Why have there only been two Catholic presidents in the history of the US?

Uh, Protestants make up nearly 50% of the population. Catholics around 23%.

OP - Historically, there used to be this widespread belief that a Catholic president might follow the Pope and Church teaching as opposed to the American principle that there's a separation between church and state. Kennedy had to give one or more speeches about this.

Given no one was going to vote for a 1st generation Italian that left the Irish as the main other Catholic group and well...

R1 you're right—I wasn't thinking of all of the Protestant denominations as a singular group. Protestantism is a grouping that consists of numerous denominations, while Catholicism is both a singular denomination and group. Even still, Catholics make up a large chunk of American Christians—they're also the wealthiest and the most educated, which you'd think would translate to more of them being in positions of political power.

OP said "Christian denomination". Here's a list of top 15 Protestant denominations. For comparison PEW Research says there's about 50 million Catholics.

I remember someone said on a podcast that Elaine Stritch couldn't play a Christian, a Catholic, sure, but not a Christian. I thought that was so odd, and an insight into American Protestant thought. Catholics had been so "othered" that Christian = Protestant was a given for the commenter.

R6 a lot of Protestants consider Catholicism pure sacrilege for their veneration of Mary and the saints. Despite the fact that Catholic doctrine differentiates between veneration (reserved for Mary, mother of Jesus, and the saints) and worship (reserved for Jesus Christ), I've encountered many a Protestant who has expressed disdain for Catholicism because of "the fact that they worship Mary." Some Protestants don't even consider Catholics true Christians, which I find bizarre considering that Christianity started with the Catholic church.

That podcaster is tight though, R6. Some people just read Catholic due to cultural Catholic implications that are separate from religious belief— subtle cultural differences from Protestants. Elaine definitely reads as a brash yankee Catholic. Not unlike the whole Jewish thing— although American Jews definitely have a more distinct culture.l that sets them apart. Even some secular people raised Catholic still have some of that essence on them that is tough to shake, myself being one.

Not to turn this into a golden girls thread, but Bea and Estelle did NOT read Catholic Italian. They read Jewish, and the show would have been better served if they could have played it that way. Can I say why? Not exactly, but that’s the subtlety I mentioned above that I’m sure someone more eloquent can come along and explain.

[Quote] That podcaster is tight though

He bottomed for you?

Estelle Getty did play Jewish, though. They just threw in the Sicily stuff.

To go along with what R7 points to, the Pilgrims and Puritans basically hated Catholics and thought the Pope was the anti-Christ or Whore of Babylon. (See linked to article.) Also, as I recall, one of the reasons Maryland came into existence is because Catholics weren't welcome in some of the other settlements.

[quote] Estelle Getty did play Jewish, though. They just threw in the Sicily stuff.

No. She was playing Brooklyn. Jews and Italians are interchangeable there. That’s why people think that Joy Behar, Penny Marshall and Nancy Walker were Jewish. They’re Italian. Even Valerie Harper based her character Rhoda off her Italian girlfriend.

C’mon, Catholics literally believe that Eucharist and wine turn into blood and flesh and then they eat it.

Whereas Jews just eat foreskin. From babies.

[Quote] No. She was playing Brooklyn. Jews and Italians are interchangeable there.

Then why did Estelle want to make the characters Jewish? She clearly felt there were differences that she couldn't deliver.

[quote] Then why did Estelle want to make the characters Jewish? She clearly felt there were differences that she couldn't deliver.

She was an actor, not writer nor creator. Susan Harris based the character on her Italian neighbors in New York. The words coming out of Estelle’s mouth came from that. Estelle couldn’t even remember her lines and was reading off cue cards. She had a lot of problems performing period.

Yes indeed, it's true that many people back when Kennedy was campaigning, were concerned that he would take his marching orders from Rome. The nuns in my elementary school; however, were thrilled to bits. An Irish Roman Catholic in the White House, they were plotzing, believe me. We prayed for him daily. Kennedy had to stress on several occasions that Rome was Rome, and the US was the US, and never the twain shall meet. Jackie did look nice in her mantilla when she met John XXIII, unaccompanied by her husband( otherwise, the whole megillah would've fired up again)

Of COURSE they thought Stritch could play a Catholic, wasn't she always bringing up the fact that a cousin was a RC archbishop?

Most people seem to be fine, but more than likely unaware, that SCOTUS is two-thirds RC.

R2 That sensible speech should be shown to the imams who demand all Muslims to vote as they're told

Weirdly r11, I'd say a very strong anti-Catholic streak survives in what the French call Anglo-Saxon countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia & New Zealand). It's even evident here on DL where people who were not even raised Catholic like to pile on with anti-Catholic tropes decades, or even centuries, old. It informs how they're covered by the media in these countries. If I, for example, told a bunch of Americans the fact that less than 1% of Catholic clergy (still too many) have been implicated in child abuse scandals, they wouldn't believe it. People in France, Italy or Germany received it differently and saw the scandal for exactly what it is: a bunch of criminals who don't necessarily reflect on a billion-strong denomination worldwide.

FWIW, six out of the nine current supreme court justices are Catholic.

In the 2020 election, Trump won over 80% of Evangelical Christians. However, he and Biden split the Catholic vote 50-50.

The whole fucking goddamned Supreme Court is Catholic, and Catholics do not represent us all, and Catholics as subscribers to their global church are relentless supporters of world-scale organized crime and relentless, ongoing sexual abuses of children. Are we supposed to clamor for more of these people to take control of the country? Fix your house first, find church leaders who don't rape little boys in musty cellars, and then come back and ask for a promotion.

I can't believe these people have taken over the court.

R19 I suspect that the billion-strong denomination worldwide is crumbling. I know it's crumbling in Ireland and Australia

I meet Lapsed Catholics every day; I believe that the army of Lapsed Catholics are at the heart of the Political Correctness and Woke campaigns.

R23 I don't, and I really don't get it. But I wasn't raised in a church or with religion, and I inherited Irish Catholic guilt even without it, so I know the pathologies run deep.

I have a friend who is Catholic, Irish and Italian. She goes to church every Sunday. She sent her kids to Catholic school. She used to tell her son to call her immediately if a priest molests him, and she really thought she was being a great mother by doing that.

"If you think there is any chance any adult might hurt your kids, why would you take that risk?" I asked when her kids were young. (Both are now out of college.)

She would laugh nervously and agree, and then say it's just the way she knows, the church, and it's the best education, and she believes her church is different, and she also knows that's what everyone believes.

She gets viscerally angry when the subject of church-sanctioned abuses comes up. She comes to me with the news stories and she knows that I don't have any sympathy for it.

How, I've asked her many times, can you give your money to this church organization? You give lip service to opposing abuses. And you continue to underwrite those abuses and to line Vatican walls with layers of gold.

Well, aside from the raping of kids and some nuns, the Catholic church does so much good in the world!

[quote] I meet Lapsed Catholics every day;

You don't meet lapsed Protestants? Or non-practising Muslims? Beef-eating Hindus? Or secular Jews? It's happening to every religion these days, however about a billion of the world's population affiliate themselves to Catholicism where, even if the don't attend mass every Sunday, they'll get married in the church or have their kids baptised into the faith.

^ I forgot to add that in Europe, most nominally protestant countries like the UK, Sweden, Denmark are far more secular than Catholic ones like Italy, Spain or Belgium.

Sicko cult.

[quote]when the subject of church-sanctioned abuses comes up.

This is a good example of an American slant on the scandal. It's also factually untrue. In my head, I imagine someone with a redneck accent saying it out loud.

Yet the Irish still remain Catholic, r27.

"I believe that the army of Lapsed Catholics are at the heart of the Political Correctness and Woke campaigns."

R23, the PC and Woke campaigns just scream Puritanism (i.e. fundamentalist Protestantism, with very anti-Catholic roots). Even the whole cancel culture thing is reminiscent of the Puritan campaigns to destroy all remnants of Catholic art in England.

R28 By all means, give a 'factually true,' non-American perspective.

US and Irish perspectives above. UK perspective here.

Should we be posting perspectives from the Vatican City Times to substantiate the church's noble efforts to protect children?

Australian legal action.

Germany

The Ku Klux Klan is rooted in Protestantism (especially Scottish Presbyterian). Catholics were/are not only not allowed to join, but one of their original targets.

UK + United Nations perspective:

"The National Secular Society has urged the UN Human Rights Council to strengthen recommendations designed to tackle child abuse in the Catholic Church in Italy.

In a statement to the council, NSS vice-president Josephine Macintosh said abusers in the church "cannot be allowed to continue committing crimes with impunity".

Experts consider Italy's response to sexual abuse to be "one of the worst" among Western nations. Over the past two decades, just 140 of the 300 Catholic priests who have been accused have been investigated. Very few of those convicted have been to prison."

r23, Sister Helen Prejean is not lapsed.

I prefer Catholics because, unlike Protestants, they run the whole gamut of political belief. Here's an example of one prominent Catholic (Sister Prejean) attacking another (William Barr).

My grandmother was raised Catholic in Pennsylvania. She married young, her husband went off to WWII, and when he came back, he confessed he was gay (after she found him with a man in bed).

She tried to get the marriage annulled. The church said no, they need to work it out. She said no, this is not a thing we can work out. The church said too bad; your only option is to live with it. So she filed for divorce, and she was no longer welcome in her church.

She was in the hospital quite a bit during my lifetime and oftentimes a priest would come into her room. "No thank you, Father," she always said. "I'm not buying what you're selling." If they persisted, she told them she's "not a joiner" and is a non-practicing Catholic--she does not go where she's not wanted. He'd always tell her she's wanted and welcome. And she would always say: "HA!"

The church's abandonment of her really did a number on her for the rest of her life. She had been totally devout until then, attending masses in Latin every week for her entire life. And then, just like that, you're out.

We judge Mormons, Jehovah's witnesses and other cults for this sort of shit but Catholicism owns 1/7 of the world and so we can't get away with criticizing them for being a cult that has protected adult men who serially rape kids while condemning homosexuality among adult men.

The U.K. is less than 10% Catholic, r36. Did you miss my post about anti-Catholicism in Anglo-Saxon countries? Yes, acknowledge and tackle the child abuse problem, but don't start pretending it's part of Catholic practice or sanctioned by the Church. That would be indefensible and the Church wouldn't be allowed to continue existing if that was the case.

I understand that as an American, anti-Catholicism is ingrained in your DNA. I'm not trying to convert you or anything like that. I'm just presenting facts and hope you can learn to absorb them from a non-emotional, pre-biased standpoint. For example, even after the scandal, a Catholic education is still highly valued in parts on the U.S. Why is that?

