Sorry if this has been posted.

One thinks they are right and the others think they are more right?

You mean, "What is the difference between Catholics and Protestants?"

One big difference is that Catholics have to confess their sins to a priest who then talks to God and decides on a penance. Protestants believe that they can talk to God directly and confess their sins.

Also, Protestants do not pray to Mary or to any saints.

No, I did mean Christians. I often here the two terms used seperately. "I'm Catholic." or "I'm Christian."

Well, you're stupid. Catholics are Christians. It's like the whole a square is rectangle but not rectangles are squares thing.



There may be some protestants that don't consider catholics christians, but they too are stupid. Catholics believe that jesus is the son of god, died and was resurrected to save mankind, that is, by very definition, christian. The title of your thread should really have been

"what's the difference between Catholics and Protestants"

.

-----------------
And yes, I still do mean Catholics/Christians.
In my family we never refer ourselves to being Christian. I've had Christians wanting to convert me or go to church with them after I tell them I'm Catholic. So obviously there has to be some kind of difference.

Think of it in these terms:

Catholic Church = Old Money

Christians = Nouveau Riche

Seriously?

Think of it in terms of geometry. A scalene triangle has three sides of different lengths. An isosceles triangle has two sides of the same length and one side of a different length.

In math most people call scalene triangles just "triangles"...and call isosceles trianges by their proper name ("isosceles triangles") because they are special. So Protestants are like scalene trianges (ordinary and refered to by the generic name ("Christian")), Catholics are like isosceles triangles (special), and Jews are like equilateral triangles (perfect and therefore favored by god). And agnostics are like right triangles (the name isn't a coincidence...think about that).

You're welcome.

here, maybe this will help

F?

jesus christ you're ****ing stupid.


I'm going to try this again, but man, I don't know, you're really stupid, so I don't know if it's worth it. Any of this you could learn on your own with like one wiki search.


In the beginning, christianity was all under one "church", but really was a bunch of allied churches. Soon, in early christiandom, the Roman church began to dominate and took control over it. Some of the churches disagreed doctirnally and broke off and formed their own churches, like the coptic othrodox. They are still christians. Then, later on, there was a bigger split, between room and Constantinople... and the east broke off, and formed their own church, Eastern Orthodox. They are still Christians. What was left was the catholic church ,and they had a gay old time, ruling most of europe's churches, untill pesky Martin Luther came along in the late 1400's and started what is known as the "protestant reformation". You see, many christians thought the catholic church was corrupt and actually anti-christian, that it had a bunch of a-biblical teachings and practices, and they wished to form a "purer" more " biblical" religion. The effects of this were wide ranging, including causing reforms in the Catholic church itself, but the major effect was that different, independant "Protestant" churches popped up ( And continue to pop up) all slightly different from the others docternally, none of which have the strong central authority the catholic church. From Martin Luther's movement spawned the Lutheran Church, the baptist church, the Church of England ( to a lesser extent), the methodist church, and all the other little random churches you see today. They are all still christians. Then, in the 1800's, Joseph Smith, with his buddies, conned a bunch of stupid lonely house wives into thinking that he was a new prophet from god, and had found missing books of the bible. They called those books " The books of Mormon" and that church The church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints, also known as the Mormons. And yes, even though they are wacky, and have their own extra book of the bible, they are still christians too, because, and here's the important part


EVERY GOD DAMN ONE OF THEM THINKS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD AND THAT HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS.


Every single one. That's what makes you a Christian. Some of them believe that you need to believe in their particular brand of christianity to be saved. They are stupid. The people harassing you are probably of this kind, either some particularly fringe Protestant or Mormon

You know what man, just fuck off and be a prick to someone who really cares. You don't have to be an *******.

Sorry if the truth hurts, Gallo. and though I was a prick, i'm also the only one here who answered your question. Everyone else just mocked you.

lol
There's ways to answer stuff and if you like being a prick about things so be it. Sorry, I don't wanna mess around with the big man on the interwebz.

