US thing. That's where most of the whacky religious stuff comes from these days.

Most Catholic people in the mid 19th century in the Americas were imagrants or Mexican and considered non-white.

Growing up in west Texas, I talked to one uber-Baptist who for some unfathomable reason believed that the Catholics "worship Mary", therefore they don't follow the "there is only one God" rule and therefore aren't Christian.

I grew up protestant, this is 100% correct haha

Thousands really.

It's like progressives and liberals 1000 years from now

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!"
He said, "Nobody loves me."
I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?"
He said, "A Christian."
I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?"
He said, "Protestant."
I said, "Me, too! What franchise?"
He said, "Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region."
I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.
I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

-Emo Philips

I worked with a Southern Baptist guy who legitimately thought Catholic aren't real Christians.

I have no idea how he thought Southern Baptism is somehow more Christian than the much much older version.

Ketchup and condiments

It's a US thing

That distinction comes from racism though, which is probably not too different than Catholics and Christians.

Catholics are Christians, but Christians are not necessarily Catholic. For example, Orthodox Christians are not Catholic. Being Catholic requires, at the bare minimum, agreement with the Holy See and implicitly the dogma he endorses. Even this “minor” difference can be used to find non-Catholic Christians.

I know that, but if you ask me, it's like saying Sunni and Muslim, one kinda emphasizes, if not "otherizes" (orientalize or occidentalize) the other... usually in a not good way...

Protestants came about at the same time printing and reading became more common. People came to understand the bible better. They found that their local priest or Catholic church wasn't representing the bible very well. Some priests couldn't read and were just making it up.

Catholics practice many things that go against the teachings in the bible. They worships false profits (saints, Mary, popes, etc). They practice religion with lots of ceremony and publicity. They also acted as gatekeepers to God, despite Jesus talking about having a personal relationship with God.

The Catholic church was caught out and many people were unhappy with it. So they left it in protest. Hence protestant being used to describe these new enlightenment era Christians.

A protestant would not think that leaving the Catholic church is abandoning God. They would have to see it as the right path to follow God. It's not consistent for a protestant to say they follow the teachings of Christ and the Catholic church is Christian. Any protestant saying Catholics are Christian hasn't put a great deal of thought into it. However, it would be appropriate for someone studying, categorising or discussing religions to call both Catholics and Protestant's Christians.

There is also a long history of discrimination between Catholics and Protestants. Protestants country's retained more of their own wealth and political decision making. Protestantism was more successful in places where literacy was higher. Both these factors lead to protestant countries being wealthier, more prosperous and lead to earlier and more successful industrialisation. This created the situation that many people were immigrants from Catholic countries to protestant ones. Like today, they faced discrimination. The religious difference of the incoming immigrants heightened the conflict. This also made it easier for people in both religions to see it as separate and different.

Catholics are one of America's og boogeyman. They used to fear the idea of a catholic president who could be influenced by the pope. I'm not sure when that went away.

Remember when Irish and Italians were dirty whites?

Hate... finds a way.

Yes, but no true Scotsman Christian...

Mormons think we are all going to be gods, and that God was once a man on some planet like we were, and therefore there are literally billions of gods out there. Our God just happens to be the one relevant to us.

Source - Grew up Mormon, am not anymore

Same with Jehovah's Witnesses not agreeing with or affirming the Nicene creed. Generally any sect that denies the Nicene creed is seen as non Christian

Christian was the case that they gave me

I was raised Catholic in a deeply Evengelical town. The little girls were saying out of the blue that I wasn't Christian. I was like 8, they were like 6. They were absolutely parroting what their parents said, there's no way the little girls I played with daily came up with that shit on their own, and since then I've noticed that's one of the "protestant culture" things that gets passed around in those circles and occasionally escapes. That Catholics aren't Christian because saints or whatever.

They get all wound up about the "pagan" elements of Catholicism then turn around and worship their dollar bill golden idols. Hypocrites!

But basically, Catholics get crapped on when there's no other minority around and they are tired of talking about Jewish folks.

I don't practice, I'm atheist, but in the USA from a culture perspective Catholics aren't in the WASP good old boy group, even if you are otherwise white. And WASP types are happy to let you know it, although its less common than it was a few decades back.