[quote] … the Puritan campaigns to destroy all remnants of Catholic…

R30 Are you talking about King Henry VIII's 'Dissolution of the Monasteries' between 1536 and 1541?

KKK cartoon depicting St. Patrick being driven out of America.

No, r41. The Puritans were 100 years after Henry VIII (who wasn't actually anti-Catholic, he just wanted his way and the Church's wealth, which required a break with Rome).

The Puritans under Cromwell engaged in genocidal scorched-earth (and scorched-church) campaign of destruction against Catholics across the British Isles.

It's sort of amazing that people who believe in mythology have so much control over the rest of us. And the fights they have over minute differences among their mythological legends! Like whether that old white man in the sky actually hates people of color or merely prefers less melanin in his favored sycophants.

If I were going to believe in mythology, I think I would choose the one about Leda getting raped by a swan, then laying two eggs, one of which, when it hatched, grew up to be Helen of Troy. Now that's a myth worthy of the red shoes and pointy hat.

We live in a democracy, r44. The majority hold greater sway. If you're unhappy more Americans don't believe in Greek mythology, get to preaching like the major religions. do.

R44 Why that one of all the potential fun ones to embrace? I mean, there's the one about the guy who lives in a whale like it's a submarine. The one about the old man who survives a planetary extinction and then gets all pissy at his son and disowns him for covering him up with a blanket after he passed out drunk and naked. There's the one about the guy named Ibrahim whose wife Sirai couldn't get preggers and so she said "fuck my personal assistant, hon," and he did, and then they changed their names to Abraham and Sarah, stole the baby and banished the whore assistant. The one about the dragon with seven heads and seven horns yada yada. So much Harry Potter by way of David Lynch packed into two poorly edited adventure story collections/life manuals!

R46, those stories are all from the same book that promotes that old white bigot in the sky, and they don't interest me. And of course I don't give a shit about Leda and the swan, I just think the idea of a woman laying two eggs that hatch and grow up to be among the most consequential people in the world is as reasonable to believe as are the myths of a primitive, uneducated people in the desert thousands of years ago.

R44, R46 You need to differentiate between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The New Testament talks about Jesus Christ; the other one doesn't.

It's all mythology, R48, with some history of a civilization not my own thrown in, and I don't need to do shit with either of them.

R47 Not really. Most are from the Old Book and one ends the New Book. And each book is really made out of disparate fantasy poems inspired by different ancient men's separate bad psychedelic trips. They're really unrelated anthologized poems that were assembled together by a self-chosen team of editors who belonged to an Italian cult, selected for political expediency.

They are mostly terrible. I've read a lot of the old and new testaments. Some of the translated language is incantatory and can be involving. But without the benefit of a charismatic cult leader teaching people from their earliest years why these texts are significant to them, they don't stand up very well against literary scrutiny and they certainly make no fucking rational sense whatsoever.

My sister brought me a book of Icelandic fairytales and they're pretty nuts. One of them involves a woman inside her house who looks out the window at a boulder. Then she sees a troll. Then she realizes she imagines the boulder was a troll. Then she goes outside and there's a giant troll. And then she goes inside and it's a boulder. I expected some sort of narrative arc but that's the whole story, and honestly without churches assigning moral lessons to a lot of biblical stories, they read like this--they just happen and are batshit crazy, almost certainly inspired by psychedelic trips or spontaneous psychotic episodes.

true story- i voted for Biden and only learned he’s RC afterwards. and i’m a Catholic,

[bold] The One Where DLers Repeat 1960s Era Tropes About Catholics

Biden deliberately downplayed his Catholicism because the PR team told him to.

BTW What is Kamala?

Why MUST you say you believe in GOD to be elected? Even if you're a scientist.

We are so stupid and yielding to xtians and "faith" in general, that's why we're here today. There is no agreement of objective reality. A. fact is now, "whatever I want to believe in, in the moment"/

[quote]Biden deliberately downplayed his Catholicism because the PR team told him to.

Biden has never downplayed his Catholicism. He wears that, and his Irishness, with pride as his main identity marker.

R53 Harris was raised by a Hindu mother and went to predominantly black churches and I believe she considers herself Baptist. Her husband is Jewish. She's well diversified and therefore not a hatemonster-type Christian.

Because they're all sodomites with unpleasant accents.

[quote]a lot of Protestants consider Catholicism pure sacrilege

My bf's Protestant parents told him growing up, "We don't care who you end up with as long as it's not a Catholic girl."

So he bought home a Catholic boy instead!

[quote]That’s why people think that Joy Behar, Penny Marshall and Nancy Walker were Jewish.

Nancy Walker was neither Jewish nor Italian.

R41, I was referring to the Puritans under Cromwell who went on to destroy whatever little Catholic art there was left in England after the dissolution of the monasteries. They also got rid of the few Catholics remaining too and did lots of book burning.

A lot of today's woke is very reminiscent of Puritanism and much of the tortuous social theory and "activism" that woke is based on is a lot like the tortuous theology of the tail ends of the Reformation, with convoluted dogmatic arguments about the most obscure religious issues.

Because most Catholics are considered white-adjacent.

we'd rather control the supreme court, easier to exercise our domination of the country over decades, and we don't get shot.

-opus di

R7 - that's true. My mom, for example, doesn't really think Catholics are Christians for several reasons.

First, they don't read the Bible, according to my mom. I've heard this but don't know if it is true - but putting all your faith into your priest or cardinal and not reading it yourself is highly suspicious. Plus, the Catholic bible is different and contains additional books.

Second, their veneration of saints is considered idolatry and polytheistic- again, according to my mom. It's hard to argue with that. I can see her point. Particularly the cult of Mary.

Third, the existence of the Pope who is elected as the head of a religion and is infallible. To my mom, that's lifting a human into God-like status and is not appropriate.

I'm not saying she's right or wrong, but I can see her perspective. Obviously, Protestants protest against the Catholic church, so they're going to be anti-Catholic by nature.

Interesting background to OP's pic. JFK met with the new pope Paul VI only two days after he has been elected. Everyone was breathless based on the anti catholic propaganda in 1960 election to see if Kennedy would bow and kiss the Pope's ring. He did not. Just a slight nod. Kennedy family prelate Cardinal Cushing had privately told JFK that the new pope Cardinal Montini was gay and had a live in boyfriend. Bet he and his gay bestie Lem Billings who was on the trip had a good chuckle.

R63, those are commonly held beliefs about Catholics, but they're distortions. Only a few pronouncements of the Popes have been considered "infallible," i.e., inalterable. Popes themselves are not inherently infallible.

The Church was never against literacy or reading the Bible, and often sponsored free schools. It was, however, heavily invested in upholding the established social order, from which it reaped extraordinary wealth. The push towards universal free education came from Protestants, and Protestantism was linked to the pesky vice of independent thought (and rebellion).

The claims that Catholicism a bit polytheistic, and has a stealth female deity (Mary), are close to the truth.

The utter failure of OP to know or understand basic US history and world history is both sad and unsurprising.

The question itself is so riddled with factual error as to make it nonsensical.

It's like asking, "Since the sun revolves around the earth, why are seasons?"

R63 According to a Catholic friend of mine, it is true that Catholic people don't read the Bible. She knows all these obscure religious days of significance I have never heard about. She knows all the Catholic rules. She has gone to church all her life, and she went to Sunday school. She knows almost nothing about biblical parables. I've never been to church in my life (except weddings and funerals), but I studied Paradise Lost in college, and that piqued my curiosity and I ended up reading a lot of the Bible. So we've discussed religion and she always marvels that I know, for example, who Job is versus who Lot is, etc. She doesn't know any of that. And I asked her once how she could have gone to church all her life and not know anything about the Bible, and she said, oh, they tell us that the Bible isn't for us to read because we can't interpret it. Only the priest can. And my mind was totally blown. So, I said, you have never, ever looked in the pages of a Bible? No, she said, the priest reads selections every Sunday, though. And I said YOU NEVER EVEN LOOKED OUT OF CURIOSITY??! I kind of yelled at her because I just couldn't believe the lack of intellectual curiosity. I'm not religious and I have been curious enough to read some of the book that our whole culture is based on. No, she said, it never even occurred to me. I was floored.

Meanwhile, my dad's (totally crazy) southern baptist sister visited with us last Christmas and my father and she got into a bit of a debate about Catholicism--whether or not Catholics are Christians. My father said yes, and she said no, absolutely not. "They worship THAT WOMAN!" she yelled in a rage, meaning the Virgin Mary. "She was only a VESSEL FOR GOD."

And my Catholic friend told me she yelled at her daughter for selecting "Christian" on a college application. Her daughter said, "There was no Catholic option. We are Christian!" And my friend said, "NO!! We're Christian, but we're CATHOLIC. If you select Christian, they'll think you're an idiot evangelical!"

The ignorance and anti-Catholicism on this thread is mind-numbing stuff. You have posts like r63 and r67 using their "mom" and "friend" to really "ask for a friend" while perpetuating the same ridiculous and debunked tropes.

R68, I am R67 and all I did was share my actual experiences. I'm certainly open to hearing other things from other people. My Catholic friend grew up in Pennsylvania and everything I wrote it true. My Catholic grandmother who married the gay guy and had to separate from her church also was originally from Pennsylvania, and everything I wrote earlier about her story is true, as well.

My southern baptist aunt is from North Carolina, and what I wrote about her freaking out at the idea Catholics are Christian because "they worship THAT WOMAN" is true. She also, by the way, has believed since Hillary Clinton was First Lady that Clinton ate human fetuses when she traveled to China in the 90s, because her megachurch told her that, and what they tell her is true.

All this is bizarre to me and so I accept that it's bizarre to you. What I wrote is not meant to be anti-Catholic. (Although I blatantly admit to anti-Catholic bias because of the church's history and the ongoing protection of child rapists as a rule, regardless of what publicity has gone out...more and more revelations keep coming through the press globally, and I think the Catholic organization has a cancer that has metastasized across the globe. I don't understand why they can't just commit to condemning and excising all the rapists, but they will not do it, and for that, I'm opposed to the church. I know Catholic people are unusually charitable and giving, and I respect that. I revile the church patriarchy. It's as sick as Trump is.)

R68 - no, Bill Donahue, we're just stating what some believe and why there is anti-Catholic sentiment. I actually don't see anything being debunked at all.

Stop clutching your rosary. It's called a discussion - it's not an attack on Catholicism.

Typical Catholic.

