DL Protestants, tell me about your churches

Mostly I just heard about what deviants the priests were and that if they weren't pedophiles, they were raping nuns and killing the babies they wouldn't abort before birth. Also, every time I saw the pope or any church personnel, I always wondered how they justified their red slippers, satin dresses, and the church's vast fortune with the teachings of Jesus, which said to sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. Also, priests who died of AIDS while the church did everything possible to condemn gay men. I thought they were a cult, and I still think so. The only reason the current pope is making positive noises about gay people is he knows if they don't get up to speed with current morality, the church will die. Everything they've taught since the beginning were lies designed to control populations politically.

OP never met an Episcopalian. Not surprising, his type world not get invited to the country club.

Growing up Jewish in Manhattan I was vaguely aware that there were different types of Protestant but always thought it was sort of like Reform, Orthodox and Conservative Jews or different orders of Catholics (Jesuit, Dominican). It wasn't till high school that I became aware that there were significant differences.

Jewish and Catholic friends who grew up in places like Rhode Island, Long Island and New Jersey report similar experiences.

There just weren't all that many white Protestants

It seems the Episcopal, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Lutheran denominations in the US are fairly hip to modern times. Their priests/pastors are educated seminarians. Methodists are a mixed bag depending on the region - but recently they seem keen on being viewed as a contemporary choice to attract new members (at least according to their marketing.)

Episcopal churches tend to look like lace curtain Irish parishes which they inspired. Presbyterian churches tend to be very plain--little ornamentation and Presbyterians like to point that out. Quaker meetings are plainer still. The currently liberal denoms like the UCC and the Unitarians tend to be like the Presbyetrian in design, simple often pseudo-early American. You might get something a little more modern with the Methodists or even the Lutherans. The non-denom megachurches tend to look like shopping malls.

"did you grow up jealous of our beautiful Catholic churches, and our centuries of rich artistic tradition?"

Sure, OP, I'm sure all others raised on other religions were just wishing they were raped by the clergy!

I grew up Methodist in a small, Southern town. Our church was downtown, right next to the Baptist church. While our church was nice and had some really lovely stained glass and woodwork, even the Baptist church next door was more elegant and gothic. We left that church when I was about 15 (long story), and for some reason began visiting Presbyterian churches. Whichever poster talked about them being plain is so right...I'd never heard of that being a thing before. My parents settled on another Baptist church and architecturally it was much newer and quite inferior to the Methodist church I grew up in. Of course, now all of the more traditional Protestant churches have lost congregants in droves for the non-denominational (or much less traditional, but still denominational) churches. The traditional churches finally wised up and some have created services to cater to this niche. The link below shows another Methodist church in a town a couple of hours away from my hometown, and their "NewRoom" service has the wood backdrop and fairy lights that a lot of these non-traditional services are known for. To me, that backdrop looks like a beer garden, but whatever brings people to church, I guess. I do like the liturgy, pomp, and quietness of a traditional service in pews, myself. The traditional sanctuary in the church below is similar to the one I grew up in.

R4, the hipness is not working. All the liberal branches of the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Lutheran denominations are losing members hand over fist, the Episcopalians most of all. All have conservative versions (Anglican denominations in the US for the Episcopalians) that seem to be growing. I'm sympathetic to the progressives but getting hip didn't seem to work for mainstream Protestants. I'm Catholic but I try to only attend Jesuit parishes (which weirdly seem to be growing in the US. I guess progressive Catholics are fleeing to them.)

I'm enjoying this thread 😀

I grew up Anglican (Church of England). Believe me, there were no rattlesnakes or jumping around. Everything was orderly and calm.

Raised Episcopalian before any "modernization" was carried out in the US (circa ~1971 or so). Called bullshit on Xtianity at age 14, refused to have anything more to do with "church" at that time, and have never looked back.

HIGH Episcopalian. full professional choirs, multiple orchestras and flowers and incense that cost as much as my monthly rent for each service

Who has the better fashion sense? Catholics or Episcopalian /Anglican? They all swish.

The church I remember going to as a kid was some sort of transportable building.... AKA a doublewide

We didnt have rattlesnakes, wish we did that would have made the services far more entertaining! I would have loved that.

I do vaguely remember women wearing floral dresses and lots of polyester, and salads of some sort, could well have been gelatin!

Not a lot of feverish jumping or running down aisles.... that would have been more entertaining too

What's the weirdest church service you've attended? Mine was at a hillbilly Old Time church. Everyone shaking hands with everybody else before it started took forever.

I once went to an Anglican service in Sydney that was the Maryest thing I’d ever seen.

Catholics have this weird sense of superiority - oh, I'm Catholic - and that somehow people are supposed to be in awe or jealous of their cult.

Nope. The way they say it so declaratively - "I'm Catholic!" - as if it intones anything.

I recall the tale of a Church of England (= Anglican = Episcopalian) bishop sitting next to a Roman Catholic bishop and remarking to his colleague how much he admired the Catholic liturgy of the Mass. His Catholic colleague responded, ‘ah yes, but you Anglicans have the music’. I was raised an Anglican and while I enjoy the richness of the Catholic rite, without the accompanying richness of the Anglican choral and hymn singing traditions I find Mass to be unsatisfying compared to Holy Communion. Also, the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer lends a certain majesty to an Anglican service in spoken English that I find well above the Catholic version although, to be fair, the latter tends to rely more heavily on direct translation from Latin and sounds to my ear more prosaic as a result.

As a lapsed Catholic I can attest that almost every church built in that dreadful mid-century modernist style is hideous. Some look like spaceships readying for takeoff.

Another refined Anglican here. No drama.

You can keep your refinement. Give me a rousing musical Baptist church in Harlem any day.