Biden being Catholic, and JFK before him, is basically a dog whistle to certain rightwing groups to make them lose their shit, it's just less obvious than, say, Obama being black esp if you don't have a family background that would expose you to that stuff.

I grew up going to various Christian schools as a kid. While it wasn't a common viewpoint, I did hear of it from time to time.

The reason behind it, to my knowledge, was that Catholic practices would often be significantly different from other denominations' practices. The biggest thing I can think of is the veneration of and praying to saints.

Me neither. Literally never seen or heard anyone say that.

It sounds super weird.

Wait do you randomly drop "and platypuses" when you're talking about mammals??

Platypuses are mammals, but they’re weird enough

We probably wouldn't consider them nearly as weird if they were more numerous than any other mammal species and lived all over the world. So their comparison to catholicism is weird.

Platypuses are mammals, but they’re weird enough that you can’t usefully generalise from them to anything else, to the point that lumping them in together could be actively misleading

I would argue that they're "lumpable" with other monotremes :)

Protestants don't like anything. Especially sex.

Catholics and Protestants are two different tribes. They're all Christians.

Basically "Christians" tend to mean, anything not "Catholic"

This is insanity. This is a purely American thing.

But if Eastern Orthodox counts as "Christian" while Catholicism doesn't, that destroys the reasoning. If Eastern Orthodox doesn't count, then you're just referring to Protestants.

I don't think there's any explanation other than anti-Catholic bias, Protestants just want to claim their way of doing Christianity is the only way.

Wow. Zero information.

Catholicism may be different enough to be considered a separate religion

I believe what you mean to say is that Protestant sects would be considered a separate religion, as Catholicism far predates other sects.

That is totally new to me.

Can you give me one or two of those many definitions for my understanding?

I might quibble about the Catholic Church being the "original" church since Catholicism only came about after Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman state in 380. You could argue that Catholicism started a bit earlier under Constantine I at the First Ccouncil of Nicaea in 325, which is when the Roman state started to consolidate the various early Christian beliefs under an official "catholic" orthodoxy. The word "catholic" literally means "including a wide variety of things". The point being that there was already a wide variety of Christian sects prior to the Council of Nicaea.

The Protestant argument against Catholicism boils down to the belief that the Catholic Church is a corrupted Christianity, not that it is non-Christian. And there is some truth to that. The pre-Nicaean churches were free-wheeling spiritualists with a wide variety of beliefs, but that all changed when the Roman state decided to create an orthodox, singular religion under its control. Protestants argue that this adaptation of religious belief to the needs of maintaining state power is the original corruption of the Catholic Church.

Now, two key facts influenced the early history of Roman Catholicism:

1. The Roman state recognized the descendants of Caesar, the Emperors, as the Pontifex Maximus, or head priest, of the Roman state. They also required that everyone adhere to the cult of the Emperor. This was purely ritualistic and was meant as a bulwark to the power of the state.

2. The vast majority of the Empire's citizens were pagan.

Because of #1, the Roman Emperor became the head of the newly formed Catholic Church, which was a unification of Church and State. This is called Caesaropapism, and is also why the Catholic Church retains a hierarchical structure to this day and its seat is still located in the heart of the Western Roman Empire. The Pope is the spiritual successor of the Western Roman Emperor.

Because of #2, Catholicism is highly ritualistic, like paganism, and early Catholicism adopted the worship of saints, which are basically small gods. Saint worship was the bridge between paganism and Christianity.

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Luther and others made the point that the union of state power with Christianity was a corruption of "original" pre-Catholic Christianity, which was more spiritually-oriented and valued personal conviction over state orthodoxy. Interestingly, the split between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe also more or less follows the geographic outline of the Western Roman Empire, with southern Europe largely retaining Catholicism and northern Europe largely adopting Protestantism. This implies a political dimension to the schism, not just a religious one. England is the odd man out here because their response to the schism was to create the Church of England, which is basically Catholicism without the Pope, substituting the English monarch as the head of the Church and toning down the saint worship.

The great irony of any Protestant movement that craves Christo-fascist state power is that they are advocating to become the very evil they swore to destroy back in the 1500s.

Roman Catholic is the original Church, so you tell me

Care to share these definitions?