Sometimes there's a thin line between cult and culture. Patriotism keeps a country together until it becomes an aggressive fanatacism. Shared spiritual exploration and collective rituals can bond a community, and unfortunately doing so often forges such an inward-looking worldview that everyone on the outside feels like an enemy. That's when it's a cult. If you can't look at your religion objectively when, for example, your religion says "we condemn raping kids" and then always in practice hides and shelters child rapists when they are caught, then you're denying reality and acting no differently than a Scientology member. You can believe in the spiritual tenets, the myths and the dogma and still be willing to criticize what warrants criticism. That's a healthy way of being. It'll keep you from drinking the Kool-Aid when all your friends who drank it are dropping dead but you feel like they did it, and they're you're people, so bottoms up.

OP, I suspect from the lunacy in this thread, the answer to your question has been answered.

OP As of today, there HAVE BEEN two Catholic President-elects, whereas there HAS BEEN only one Catholic President.

R7 Wrong. The. Original Church now is The Roman Catholic Church. Which split from the Eastern Church which is the Orthodox Church. The Great Schism happened because the Western Church changed the nature of The Trinity wheras The Eastern Church kept and maintain it to this day. The Roman Catholics added non Bibilical traditions like The Assumption of Mary and The Immaculate Conception much later on.

R71 I have talked to bugfuck crazy Roman Catholics who never talk about the abuse scandals. As if they didn't happen. That is one of the great evils of Roman Catholicism......their hypocrisy.

The immaculate conception myth has correlates in other world religions, such as Buddhism, in which Siddhartha's mother supposedly dreamed that a white elephant entered her body through her flank and then woke up to discover she was pregnant. White elephants were divine figures, and so it's akin to God non-sexually planting a baby in Mary's womb. All these people adapted stories from one another or else merged them.

I agree with the person above who said that it's nuts that people war over different version of the same story. It's like a writer's workshop or book club gone ballistic.

R74 - that's also part of what is considered so hypocritical is the parsing of language among Catholics. Worship vs. veneration. Whatever - you're still praying to people other than God. And that somehow the Church can determine a saint to be prayed to and venerated - presumably through God's approval?

Infallibility was widely accepted and now it is said to be misinterpreted. The buying of indulgences which Pope John Paul II re-introduced. The concept of purgatory and that people can pray for you and sway your way into Heaven.

All religions have some crazy stuff - but Protestants have a very wary eye of all of this and for good reason. In contrast, Protestants look so simplified and stripped down.

Enter crazy, and now we devolve...

[quote]I don't understand why they can't just commit to condemning and excising all the rapists, but they will not do it

There you go again, r69. You just can't help yourself.

R79 I don't try to 'help myself' if by helping myself you mean not mentioning the humongous elephant in the room. I'm not Catholic. I don't pretend that there's no there there. That's not a thing non-Catholics do when it comes to sweeping Catholic sex abuses under the rug.

R22 That's not correct. The SCOTUS is not entirely Catholic. The Catholics on the court are Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Barrett. However, Breyer and Kagan are Jewish, and Gorsuch is Protestant.

Interestingly, when Scalia was on the court along with the others in the pic below, it was the first time in US history that the court had no protestants.

R81 I was being a bit hyperbolic for effect, but the court is Catholic dominant, which seems really odd to me as a secular person, because it seems to give a religious order a majority decision over the country's justice system. We know that Barrett's faith and I believe Kavanaugh's faith have a great deal to do with their interpretations and rulings, and it's just sort of an odd feeling to have no religion and realize law enforcement is dependent on the magical beliefs of a few people who belong to the same club.

[quote] In my head, I imagine someone with a redneck accent saying it out loud.

And in my head, I imagine you as looking like this:

Would America accept a Vajrayana Buddhist president?

[quote]The ignorance and anti-Catholicism on this thread is mind-numbing stuff.

As they've been saying about gay people for decades...we don't hate catholics; just their entire belief system.

Nancy Walker was Italian? Her Wikipedia article doesn't give any suggestion of Italian ancestry—probably some British Isles descent. She was also born in Philadelphia.

WRONG.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

DONALD J. TRUMP

JOE BIDEN

ALL CATHOLIC! THAT MAKES THREE CATHOLIC PRESIDENTS OF THE U.S.A.!

Trump's heritage is protestant but he only worships money

The Catholic Church was pro-Hitler and stole Jewish babies and baptized them Catholic. It’s a pedophile cult.

[quote] Nancy Walker was Italian? Her Wikipedia article doesn't give any suggestion of Italian ancestry—probably some British Isles descent. She was also born in Philadelphia.

Her father’s last name was Barto and it was written about in her obituary. She said that everyone thought she was Jewish because she played so many Jewish characters when in fact she was an Italian-American.

R85 I don't hate the Catholic beliefs system. Actually, of all the Christian sects, the magical woo-woo rituals are the only ones that really appeal to me. Dressing up in fancy garments and swinging incense around > dancing with a killer rattlesnake and blabbering in gibberish.

Again, I'm cool with the magical beliefs and the proclivity for fancy, overwrought things and totally not in any way tolerant of the rapey thing.

Nancy Walker: the fake Jew. lol

Valerie Harper based Rhoda on her Italian stepmother.

Can we talk about the Jesuits?

Oh autistic child screaming in all caps: Trump is NOT Catholic and never has been. He was raised and confirmed in the Presbyterian faith, but he now lists himself as a non-denominational Christian.

Trump knows nothing of Christianity. He probably paid someone to take his catechism classes at that Presbyterian church.

He and Epstein may have snorted coke off some kid's ass together with a bishop or two.

I grew up in New England in the 80s/90s and even back then people who were overtly religious (Catholic or Protestant) were considered really weird. There just wasn't much religion in our daily lives. In CT, "religious" people were considered simple and unintelligent. It was only in my adult life when I traveled to different regions of the US that I realized how religious this country really was. Holy shit! It was mindblowing to experience how much religious beliefs direct people's daily lives. It was completely foreign to me, coming from New England.

R90, the Wikipedia article says Nancy Walker's father's stage name was Barto but he was born Steward Stephen Swoyer; her mother was Myrtle Flemming Lawler. I'm not seeing anything Italian or even "ethnic" there beyond some British or Irish descent. Her father's Swoyer surname goes back at least a couple of generations before his birth, so unlikely it was Anglicized from something.

OP, there is a long history of anti-Catholicism in this country going back to the Colonial Era. It's an inheritance from Britain.

Al Smith, the Governor of New York, was the first Roman Catholic to run for President. A Democrat, his religion cost him the election.

Americans forget that the KKK reached the height of its popularity in the 1920s. Primarily anti-Black, to was also anti-semitic and anti-Catholic. The KKK was popular in northern states because of the influx of Eastern European immigrants, primarily Jews, Italians, and Irish, as well as the Great Migration of Black people from southern states northward to those states.

In the first half of the 19th c, as Irish and German immigrated here, prejudice against them rose with attacks on convents and Catholic churches.

The Kennedys downplayed their Catholicism as much as used it to win votes. Of the two Catholics elected as POTUS, Biden is the more devout. Kennedy's Catholicism was more tribal than devotional.

On a personal note, my grandmother, Irish-American and Catholic, was denied admittance to a Girl Scout-like organization in upstate NY around 1914/16, because she was Irish Catholic. Another relative, who became somewhat famous in the mid-20th century, changed his middle name from Aloysius to a more WASP-sounding one to achieve success with a law career.

The Irish were arguably the most despised immigrant group in American history. It's shocking how much they were hated.

[quote] The Roman Catholics added non Bibilical traditions like The Assumption of Mary and The Immaculate Conception much later on

The Orthodox believe in the Assumption. They call it the Dormition. Regarding the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Orthodox consider it superfluous rather than erroneous.

My Lord Burghley and I have much to discuss with you on this matter.

R63, is correct. The lack of Biblical reading and knowledge among most Catholics; the lack of the born again conversion through faith in Jesus experience among Catholics; the veneration of Saints; seeking forgiveness through a priest instead of just going to God; the condoning of alcohol use; the infallibility of the Pope; the scripted liturgy instead of spontaneous worship and prayers; the belief that works are necessary for salvation instead of faith in Jesus alone; and the pagan-seeming rituals of Catholicism are all reasons why Protestants tend to object to Catholicism and view it as nonChristian. To many, It looks nothing like the biblical first century Church.

Someone said that Catholics tend to talk about the Church the way Protestants talk about Jesus. It seems like they place cultural Catholicism often a real faith in Jesus Himself.

I hate protestants, it’s because of them that American society and politics is so conservative. Catholics are more interesting, except for their abortion and homosexuality views.

Protestants worship in clapboard shacks in some bumfuck backwater, while red neck preachers shake rattlesnakes. They drink grape juice because they’re afraid of alcohol, but they sin nonetheless by being racists and homophobes.

There have been great Catholic saints like Dorothy Day and Francis Assisi and then terrible people as well. The Catholic Church is the church of extremes. Gays should like it, it's the drag queen of churches.

[quote] Protestants worship in clapboard shacks in some bumfuck backwater, while red neck preachers shake rattlesnakes.

Oh?

R105 I think that Catholics in general tend to have a more curious and intellectual view of the world than Protestants, who by contrast tend to be more hardline, ask-no-questions types. Catholics are also more gay-friendly than most Protestant denominations. At least they acknowledge the reality that sexuality is not a decision you make (which many Protestants still seem to think, even in the 21st century—especially Evangelicals). The chastity stuff in the Catholic Church is admittedly absurd.

The Jesuit approach to education certainly is superior to the Betsy DeVos, Jesus-by-way-of-capitalism approach to anti-education.

[quote] Catholics are also more gay-friendly than most Protestant denominations.

Most bizarre comment of the week.

Because most practicing Catholics are insane.

[quote]I hate protestants, it’s because of them that American society and politics is so conservative. Catholics are more interesting, except for their abortion and homosexuality views.

Protestant countries vs. Catholic countries, aka North America vs. South America

I'll take Protestant, thankyouverymuch.

OP, until fairly recently, Catholics were often derogatorily called “papists”. That’s the main reason.

[quote]Protestants worship in clapboard shacks in some bumfuck backwater, while red neck preachers shake rattlesnakes.

Oh, hi!

You really have to make a distinction between Mainline Protestant and Evangelical Protestant. The two are completely different.

Mainline Protestantism is nearly extinct

[quote]OP As of today, there HAVE BEEN two Catholic President-elects, whereas there HAS BEEN only one Catholic President.

Technically, there has only been one of each, since Biden is not President-elect until the Electoral College votes.