D is mostly right

to add though

Catholic means universal, it claims to represent the entire church of God on earth. They claim Peter was their first pope.

The pope has direct connection to God, as loogie said.

As an official church doctrine they do not actually promote praying to Mary etc, but obviously they do.

An interesting side note about the split with Constantinople was that in the 1500's when men started writing the Bible in English ( which the Catholic church forbid ) the translations were not very good because Latin was such a bad language to transfer to English and the Catholic church had regional translations that were losing their fidelity to the original manuscripts. Along cam the Muslims, invading Constantinople, driving the Christians out. They brought thier Greek translations of the Bible, which were much more accurate and resulted in a much truer translation from the original.

We know this now because thousands of manuscripts from hundreds and in some cases 1900 years older sources have allowed us to confirm that what we have today is what they read in the days of the authors.

I have a few pages from english translations from the 1590s and although difficult to read, the message is the same.


Anyway Protestants base their belief that you have a right to read the Bible yourself, see what it says, and speak directly to God without any mediator. Your relationship with God is personal, not through the church.

Catholics are saved because their doctrinal truths are correct, just add on laws are man made and therefore not Biblical.

Mormons are not, because they do not believe in the Jesus of the Bible.
They believe God used to be a man like us, but became a mormon on a different planet, and the god of that planet gave him this one to be god of, along with ten thousand wifes he is supposed to impregnate as much as he can. Currently he has done it 40 billion times, because every single soul comes directly from his having sex with a woman in his harem.
This god also took on the form of a man, came down and had physical sex with Mary, resulting in her pregnancy of Jesus. Which mean the Jesus they teach comes from a god that is just one of many. Hardly in line with what the Bible teaches. They also teach satan is jesus's brother. And if you leave the mormon church, the only way you can be saved is if a good standing mormon shoots you in the head for a blood atonement. But of course they don't practise that or polygamy anymore.

I guess it just makes you feel better about yourself, while being demeaning towards others.

I answered in that way, because, despite everything everyone was saying, you continue to insist that Christians are different than catholics, instead of catholics being a subset of Christianity. So, instead of like, doing some reasearch on your own, which would consist of typing in "Christianity" into wiki, you'd rather people spoon feed you the information. I'm sorry if I don't put sugar with my spoonfuls.

Sorry was at work, can't really do a lot of research there.

nope, just makes me laugh.

And if stuff pisses you off so much just ignore it.

so you can post and read on a internet message board, but you cant passively read a wiki entry? seems likely.

As do people who think they are all big and bad on a forum but would probably not interact with someone like that face to face.

Good thing I'm in a internet forum, huh?

the simple answer hasn't quite been given yet.

catholics believe that the church is the only avenue by which a human being can associate with god.

the lutheran revolution which began protestantism (which has since evolved into evangelicalism, etc.) rejected this idea and contended that personal faith was the true avenue to god.

there, done.

No, he didn't ask about Lutherans, Cheeky. He asked about Christians. Duh.

So why are Christians always trying to convert Catholics if Catholics are Christians anyway?

I'll try take a stab at this one, and I'll try to be nicer, as I know you are sensitive.


Check out BG's post, and check out what he says about Mormons.... BG is a fundementalist "born again" flavor of protestant, and it's not uncommon for them to view mormons as non-christians, catholics as non-christians, Othrodox as non-christians, etc. And, even if they view them as christians, they don't think they are "saved" they don't think that they believe in Jesus in the proper manner, they don't say the proper magic spell, what ever. And Mormons believe the same thing, and Catholics certainly believe that they are the one true way to christ. Not all of the different sects think some or all of the other sects are going to hell, but many of them do.


So, lets say a Baptist thinks the only way a person can go to heaven is through accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, "letting him into your heart", asking him, directly, to forgive your sins, and then living a christian life after that, where you continue to take your sins to god directly ( which is known as "having a personal relationship with your savior jesus christ" So, they see a Catholic, who takes their sins to a priest who takes them to mary who takes them to jesus ( or how ever it works these days, I don't keep up on dogma) and they see it as blasphemous, and an illegitimate path to salvation, so they attempt to convert you, so you yourself can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.