[quote]The immaculate conception myth has correlates in other world religions, such as Buddhism, in which Siddhartha's mother supposedly dreamed that a white elephant entered her body through her flank and then woke up to discover she was pregnant. White elephants were divine figures, and so it's akin to God non-sexually planting a baby in Mary's womb. All these people adapted stories from one another or else merged them.

The immaculate conception has nothing to do with how Jesus was conceived. It is the belief that Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.

Until Trump , the SCOTUS consisted entirely of Jews and Catholics.

[quote] The Irish were arguably the most despised immigrant group in American history. It's shocking how much they were hated.

So?

[quote]I hate protestants, it’s because of them that American society and politics is so conservative.

Protestants spearheaded the abolition movement and other liberal causes in the 19th century. Mainline Protestantism (which is hardly extinct, as someone said upthread, and in any case was powerful in the last century) is very liberal. The Episcopal Church is very liberal. Meanwhile you've got many rightwing Catholics like Bill Barr, the heirs of Father Coughlin, making common cause with "evangelical" (i.e. fundamentalist) Protestants. Learn some history and don't generalize.

[quote]Protestants spearheaded the abolition movement and other liberal causes in the 19th century.

Yeah, those Southern Baptists -- America's largest Protestant denomination -- were all about justice for blacks.

Protestants were also the driving force behind Prohibition.

My imaginary sky god is better than your imaginary sky god.

I don't give a fuck about some of the shit Protestants have done in the past, I would still NEVER live in a Catholic majority country. Ugh.

OP is forgetting President Bartlet. It was interesting that Sorkin chose to make his ideal President Catholic. (And nobody watching had a problem with it.)

The very term you use, asshole at R123, indicates that the Northern and Southern Baptists split over the issue of slavery. "Largest Protestant denomination" is irrelevant; this was a regional issue, not one dividing "Protestants" generally from Catholics (who were not numerous in the US then; in any case Irish Catholics often sided against abolition, e.g. in New York, for economic reasons). The abolitionist movement was full of Protestant clergymen and used the language of American Protestantism. Learn some history.

R7: “… Christianity started with the Catholic Church …”

That’s a very Roman Catholic perspective, one with which Orthodox as well as Protestant Christians would disagree. The RC Church claims – with some justification – that they represent the most continuous thread of church leadership from the days of the early church, but the early church was not Roman Catholic in the modern sense of the term.

The biblical first century Church was very different from Roman Catholicism, in dogma and practice

The Armenian church is the oldest Christian church in the world.

[quote]I prefer Catholics because, unlike Protestants, they run the whole gamut of political belief.

R38, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Protestants range from the most liberal to the most conservative. I’m not sure Episcopalians and Evangelicals agree on anything except that Christ is the son of God … and some Episcopalians probably take even that with a grain of salt (and a martini).

It’s true that individual Protestant denominations tend toward one side or the other, but among individual members of the denominations, there’s a lot of variability. For example, I assure you that lay Episcopalians are, on average, notably less liberal than the leadership of their church, which is why there’s an Anglican church in the US.

In general (not directed at R38 personally), the level of ignorance about Catholicism, Protestantism, Christianity and European/American history in this thread is amazing. Some people are clearly dredging up unexamined prejudices from their upbringing. Others are using this as yet another opportunity to vent their bile at Christianity or at religion generally - something they never seem to tire of doing.

Mainline Protestants (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregational) look down on Evangelicals as hillbilly trash.

[quote]On a personal note, my grandmother, Irish-American and Catholic, was denied admittance to a Girl Scout-like organization in upstate NY around 1914/16, because she was Irish Catholic. Another relative, who became somewhat famous in the mid-20th century, changed his middle name from Aloysius to a more WASP-sounding one to achieve success with a law career.

Southerner here—one of my family's neighbors when I was growing up was Catholic, and she told us about the KKK burning crosses in her family's yard when she was a child.

Catholics were also routinely turned away from college fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s, so they founded several of their own (even though the Church officially frowns on secret societies).

Mainline Protestants are a small and waning segment of modern Protestant Christianity, and their voice and influence on Christianity is so faint as to be almost invisible today.

A growing number of young Catholic priests consider themselves evangelical or charismatic and work closely with Protestant conservatives

R134 = Evangelical from Dirtsville, USA

What about Lutherans?

What r2 said.

[quote] Southerner here—one of my family's neighbors when I was growing up was Catholic, and she told us about the KKK burning crosses in her family's yard when she was a child.

When I was a kid and lived in suburban Georgia in the 80s, the KKK marched by the Catholic church on a Saturday so we couldn't go to mass.

When I lived in the rural Deep South about a decade ago, I met black and white people who didn't know Catholics were Christian.

In any church (whether Catholic or Protestant) you'll basically find old people. The church has become irrelevant to many, at least in America. Those who lead don't really inspire, they judge, and that's not good.

Like so many of our cultural problems, fundamentalist Protestantism lies at the core. Very few of the original thirteen colonies allowed Catholics. Catholics are seen as inherently foreign and “worship statues.” They are UnAmerican and swear allegiance to the Pope. I had a ‘tard tell me with a straight face that he had “gone to Mass with his girlfriend.” It was interesting and all, but an “obvious knock off of Christianity.” Lol. Catholics are considered exotic in places like Arkansas and North Carolina.

OP, R63 & R103 offer you ample evidence as to why we have had only one RC POTUS thus far.

Does Biden’s being Catholic mean that he’ll keep those lying, hypocritical scumbag Evangelicals out of the White House?

Protestants are horrified that Catholics don't read THE BIBLE!!! Catholics are amused that so many protestants believe it is the literal truth. I'm a lapsed Catholic but was taught in Catechism classes by the nuns if you believe every word in the bible you've, basically, got rocks in your head. Sure, St Paul's letters, the Ten Commandments and The Sermon On The Mount are the real deal, but most of the Bible is best read as allegories and don't trust the New Testaments too much, as they were written by oppressed people skirting around their Roman overlords.

R143 - so don't believe what you read, but believe what we tell you to believe instead. Only priests know the real deal - you can't possibly interpret it the right way or get it right?

Got it. How is this so much better? It's this dogma and lack of agency that Protestants rebelled against in the first place.

Yeah, it's been so much better for America that the Protestants take every word in that book literally.

R145 - only a few Evangelicals are literal interpreters of the Bible. It's a small percentage of Protestants.

However, I will admit, the Puritans didn't get America off to a good start. And the real crazies and threats today are Evangelical Protestants. The Catholics have morphed into the low-key, more fun and tolerant religious group - but that's only the past 20-25 years.

Women make up more than 50% of the population, way more than 50% of the voting public and there still hasn't been even one elected President.

Catholics love to view themselves as victims of predjudice- they are not.

Someone earlier in this thread said Joy Behar and others were Italian but people assumed they were Jewish. There was a genetic survey done about 10 years ago that said the group of non Jewish Europeans that Ashkenazi were most closely related to were Italians.

Protestants idolize the Bible.

WASPs

R150 - would we call that idolatry in the religious sense? Seems to me that Catholics have that covered in spades with all of their saints and statuary.

If you liked Ulster in 1982 you'll love this thread.

The fact that Tackymericans don't consider the Catholics as Christians, show how ignorant they are.

R154 - well, Catholics don't think Protestants are true Christians either. So, there ya go.

r155 not true. Catholics consider Protestants as Christians, because their faith is an excision of Christianism. This is the difference between knowing the history of the world and being an ignoramus, like most americans.

R156 - no, it comes down to a belief of what you believe a true Christian is. Protestants in the US don't consider Catholics to be un-Christian as you suppose.

You're just making baseless comments to bash America.

yes they do, R157. Especially you Yeeevangelical types in flyoverville.

Catholics believe Protestants have part of the truth (the amount depends on which denomination) but do accept Protestant baptism as long as the formula (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is used with water. (Unitarians are out.) Protestants are an ecclesiastical community but not a full church in that they also lack apostolic succession and do not possess all the sacraments. Eastern Orthodox are considered true churches, all their sacraments are valid and their teaching essentially correct in the present view of the Catholic Church.

Protestants, for all their faults, make for much better countries with a much better standard of living.

I'd rather live in the US than Mexico.

[quote] but not a full church in that they also lack apostolic succession and do not possess all the sacraments.

Anybody who still gives a shit about something like this in the year 2020 is just hopeless.

When/if Mayor Pete becomes President, what will he be considered? He was born Catholic, raised Catholic, went to a Catholic High School, but is now an Episcopalian, I suspect because of the Catholic Church's views on same sex marriage. Would he be considered a Catholic or Episcopalian President, or will no one care because he would be the first openly gay President?

I don't think Pete is particularly religious, he's just playing along. You can't get elected in this stupid ignorant country unless you talk about Jesus.

Ridiculous for a first world nation, but that's America for you.

I should add that if any politician started talking about God and Jesus in the UK or Europe, they'd be considered a complete nutjob and run out of politics on a rail.

r160 Like France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg... I rather live in one of those countries than in backwards US, with their guns, corrupt police, lack of a universal health system or sophistication, and now, undergoing a banana republic electoral process.

r163 You are so right. I can't picture an European leader taking the oath of office on a Bible.

[quote]Catholics believe Protestants have part of the truth (the amount depends on which denomination) but do accept Protestant baptism as long as the formula (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is used with water. (Unitarians are out.) Protestants are an ecclesiastical community but not a full church in that they also lack apostolic succession and do not possess all the sacraments. Eastern Orthodox are considered true churches, all their sacraments are valid and their teaching essentially correct in the present view of the Catholic Church.

And don't get us started on the Mormons.

Mormons are batshit freaks. They're basically Scientologists with better PR.

R161 is an angry Prot who deep down knows the Catholic Church is correct.

[quote] You can't get elected in this stupid ignorant country unless you talk about Jesus. Ridiculous for a first world nation, but that's America for you.

The Constitution is neutral with respect to religion but the American people have been religious ab initio.

[quote] C’mon, Catholics literally believe that Eucharist and wine turn into blood and flesh and then they eat it.

There is history behind that. It’s poetic. The story of Abraham and Moses. Do you know about that?

Traditional religious Faith is still a major part of UK politics, and certainly huge in Central and Eastern Europe

[quote] is an angry Prot who deep down knows the Catholic Church is correct.

I'm a person who is living in the 21st century and does not belong to any religion, nor was I raised by religious parents.

I wonder how old some of you guys are and what region of the US you're from to still care about stuff like this.

Not really r172. Certainly not in the UK. Maybe Eastern Europe but nobody really gives a shit about Eastern Europe.

Here is one part of the poetry of the Bible, IIRC, written over 2000 years. It’s why Catholics eat the body and drink the blood of Christ, the “Lamb of God”.