The catholics think all this personal relationship stuff is a bunch of hippy hog wash, and they believe that they are the one true church, that the Catholics have an uninterupted line, from today, to Saint Peter and Jesus. They think only through holy communion and the sacraments and confession can your sins be saved. Now, I'm not sure what there position on protestants is theres days ( it used to be hell bound blastphemy) but I'm pretty sure they think that Protestants are all going to limbo or purgatory or something. They would rather you just go straight to heaven, and want you to come back to the one true faith.


Mormons, well, they think that after jesus "died" that he came to america, and gave another series of gophels to the native people, who were called "mormons" these people wrote these books down, and joesph smith found these steel tablets ( or what ever the fck they were supposed to be) and while he was wearing his magic glasses, was able to translate the books to english. Then, these books got lost or destroyed or something, and no one can find them. ( I swear this is all true, or the jist of it) So the mormons believe all kinds of nutty bs that Joesph smith made up, but the also believe ( allegedly, at least) in the protestant bible ( which has a few less books than the catholic bible, btw) Their status, as "Christians" is disputed by many because of the edition of this new book, and the existence of modern day prophets.

So, to answer your question, the reason they try to convert you, is they think their way of worshiping god is right, and your way is wrong. A biblical scholar or a neutral observer would call them all "Christian" because they all believe in jesus's divinity. But the churches themselves don't necessarily agree with that, because they think they themselves are right, and if they are right than you ( and other branches) have to be wrong. Also, a cynic would say that churches are essentially religious businesses, and in order for them to get money, they need to expand their customer base ( IE Believers). They are competing for customers in a very crowded market place, so some of the branches of Christianity have become very aggressive in their marketing.

Thank you for your response. More or less what I was looking for.
I still think you're a prick, but thanx anyway.

and I still think you're stupid needing to ask and lazy for not wiki'ing it, so I guess we're even.

gallo, bdmg's last post is really, really good, imo.

it's also worth saying that contemporary evangelicals are generally a lot more concerned with proselytization (conversion) than catholics these days. but they're still both way beyond, say, buddhists.

bdmg, why cheeky? i feel like i'm getting subtly digged upon, but it's going over my head.

Assuming that is from a screenshot of your computer, I'm compelled to ask: Is this your computer?




Or do you have super-vision?

I'm glad you ended with this since it was the real answer to the question.

Why do they try and convert you?

They want your money.

Also reminded me of a funny story when I was a kid.

I was about 5 or 6 and a new kid moved in next door the same age. We were raised Catholic, went to a Catholic scool and church every Sunday.
He never attended church that I can remember but thinking back i'm sure they were Babtist. Anyway we were talking about it one day and he
asked what the difference between the two religons were, being curious as to us always going I suppose.

I asked him what religon he was and he said, "I think were Publics"

We asked my mom what the difference between Catholics and the Publics were and she howled.

Um how has nobody answered this question properly?


MONEY


Your welcome.

It's like you couldn't even bother to come up with a real excuse.

no, I'm just an illiterate moron, who is wholly Dependant on spell checks not to sound like an idiot, but things like Cheeky, that aren't actual spelling errors, slip through the cracks.

I did exactly that, apparently you didn't read my whole post

*sniff sniff*

Actually I didn't, I stopped about half way through it was really long and I have a short attention span this morning. I also have to pee.

randy even quoted it and bolded it 'n stuff


*sniff sniff*

He posted that while I was posting. I was on the thread for a while before I posted.


DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER?

Don't touch me....

I'm not sure what you mean. you mean my pixels are small?


but yeah its my work computer, and yes I have super vision.

I dont like that word.

that's because it's more of a letter.

quite right.

Sorry, but I do work.

Oh.

I wish I had a job that required me to post on FCP.

And I wish I had a daddy that didn't require me to work.

Zing?