Abraham was a pagan (possibly late 2d millennium BC) who was accustomed to sacrificing animals to his various Gods. The animals had to be unblemished. He couldn’t sacrifice an animal that had a disease, for example. That would insult the Gods. After the ritual killing, a portion of the sacrifice was given to the priests, and the family kept the rest, for a feast.

Abraham was called by God to abandon his pagan ways and worship him alone. In due course, God tested him. He told him to sacrifice his eldest son, Isaac, in the same manner as he had previously done with animals, on Mount Moriah.

After Abraham built an alter, and drew his knife to slit his son’s throat, God stayed his hand. He was told to sacrifice a ram, a male sheep, instead.

Centuries later, Moses was the leader of the Jewish people. You are probably familiar with the plagues of Egypt. The final plague was after Pharaoh threaten the first born of every Jewish family. Instead, Moses instructed the Jewish families to sacrifice a lamb, and use its blood to paint above their doorsteps, so that the Angle of Death would “Passover” their homes. Only the Egyptian households lost their sons that night.

Centuries more later, the Jews had settled in the Levant, and built their temple in Jerusalem, on Mt. Moria - the very place of Isaac‘s “near sacrifice”. The Temple is the only place that Jews could sacrifice animals to their God.

Jesus, the Son of God, celebrated his last Passover in Jerusalem. During the meal, he first referenced the bread and wine being his body and blood. He was captured and sacrificed there. When he lay dying on the cross, he was taking too long to die, and a Centurion was ordered to break his legs. Before he could do so, Jesus died. He died without a single broken bone, unblemished.

We see the repeated themes in all three stories: God offered up his firstborn son as a sacrifice, in the same manner as he had asked of Abraham and as he protected Moses. This is why Jesus is called “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”, and why we eat and drink his body and blood.

There are more connections that I don’t recall at the moment. I think of it as poetry, written by many people, over centuries.

Mike Dukakis was a practicing Greek Orthodox but when he set his sights on political office suddenly he switched to Methodist. Caste traitor Bobby Jindel set his Hinduism aside and became a born again. We’ll probably never see VP Harris participate in a Hindu puja, but you can be sure we’ll see her hoot and holler at some black church.

R162 No one is born Catholic; people are baptized Catholic.

My grandmother had a fear that one of her children might bring home a nice Catholic boy or girl to marry. She considered Catholicism to be the religion of servants. She also made said servants wear uniforms and change them at dusk for dinner.

I sometimes miss the good old days.

I'm sure granny would be repulsed that her grandson is a big 'mo. I wish she were here to know how popular her grandson's ass is. Ah, the good ol' days.

r178 said the descendant of the poor and criminal shit excreted by Europe...

Because American Protestants are evil bigots.

[quote] So?

Sew buttons!

"Why do you suppose Irish-American Catholics are all such social climbers? Is it because their mothers were all maids?... Oh, I don't mean you."

--Gore Vidal to Dominick Dunne at a luncheon

The impression I've gotten from many Protestants is that they think Catholicism is too "hocus pocus," and some equate the church's practices to black magic or something of that nature—all the rituals, recitations, incense, candle burning, holy water, praying to the saints. There are admittedly a lot of ritualistic, quasi-pagan practices in the Roman Catholic Church that are not found in Protestant denominations—that being said, it's sort of the pot calling the kettle black when you consider the fact that many Protestant sects have their own brands of craziness (i.e. speaking in tongues, holy rolling, getting "slain in the spirit," snake-handling, etc).

Why are the Protestant haters claiming that Evagelical Christians are somehow representative of all Protestants?

There are equally crazy charismatic Catholic sects in the USA where people engage in the same activities as the Evangelical Protestants:

[quote] Catholics who practice charismatic worship usually hold prayer meetings outside of Mass that feature prophecy, faith healing, and glossolalia. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a Catholic church describes charismatic worship as "uplifted hands during songs and audible praying in tongues."

[quote]that being said, it's sort of the pot calling the kettle black when you consider the fact that many Protestant sects have their own brands of craziness (i.e. speaking in tongues, holy rolling, getting "slain in the spirit," snake-handling, etc).

Those are only the redneck trash Protestant churches.

All religions are cults, and have no place in modern society. Why people choose to live their lives based on what some primitive people came up with thousands of years ago is completely illogical. .

Uhh ... when did Abraham ever hang around with Moses, r171?

I think "Xavieer"@ r175 is missing the point.

It doesn't matter that the Bible can endorse silly miracles that aren't true. The Bible is full of silly miracles that aren't true — we already know that.

The point is that it is foolish of you and all Catholics to believe in transubstantiation at every mass just like it's foolish for anyone to believe everything in the Bible!

I’m not Catholic but went to a Catholic school and was side eyed by a Mennonite when I was introduced as a Georgetown undergrad. For some reason that’s something I’ve always remembered... the way she said, [italic]isn’t that a Catholic school?[/italic] you’d think I worshipped the devil.

R188, see R175 for exposition.

R189, someone upthread commented on transubstantiation, and I responded to the subject that person raised, and explained that it needs context to better understand it. That is the point. Context. It matters. That’s my point.

And dear Lord, R189, stop judging. It’s ugly.

I thought this was interesting when I learned it:

Most Catholic Church’s are designed in the for or a crucifix. The arms are typically right before the alter.

At the Second Avenue Deli, R188.

[quote]The arms are typically right before the alter.

Oh, dear.

Oh STFU with your oh dear shit. One wrong letter in a word and you're a pissant schoolmarm. Fuck off.

[quote] Most Catholic Churches are designed in the form of a crucifix.

Millions of Anglican and Baptist churches are the same

Oh, what a bitchy bad sport you are, r195.

Yes there's more than a few cantankerous bad sports here.

But I ignore them and am just thankful we ave our anonymity. It can be hellish in small chatgroups when the bitches go attacking others

The grammar trolls are the worst.

[quote] the worst.

People concerned with grammar aren't as annoying as those who choose to change the meaning of words and pointlessly impose four-letter words into sentences.

Is there anything more Datalounge than a discussion about Catholicism morphing into an argument about the ethnicity of Nancy Walker?

Blow it out your prisspot ass r200.

Dlers are the only people on Earth who remember Nancy Walker.

There's only been one, so far

Al Smith, 4 time governor of New York, was the nominee in 1928. He was Catholic, and he lost. Some blamed his Catholicism and it may have been thought for a while that a Catholic was unelectable.

Another question might be, why have we never had a Jewish President? People seem to think it's so important to have a woman, or a person of color. But not a Jewish person.

Because most Americans hate Jews. Actually, most people in general hate Jews.

R179 No problems as her brother Harald was a confirmed bachelor. But I did have to marry and spit out some children back in the 80s to get my share of the cash.

[quote]Most Catholic Church’s are designed in the for or a crucifix.

No, there are four spelling mistakes. "for or" should be "form of" and "Church's" should be "churches". That's unforgiveable. Please don't type when drunk. Thank you.

Oh dear. I just noticed R196's corrected quote.

[quote]Please don't type when drunk. Thank you.

Please don't post

[QUOTE] People seem to think it's so important to have a woman, or a person of color. But not a Jewish person.

oh gross. All US foreign policy will be centered around Israel. And can you imagine all the black coated haredim suddenly oozing out of their diamond dealerships and getting into politics? horrible.

r208 should get ass raped by a pack of horny priests.

[quote]R208 should get ass raped by a pack of horny priests.

Just being helpful, dear. Maybe R192 doesn't know the difference between "churches" and "church's". He certainly can't be bothered to check what he's written before he presses "post".

Maybe r213 should stop giving a shit about perfect spelling and punctuation on a bullshit internet forum written in conversational, colloquial English. This isn't a doctoral dissertation, dear.

[quote]Most Catholic Church’s are designed in the for or a crucifix.

Don't be ridiculous, dear R214. This sentence is difficult to understand because it has so many mistakes.

“For or” = “form” obvious autocorrrectuon failure

People who overlook the story just to point out a grammatical error are all about CONTROL and are usually single. Just dismiss those gals.

[quote] …the story…

It's hard to see a coherent 'story' in this thread, R217, because most of us are dredging up old hatreds from the 1980s and the 1880s and 1680s.

It's easier to abandon this thread (just like all those millions of Lapsed Catholics have abandoned their Catholicism).

Catholicism is more intellectual and encourages introspection and questioning, not just blind devotion. Mother Teresa famously had a "crisis of faith".

[quote] Catholicism … encourages … questioning,

There's been so much questioning over the last decade that a million Catholics have become Lapsed Catholics.

^ The Church is actually growing, r220.

Not nearly as fast as Pentecostal Christianity

Between 2000 and 2017 there was an increase in the number of US Catholics, however in 2019 the number of Catholics decreased by 2 million people. I think organized religion makes people crazy.

I vehemently disagree. But you do you, bro.

[quote]If I, for example, told a bunch of Americans the fact that less than 1% of Catholic clergy (still too many) have been implicated in child abuse scandals, they wouldn't believe it. People in France, Italy or Germany received it differently and saw the scandal for exactly what it is: a bunch of criminals who don't necessarily reflect on a billion-strong denomination worldwide.

The Catholic pedophilia scandal has nothing to do with the number or percentage of perpetrators, R19. It never did. It's about the coverup within the church; the priests who were shuffled from parish to parish, the closing of ranks within the clergy and the church hierarchy, and the silencing, shunning and discrediting of victims and their families for decades.

And before you call me anti-Catholic, I was raised Catholic. I know damn well what went on. The church covered it up, so it most certainly does "reflect on a billion-strong denomination," whatever that means. The "bunch of criminals" includes the many bishops and cardinals who covered it up for decades and let priests get away with it.

As an addendum to R175, my understanding is that the Muslims believe that God called Abraham to sacrifice his other son, Ishmael. It’s is why Christianity and Islam and Judaism are all “Abrahamic” religions, because they all spring from the same source.

Also, the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran also involves a conflict over different sects of Islam. There was a power play, way back, and two different men claimed to be the legitimate descendant and heir of Mohammad, and leader of their cohort. As it happens, one such line had no male children, so they merged again; however, the was a problem.

There is supposed to be some messiah or something to come from that line, at a certain generation, and the two sects believe in the same line, but have a different “count” on where we are in that generational line, due to that temporary split.

Though, the rift is about power, not really about religious differences. As it always is. It’s not religion that is the problem, it’s people. People are just awful.

R225 - I think it's also about the scale of the problem and how many decades it went on with no prosecutions. And also, the amount of money that was paid out to victims in hush money. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars from the donations of church goers.

The Catholic church hierarchy believes they are a political and governing body among themselves, separate from laws of the nations in which they reside. It's disgusting - but then they want to influence the laws (abortion, divorce) of these countries.

The last post that was actually on topic was about 20 posts back

[quote]Also, the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran also involves a conflict over different sects of Islam. There was a power play, way back, and two different men claimed to be the legitimate descendant and heir of Mohammad, and leader of their cohort.

And they're still fighting over this 1400 years later.

R224 Can you point to a study or where you're getting your data from?

Why should he bother, r231? When we have his gut feelings to go on?

At the risk of being called a prisspot:

A cross and a crucifix are not the same thing. The plain cross is the symbol of Christianity of all denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant churches, Orthodox churches and any weird sect that chooses to call itself Christian.. Protestants generally use only the plain cross behind the alter and elsewhere.

A crucifix is a cross with the crucified Jesus on it. Crucifixes are associated with Catholics and Catholicism. In a Catholic Church, it will generally be a crucifix behind the altar.

Both Catholics and Protestants often wear plain crosses on a chain around their necks, but if you see a crucifix on that chain, you can be pretty sure the wearer is Catholic or at least comes from a Catholic family.

Oh, dearing myself. That should read, "... in a Catholic church [no capital "C"], it will generally be ..."

R233 - well, thankfully Jesus wasn't hanged or guillotined.

R235 I laughed loudly reading your post lol!!!!

R233 Most (but not all) Catholics who wear a "cross", have a corpus (body) of Christ on it. That's the difference between a crucifix and a cross.

Naval Admiral Rickover chose to name fast attack submarines after cities, and ballistic missile subs after states, because it created a political support system. Politicians from those areas would always be invited to the launching.

Anyway, the Navy chose to name one sub after a city in Texas, Corpus Christi. Well, the Catholics nationwide had a fit! Despite knowing that the military has its place, and that there are “just wars”, the Catholics didn’t want a war machine named “Body of Christ”. And so, that is how the sub got the very long name “USS City of Corpus Christi”.

*Rickover also saw to it that major parts of his subs were built in CT, RI, and MA, racking up 6 Senators who wanted to keep the jobs.

R238/Pierre, that is just about the manliest job ever, anywhere.

Thanks, R239.

I loved that job. It was mostly office work, but I would often be called down to the “yard” to view something or another on a submarine. If the weather was fair, I’d sometimes go to the yard just to enjoy the weather.

I had a Department of Defense “secret” clearance level in the 1980s, but every secret thing I knew then, can now be found in Wikipedia.

Here’s some more trivia: when the USSR had a submarine fleet, the USSR and US navies used to play cat and mouse games. They’d try to sneak up on their opponent, without being sensed. Sometimes they would collide. There was one US sub that came in for repair, after hitting an “undersea mountain”, but I heard it had a huge titanium streak on its side. That means it actually collided with a USSR sub, because they made at least one of their subs out of titanium.

R233 many anti-Catholics like to push the idea that the crucifix is too grim or violent to display, and attempt to use it to paint Catholics as unnecessarily morbid. While there is some strand of truth to that, the reality is that life in general is morbid, and there is more evidence of that in any Bible than there is in an image of the crucifix itself. The Catholic response to this has always been that the crucifix, in all of its ghastliness, serves as a more potent reminder of what Jesus endured on the cross.

Wait, Protestants think the crucifix is morbid? That's the central point of the Christian faith.

R244, sort of, but isn't the Resurrection really the central point of Christianity? Yes, Christian churches of all kinds teach that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but - to put it crudely - isn't Christ's resurrection, ascent into heaven and promise of eternal life the main selling point of Christianity?

I think both Protestants and Catholics would agree on the importance of the entire Holy Week sequence of events. It's more that Protestants as a rule like to focus on the promise and hope of the Resurrection and not quite so much as Catholics on the suffering of Christ on the cross. Both believe both things are absolutely critical to Christian faith. It's more a matter of how much focus goes on each.

And Irish Catholics at that! Their stern form of Catholicism is possibly more palatable for American Protestant tastes.

I doubt they'll ever let an Italian in there. They'll likely fear it'll be the Sopranos or Mob Wives in the WH. 😂

R246, the Evangelicals are going to support whoever the Republican candidate is, even if he looks and sounds like Vito Corleone (although Michael is a far more likely modern politician).

Nobody else cares whether the candidate is Protestant or Catholic, much less if they're of Italian or Irish descent. In fact, in my experience the people most likely to object to an Italian candidate would be the Irish!

R247, you're probably right. I was really only partially kidding by repeating something my dad used to say about Italians = mob, which was more a thing in his earlier lifetime/previous decades. I also would not vote for someone based on shared ethnicity/religion either.

Modern Italian Americans are indistinguishable from any other white ethnic group these days.

Does anyone know where the Protestant hatred for alcohol and cigarettes comes from? Catholics will drink and smoke without any problem. I know a Catholic priest who can hold his liquor better than most barflys.

R249, mostly, but there are still enclaves that are very Italian, with all the ethnic baggage.

Protestant work ethic, R250.

R249 must live in the Midwest because that is not true in most of the Northeast.

r253 I live in the Northeast and the Italian-Americans around here are just like everyone else, except for a few pockets in the NYC metro area. If you go to New England they're totally assimilated.

I swear some of you must live in the past.

What the fuck is "ethnic baggage?"

Soeone above said Irish are still Catholic and it's not true in the religious sense. However, when the entire country was run for so long by the Church Catholicism becomes cultural. In Ireland being Catholic is now cultural. The overwhelming majority do not believe the teachings of the church but is impossible to live a completely secular life as the church still run 96% of the schools, there has been constant problems of them not admitting children who have not been baptized so parents go along with baptism and have a big piss up afterwards. Preparation for communion and conformation happened in schools so your kid would be the odd one odd if you objected so everyone goes along with that and has a big piss up afterwards. Funerals are done with the assumption that the family wants a Catholic mass, open casket, wake, burial in a Catholic cemetery. Crematoriums don't exist in most parts of the country and to go against all this would be a giant headache so families go along with it all even though they don't actually believe that what is said at a funeral mass is true. Hospitals are still affiliated with the church so the fuss and the scene you'd have to make to say get the crucifix off the wall, don't send a priest in here, don't give him the last rites is against the nature of Irish people who hate a fuss above all else so you go along with it. And many people by the way who don't think about this stuff a lot sort of forget that some of these things are Catholic it's so entrenched that people just think 'that's what you do'.

But the cracks started in Ireland when a bishop called Bishop Casey was revealed to have fathered a child with an American woman. My grandparents were absolutely beside themselves. Around taht time the country was still devoutly Catholic enough that the people voted against divorce for the 2nd time. Then throughout the 90s the scandals started to come out. Not just sexual abuse but physical abuse, the sale of babies from mother and baby homes to rich Americans, the abuse of women in those homes, the discovery of babies of children dumped in septic tanks. People themselves felt free to open up about the beatings they got in school from Brothers and Sisters. You have the Ryan report and the Murphy report. Brutal reading by the way, the cover ups were just shocking. Movies like The Magdalene Sisters, Song for a Raggy Boy and Angela's Ashes came out. People stopped seeing their mothers who had 14 children and no support from alcoholic husbands as martyrs and started to say that their lives were tragic and unacceptable. And I suppose is all culminated with the people voting for divorce (with so many restrictions no-one bothered), gay marriage, then abortion and then finally divorce without the silly restrictions.

It's also important however to note that even in the 'glory days' of Catholic Ireland many people did not believe all this but they were voiceless. My grandfather and many men of his generation stood outside the church door talking sports and never went inside. My mother grew up in a working class area where people would put the statue of Mary out when the priest came and then shove her back in the cupboard as soon as he was gone! People knew that the priest living in a mansion with a housekeeper and land in the countryside was wrong when they were raising a dozen kids in a 2 room house but how could they voice this then? The church set up a system where the priest was all powerful in the community and could never be challenged. Then when people fell away from the church and pointed that out they said 'no you're only imagining that and if you felt that you it's your own fault'

There is a difference between an altar and the verb alter. The latter means to adjust or change, like one alters a dress or a course. The table-like structure in a church is an altar.

r257 it's a single letter, probably Autocorrect. You grammar trolls are such OCD mental cases.

[quote] The church set up a system where the priest was all powerful in the community and could never be challenged. Then when people fell away from the church and pointed that out they said 'no you're only imagining that and if you felt that you it's your own fault'

R256, where did these worldly priests come from? Where did the nuns who ran the laundries come from? Where were the abusive brothers who taught in the schools from? How did the terrible people land on Ireland shores? Or were they Ireland’s own?

Ireland is such a tiny country (pop. 3 million), with fewer people than most large cities. I don't know why they keep overstating their significance to the Catholic faith. They're a drop in the bucket, not important at all.

In the US, it was mostly Protestant until an influx of Italians and Irish, both Catholics. They were also impoverished, generally, so they were not liked. Both because of their religion, and also their lack of money and related poor social skills.

To ensure that America doesn't enact any more human rights violations on its minority populations than it already has. Yes, there have been only two Catholic US presidents, and I as a gay man would like to keep it that way.

R260 They spread the faith all over the world through immigration. There are 30 million Americans who claim Irish heritage.

R259 Yes they were Ireland's own. There's a whole history of who was sent to the priesthood, who got to become a nun. It wasn't because people got a calling. You had to come with a dowry to be a nun, Priests were usually the scholarly brother in large rural farming families.

That's crazy, R12. I'm half Jewish on my mom's side so Jewish and I thought for SURE Joy Behar was Jewish. She just screams annoying Jewish mother and even her mannerisms remind me of my grandmother. I'm actually shocked she's Italian.

It may be because I'm not from NYC and therefore sort of impartial but I can hear a very distinct difference in the accents of Jewish NYers, Italian NYers and Irish NYers of a certain age. I don't hear it in younger people but then there aren't many younger working class people making it in entertainment these days so perhaps the accents haven't died out but anyway Joy sounds Italian to me so I always assumed that's what she was even before I saw her maiden name.

Big East Coast cities still have Little Italy’s and Irish sections. The Italians or Irish there aren’t always completely assimilated.

My nephew thinks he’s Irish because he has an Irish last name. Actually, he’s almost half German, almost half Italian, and just an eighth Irish. Not that I’m going to tell him.

r264 Joy Behar is ethnically Italian but she grew up in Brooklyn surrounded by Jews, so that's where the confusion comes from. She had a lot of Jewish influence in her life.

[quote]Big East Coast cities still have Little Italy’s and Irish sections. The Italians or Irish there aren’t always completely assimilated.

What decade are you posting from?

Right, Woodside is still very Irish although immigration laws changed in the late 80s and there hasn't been a wave of Irish or Italian immigration since. These days there are Irish enclaves in Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver rather than NYC, Philly, Boston and Chicago. I have 3 aunts and 5 uncles who were part of the last great wave of Irish to arrive. If you were working class in Ireland in the 80s you had 3 choices - dole queue, US embassy queue or boat to England. Then after the 00s recession another wave of immigration, myself part of that one. I went to Canada first and got a Canadian passport to get into the US but I now have 4 first cousins in Sydney, 2 in Vancouver and 3 in London.

Protestantism is a scam.

They are all scams dear and all made up to help us deal with the scourge that we know we will all die. Some are far more hostile to femininity and by extension homosexuality in mean that others.

The female role is reproduction is powerful. A woman eggs are formed in the womb and she is born with all the eggs she will have in life. So the egg that made you was not only in your mother when she was born it was inside your grandmother. Religion subverted that and shoved into the first pages of the bible that 'man comes not from woman but woman from man' and made up a bit of nonsense about ribs to support their cult of masculinity. A dear childhood friend is a Dr of Reproductive Science at a British university. The little I've learned from him alone shows me how robbed we were to have been denied the complete understanding of the wonder of life and filled with nonsense fairytales about ribs and dust and 7 day creation.

R6 That hatred for Catholics is ingrained in Northern Irish Protestants.

It doesn't matter where what your nationality is, but if you are Catholic as far as they are concerned you're and agent of the Whore of Babylon. Many of them went to the USA, and their rampant fundamentalism is on display right across your southern states. In fact the term hillbilly comes from these protestant Irish settlers, supporters of King Billy of Orange.

Interestingly, COVID cases and deaths in Northern Ireland are running at 4 times the rate in the Republic, basically because the government in N Ireland is run by fundamentalist Protestants, who also happen to be huge Trump supporters.

Dumb and morally bankrupt.

The most "Irish" city in the U.S., per capita, is Butte, Montana—surprising when you consider it's a small town of around 40,000. It's also very Catholic (there is literally a large statue of mother Mary overlooking the city from a mountain peak) and very politically blue. It ended up this way because so many of the immigrants who landed there in the early-19th century to work in the copper mines happened to be Irish. There was also a significant Chinese population, but the Irish won out in lasting power. I have family in Montana and have been to Butte many times; historically speaking, it's a fascinating place full of beautiful old buildings, many of which are unfortunately in dire straits. I'd love to see it revitalized, but who knows if that will ever happen.

[quote] R272: [R6] That hatred for Catholics is ingrained in Northern Irish Protestants

An American is at a pub in Ireland when he struck up a conversation with an old man. The old man quickly asks if the American is a Catholic or a Protestant. Not wanting to cause trouble, the America says he’s an atheist. The old man replied, “Ay, but are you a Catholic atheist, or a Protestant atheist?”

Teddy Kennedy and Tip O’Neil made sure the Irish were give preferential immigration treatment.

American here who was raised by a father who was raised Catholic but was never a practicing Catholic in his adult life and a mother who was raised Congregational (Protestant) but has never been religious, so I never grew up with any religion. In New England, religion isn't all that important and it's considered kind of tacky to discuss religious beliefs in mixed company.

I never realized how batshit religious the US really was until I was an adult and traveled extensively throughout the South and the Midwest, I lived in Virginia for a year and North Carolina for two years. When I was in conversation with people and they started talking about God and Jesus I was really taken aback, that is practically unheard of in the Northeast. And they would come right out and ask me what religion I was, another taboo topic where I'm from. When I told them I'm not religious at all and wasn't raised with any religion either, they were shocked and from then on treated me differently.

My experiences with Southerners and Midwesterners really opened my eyes to how there really are two different Americas.

I should've said that my experiences all happened in the 2000s and 2010s so it was all very recent. I know that with this being DL, it often could mean that it happened many, many years ago but that's not the case with me, just to clarify.

I interviewed just outside Salt Lake City once, I had lunch with a group that had hired in from other states and were not Mormon. They said that the Mormons were really nice at first, but that changes when it become clear that you are not converting.

Everybody is more comfortable within their own clan, whatever that is. Since I was a teenage, I’ve lived in Gayborhoods and can’t imagine it otherwise.

Oh, that company outside SLC made rockets and/or rocket fuel, and blew up a few years later.

I went to tour the SLC Mormon temple. The guide says they were just closing. Then she grabbed me by my coat and said she would run through the place with me, pointing stuff out. I though that was very nice.

My Mom was a devout Catholic, but impressed upon us the immorality of being anti-semetic. I never heard a racist or bigoted word in my family. I was really lucky.

R274 The truth of that statement is that it was unfortunately the question asked before getting a bullet in the head in Northern Ireland. Becoming an atheist didn't mean shit. You were for life what you were born into agree, disagree or vehemently reject all you will.

God, you could grow to love, it, God-fearing, God- chosen purist little puritan that, for all your wiles and smiles, you are (the dank churches, the empty streets, the shipyard silence, the tied-up swings) and shelter your cold heart from the heat of the world, from woman-inquisition, from the bright eyes of children. Yes, you could wear black, drink water, nourish a fierce zeal with locusts and wild honey, and not feel called upon to understand and forgive but only to speak with a bleak afflatus, and love the January rains when they darken the dark doors and sink hard into the Antrim hills, the bog meadows, the heaped graves of your fathers. Bury that red bandana and stick, that banjo this is your country, close one eye and be king. Your people await you, their heavy washing flaps for you in the housing estates - a credulous people. God, you could do it, God help you, stand on a corner stiff with rhetoric, promising nothing under the sun.

© Derek Mahon, Ecclesiastes, 1979

I always liked that Irish poetry brings violence into the domestic sphere. It's dark but it's real and it hits hard.

He was preparing an Ulster fry for breakfast When someone walked into the kitchen and shot him: A bullet entered his mouth and pierced his skull, The books he had read, the music he could play. He lay in his dressing gown and pajamas While they dusted the dresser for fingerprints And then shuffled backwards across the garden With notebooks, cameras and measuring tapes. They rolled him up like a red carpet and left Only a bullet hole in the cutlery drawer: Later his widow took a hammer and chisel And removed the black keys from his piano - Michael Longley

Patrick Rooney, aged nine, was killed By a tracer-bullet where he slept. Boys and girls in his class resumed Their games soon after: In and out go Dusty bluebells, Bangor boat’s away

I bury beside him Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone. A packet of Woodbines I throw in, A lucifer, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Paralysed as heavy guns put out The night-light in a nursery for ever; Also a bus-conductor’s uniform – He collapsed beside his carpet-slippers Without a murmur, shot through the head By a shivering boy who wandered in Before they could turn the television down Or tidy away the supper dishes. To the children, to a bewildered wife, I think ‘Sorry Missus’ was what he said.

When they massacred the ten linen workers There fell on the road beside them spectacles, Wallets, small change, and a set of dentures: Blood, food particles, the bread, the wine.

Before I can bury my father once again I must polish the spectacles, balance them Upon his nose, fill his pockets with money And into his dead mouth slip the set of teeth.

Kamala is in a pretty good position to become the first female person of color, to become President.

R260, consider the countries most Irish emigrants went to: Great Britain (primarily England, which has always had a large Irish population) and the US.

It’s not hard to see, then, that Irish Catholics came to have an outsize influence on Catholicism in the English-speaking world. For much of the 19th century Catholic = Irish in the minds of most Protestant British and American people. In America, the association of Irish with priest (and cop – funny how that works) was a famous stereotype through much of the 20th century.

Also, for many years, the Irish-dominated American Catholic Church was a cash cow for Rome.

I’m not sure the influence you talk about extends beyond the Anglosphere. There has never been an Irish Pope, for example, nor even an English-speaking Pope.

12th century Pope Adrian IV was an Englishman from Hertfordshire.

[quote]There has never been an Irish Pope, for example, nor even an English-speaking Pope.

Likely never will be. The American Church, especially, is in such disarray that the rest of the Catholic world pities them.

This is purely anecdotal but living in the US all my life over the past 50 years I dont actually know a single Catholic person I grew up with that still goes to church except for weddings and funerals. And even that is changing. Their kids who are all of marring age are all opting to have the ceremony outside of the church in a natural setting without the religious hoopla surrounding them. It's basically fading into the background of secularism.

I really don't understand how all those Evangelicals have seemed to go the other way forcing religious judges down our throats and putting up with outrageous a lying, thieving, selfish, narcissist in the White House just to get their bible thumping way. They seem to have gotten more extreme over the years.

Church weddings have been declining for awhile now. Having a wedding in a non-religious venue is very common.

No the religious orders have just about died out in Ireland. There have been years when not a single man or woman joined the priests/nuns. There will not be an Irish pope. Also remember that because they are white, the biggest 'other' about the Irish was that they were Catholic. Being white adjacent to use the DL term Italians and Puerto Ricans had the handicap of the brown skin that differentiated them from WASPs without needing to look for the religious difference.

R285 It's a old joke at this point about sending yor kids to Catholic school if you want them to become atheists but it's true that those raised Catholic not only fall away from Catholicism but they fall away from all religion. The Irish and Spanish and French and American Catholics have not converted to other Christian denominations, they have mostly become agnostic and some atheist. Believing there may be something, who knows, but it's not represented by ANY organized religion. The evangelicals have managed to retain their flock and expand it and when you find the odd one who has broken away they are likely to have converted to another denomination, moved to a liberal church or one of those song and dance prosperity churches, some even convert to Catholicism! To however they indoctrinate children (I have no familiarity with that culture) it really 'works' much better than the Catholic way.

Rome also made a fortune over the years selling annulments to American Catholics. This practice was almost unheard of in Ireland and Italy but I guess American Catholics living in a country where they could divorce legally and where the protestants around them could too were not going to accept that divorce was not an option. There were prominent families where the couple had been married 20 years and had 4 children and they could get an annulment by donating 20K to the church even though it was obvious they didn't meet any of the criteria for a legitimate annulment. Meanwhile poor women who were being beaten to death by husbands and kids who were being abused were told to go back home, say a few Hail Marys and 'offer it up' [the suffering that is] My grandmother was one of those women and when my grandfather was throwing bricks in the windows of the family home after the police removed him for pouring boiling water on his wife and beating his son the church did absolutely nothing. That's the kind of shit that turns people into hardcore atheists. A lot of famous Catholics visited S America and saw the squalor and poverty and fell away from the church as they could no longer stand to see the wealth of Rome and even parish priests while their flock were living like that.

Again, according to Pew Research. The Catholic faith is growing and in better shape than all Protestant denominations save Evangelical Pentecostals. The Episcopal Church is but a husk of its former self. Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans have no significant congregations left in any country. The only group doing worse than mainstream Protestantism is atheism. Most people, even if they don't practice or attend church, still don't want to be labelled atheist.

Catholicism in the USA get converts! It doesn't in Europe. But in the USA former protestants convert and people convert for marriage which helps the numbers. Immigration from Latin American helps too.

LOL at people thinking that just because people stop identifying as Catholic.

[quote]Catholicism in the USA get converts! It doesn't in Europe

In Europe, people are born into their religion, evangelism is a New World phenomenon.

Catholic schools are still thriving. Why is that?

Very few Catholics are holy-rollers.

R292, the most obvious reason is that they thrive in areas where the public schools are perceived as inadequate, which includes most of America's largest cities. While Catholic (and other Christian) schools are not free, they are usually cheaper than religiously unaffiliated private schools.

I'm not Catholic, but if I lived in Philadelphia or DC, I would certainly send my (non-existent) children to Catholic school before I sent them to the local public schools.

What r294. Public schools in US cities are SHIT (for reasons we won't get into) so a Catholic school is a much better alternative and cheaper than other private schools.

What r294 SAID, I mean.

A Catholic, especially Jesuit, education is probably the highest standard system you can get in the western world.

No, it is not.

r298 = Homeschooled.

r297 is yet another DLer who is living in decades past.

[R6] a lot of Protestants consider Catholicism pure sacrilege for their veneration of Mary and the saints.

Agreed; I remember even as a kid (and I'm in my 50s) some kid from a "born again" family saying that Catholics were going to hell because they were idolaters (I, on the other hand, was just going to hell because....well, you know...). That said, I think a lot of that has changed now the Catholics have joined Evangelicals in their quest for a puritanical society (see Barr, Bill), but other religions have traditionally looked down on Catholics for not reading the bible, worshipping Mary & their nonsensical displays of piousness (won't eat fish on Fridays - which use to be every Friday, not just Lent, love of bingo, wearing mantillas, etc.)

[quote]a lot of that has changed now the Catholics have joined Evangelicals in their quest for a puritanical society

That's not true. Catholics are the only Christian denomination to vote Democrat.

[quote]but other religions have traditionally looked down on Catholics for not reading the bible, worshipping Mary & their nonsensical displays of piousness (won't eat fish on Fridays - which use to be every Friday, not just Lent, love of bingo, wearing mantillas, etc.)

None of these is true. Also, you've got it the wrong way. It's Catholics that look down on Protestants. Also, I'd say Pope Francis is slightly better known than the Billy Grahams, Pat Robertsons and Jerry Fallwells of the world.

The Catholic Church's position on Mary is pretty gray. She's more than just a saint but less than God. Yes, Catholics can pray to Mary. It doesn't help that the only times the Pope has spoken "infallibly" have been in reference to her.

It’s very true that there is a vocal minority of American Catholics who are almost indistinguishable from Evangelicals because they have meshed their faith to the Republican Party and made abortion and gay marriage the defining features of their faith. Just about every online Catholic community is like this.

And let’s face it all religions “look down” on one another it’s a feature not a bug. It’s silly to say no it’s the Catholics who look down on Protestants. It goes both ways. Everybody thinks their the beliefs of other religions are daft and nonsensical and possible heretical. Of course all Christians laugh at flying horses and virgins waiting for bastards who blow themselves. Mormon beliefs are always good for a laugh. Many people are just too close to the beliefs they were indoctrinated in as kids to see the silliness and humor.

The US and the Vatican didn’t have diplomatic relations with the US until, Jan,1984, FWIW.

R304, agreed. There wouldn't be much point in a religion that said, "our beliefs are good and true, but so are the completely different beliefs of all these other religions." If a religion has no faith in its own truth, why would anyone join?

[quote]their nonsensical displays of piousness (won't eat fish on Fridays - which use to be every Friday, not just Lent, love of bingo, wearing mantillas, etc.)

WTF does bingo have to do with "nonsensical displays of piousness?"

The word is piety, btw.

I've never even heard of a mantilla and had to look it up. Never in my life have I seen someone where one of those, not in the US, anyway.

I was just joking about the bingo thing - but in the mid-west where I grew up, yes, some older women wore mantillas (some still do today, but it tends to be old ladies). At the time, this behavior was considered to by showy and mid-westerners don't do showy, however, evangelicals & their holy roller/in your face ways have changed all that.

R307, Jacki Kennedy wore one for the funeral procession of her husband. The one where John-John saluted. But that was pretty-Vatican II.

[quote] And let’s face it all religions “look down” on one another

That is true to some extent but the Catholic Church has a tier-like relationship with other religions. I think the Eastern Orthodox Churches are the closest. Their leaders revoked their excommunication of each other a while ago, I think under JP II. The Episcopalians are also close, IIRC

[quote] [italic] The Catholic Church makes a distinction between full and partial communion: where full communion exists, there is but one church; partial communion, on the other hand, exists where some elements of Christian faith are held in common, but complete unity on essentials is lacking. Accordingly, it sees itself as in partial communion with Protestants and in much closer, but still incomplete, communion with the Orthodox churches. It has expressed this distinction in documents such as Unitatis redintegratio, the Second Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism, which states: "... quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic Church. ...Men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic Church even though this communion is imperfect".

[/italic]

“Ecclesial communities” is the term that the Catholic Church uses for those Protestant denominations that lack apostolic succession.

The Protestant work ethic and separation of church and state built the best countries in the world.

Under certain circumstances, the Catholic Church allows priests to be married. Surprised?

Episcopal priests are allowed to marry. If an Episcopal priest decides to convert to Catholicism, a d remain a priest, he is allowed to do so and keep his wife.

My cousin, Virginia Mary (of course) became a nun. After a couple decades of that, she quit and married a Priest, who had also quit in order to get married.

[quote] The Protestant work ethic and separation of church and state built the best countries in the world.

The Church of England is the established church in England. The Kirk (Presbyterian) is the national church of Scotland. Norway, Denmark and Finland all have state supported national churches. The Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany receive state funding.

[quote]Episcopal priests are allowed to marry. If an Episcopal priest decides to convert to Catholicism, a d remain a priest, he is allowed to do so and keep his wife.

And even have sex with her, since as I understand it there's a dispensation from the vow of celibacy for such men. Thus, I suppose you could have a Catholic priest with a pregnant wife. In fact, you'd expect pregnancies as long as the wife was young enough; it's not like they can use birth control. Imagine the look on the faces of the others at the prenatal classes when a pregnant woman arrives with a partner in a black shirt with a Roman collar. What a sitcom that would make! "Yes, Father Dad"

But, if the wife dies, he must remain celibate thereafter. The dispensation from the vow of celibacy is good only for the existing marriage at the time of conversion.

Anyway, that's how I understand this rather peculiar situation. Is my understanding correct?

R375, while I cannot say with certainty, it stands to reason that a married man is expected to do his duty and procreate.

Re: prohibition on remarriage - I wonder if there are any Priests who game the system by bouncing back and firth between denominations for the purpose of marrying and remarrying as a widow, then returning to Catholicism.

Not all Priests take a vow of poverty. Some have outside income (e.g. inheritance, book sales) that they are allowed to keep. They all get a pittance in retirement, which must be hard on their families. My Monsignor, the family Priest, drove a Cadillac that was gifted to him by a wealthy parishioner.

I would expect that remarriage by a Priest after a divorce is prohibited. The Catholics actually don’t have a problem with divorce, per se. it’s remarriage after divorce that is considered to be sinful because the original marriage is considered to be inviolable.

I cannot think of a human society that didn't organise the universe in some spiritual way. Today's First World secularism is a new development, relatively, spurred on first by the Enlightenment and then by the Industrial Revolution and increasingly rapid developments in science.

I'm not so sure that a solely left-brain approach to live is de rigueur for a successful society. Most spirituality stems from a right-brain perspective, which is also where a good deal of our creativity and imaginative capacity resides.

That "white bigot in the sky" bullshit is just that: an absurd bit of reductionism of a major philosophical as well as magical framework. I wouldn't take everything in the King James at face value (it's the version I prefer for the language), but there is a good bit of shrewd, and sometimes bitter, observations on human life and foibles.

The Protestants by and large also held that if you were successful, particularly materially, it was because God loved you and approved you. Catholics believed no such thing. The literal interpretation of transubstantiation was another difference: literal or symbolic.

I'm not so sure that a moral canopy of sorts that transcends politics and sociopolitical trends isn't a benefit. Certainly, it has its drawbacks and isn't particularly easy to follow - but it's precisely because of humans' carnal, narcissistic, what's in it for me, tribal nature that it is difficult, and its difficulty is part of its, well - not charm exactly, but potency.

A huge amount of the greatest art in the Western canon, both visual and musical, was inspired by that white bigot in the sky. He looks different in Africa and amongst Asian Christians, by the way.

The bigotry is in us, not your little white bigot in the sky meme, mate.

"For the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools in the house of mirth." Eccl. 7.

[quote] R317: The Protestants by and large also held that if you were successful, particularly materially, it was because God loved you and approved [of] you.

This is also a common Pagan belief. Ancient Rome and Greece believed this, and charitable giving was often motivated to appease the Gods and remain in their good graces, rather than out of altruism.

(Despite the cultural differences, human nature being what it is, I have to believe that some Pagans were nonetheless motivated by compassion. Perhaps there were so much abject poverty everywhere that the wealthy were inured to the emotion? OTOH, perhaps this was part of the appeal of Christianity, with its emphasis on community and charity being more aligned with human nature?)

[quote]The Protestants by and large also held that if you were successful, particularly materially, it was because God loved you and approved you. Catholics believed no such thing. The literal interpretation of transubstantiation was another difference: literal or symbolic.

Prosperity gospel is a Protestant concept and largely informs attitudes in America, for the most part. I've noticed it's very different from nominally Catholic countries I've lived in like France, Spain and Italy.

R297 I work with a woman who sends her daughter to a Catholic school. The reason is she thinks public school in her town (a safe, quiet suburb) is going to be a bad influence on her daughter, an only child who's a bit spoiled and overprotected. She and her husband drive the girl, who's 13, to a town15 miles away, and back, every weekday, and many weekends, to go to the school and attend sports (she's a cheerleader). The school is no better than a public school, and the idea that this Catholic school is safer and more sheltered than the suburban school is stupid. But the woman went to a Catholic school herself. They spend about 8K a year to send her there.