[quote]You can keep your refinement. Give me a rousing musical Baptist church in Harlem any day.

In God's house there a re many rooms.

Stay in the refined living room please. We will gather in the large warm kitchen!

My church is a 12th century cathedral which changed hands when popery was defeated during the Reformation, and all traces of superstition (you know, except for the belief in a supernatural omnipotent entity) were wiped out.

The cathedral was saved from desecration, reportedly by the craftsmen who had worked on the building and saw it as a monument to their own work and that of previous generations. Instead of destroying the building, it was agreed that three separate congregations would be allowed to partition the building to act as 3 separate parish churches. The “partitioning” was rather halfhearted, and the integrity of the building was maintained. It’s a special, peaceful, but occasionally spook place to sit and think in.

[quote]Catholics have this weird sense of superiority - oh, I'm Catholic

I sort of feel they're right to feel that way. Most of the "God hates fags" rhetoric in America comes from Protestant preachers. Catholics as a whole tend to be more progressive, better educated and more likely to vote Democrat.

It's the One True Church after all.

[Quote] Most of the "God hates fags" rhetoric in America comes from Protestant preachers. Catholics as a whole tend to be more progressive, better educated and more likely to vote Democrat.

True. Protestants are more proselytizing. The other meaning of the word catholic is all-embracing.

"Here comes everyone!" James Joyce.

Catholicism a cult that has been using fear to control idiots since medieval times. I grew up in a very fundamentalist Baptist church. I was told every Sunday that J was going to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. It took me decades to get over the mind games. I despise organized religion.

What an original response, R29! The best part of religion/spirituality is not fear, it's love and connection. Even most of the "bad old religions" have that somewhere in them. Sorry you did not experience it with the Baptists.

R30.is oblivious to the fact that Catholics supported Trump in huge numbers.

Your ALL pharacies I’m the end!

My favorite service? AA funerals. The food, the booze the theatrics. I have some friends from a previous job that attended the churches. I was raised Southern Baptist and our shit was nice. It was barely even a church. It was a procession of people trying to outdo each other.

Back to the funerals, my friends and I could talk and debate Bible. So I visited their churches and went to the funerals if it was a family member that my friend was close to. So I wasn’t on vacation. But some of the better ones had three pastors, fainting, the wonderful singing and church officials I had never seen.

Weddings are optional. Funerals are mandatory.

I am protestant (northern baptist) but I have always admired cathedrals. I first became interested in them after reading Pillars of the Earth in my early 20s. One of the my favorite vacation moments of all time was visiting Canterbury Cathedral a few years back. It was a vision. And thinking of everything that's happened there is mind blowing.

I went to one church from birth up until I went to college. It is one of the oldest continually operating churches in Connecticut. Because of that it had a decent endowment and a nice building. In particular we had a massive organ. To this day one of the biggest I've ever seen. We usually got to host all the large interchurch gatherings just because so many people liked hearing it.

I loved it growing up but as you can probably guess it's a very traditional church. I go to a more modern church now. Shorter services, people are less dressed up, worship is more fluid.

R31, 50% of Catholic voters went Trump, 50% went Biden. Approximately. Since there are a lot of Catholic voters I guess that 50% is a lot.

Catholics in the US have no natural party. The official teaching is anti-abortion but also anti-death penalty. There are progressive Catholics, reactionaries and everything in-between. Biden, Pelosi and Cuomo are Catholic as are Santorum and Barr. They are increasingly Hispanic with all those political contradictory positions. They are decent statistically on support of gay marriage. They don't fit into easy categories politically like Evangelical Protestants or mainline ones. With that brief statement you show you are the ignorant one. R31.

R31, 2020 Catholic vote. Majority for Biden. Both 2016 and 2020 the difference was only a few points among Catholic voters between Democrat and Republican candidates.

Is the OP's smug chauvinism supposed to be cute?

Catholic Churches are Lie and Child Rape factories.

R34 Fuck off Troll. Catholic cunts LOVE Dump.

R36 WW

R37 did you read the link? Because it reinforces r34's point. Literally the first sentence says most prefer a Dem

R37, the source you cite says Trump loses among Catholic voters when matched with major Democratic ones. Read it. It's early than the Gallup poll, which says the same thing.

Catholics have a conservative and a liberal wing. They're not monolithic in belief, behavior, or voting patterns.

No, OP. No.

I grew up wondering why the Catholic churches had those cheesy statues everywhere and why, oh why, anyone would care about them. Same thing with the beads. I mean... grow up.

It's also messed up that Catholic crucifixes all include a dead body. That is very, very messed up.

[quote] It's also messed up that Catholic crucifixes all include a dead body. That is very, very messed up.

Don't forget our penchant for cannibalism. We eat the body of Christ and drink his blood as well!

I wish someone would explain where the entire concept of popes, nuns, and celibacy can be found in the scriptures. My partner grew up Irish Catholic and says he thinks Peter may have been the first 'pope', but has no idea where the idea came from.

Episcopalian in SoCal. All the music and frilly frocks, none of the Mary.

With few exceptions, such as in Maryland, a state founded as a Catholic refuge, most Catholic churches in the US tended to be plan brick boxes with crude embellishments, a reflection of the fact that their parishes tended to be poor. St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York was an anomaly and was also unusual for being the first such church built with an injunction against gargoyles, which the parish thought were associated overmuch with superstition. Waves of Italian immigrants with artisan backgrounds during the 1900s coincided with gathering wealth among Catholic communities overall and a third generation of rigorously correct Archeological Gothic and Florentine Renaissance churches were erected in major cities. Many of these are indeed splendid structures, although perhaps lacking the architectural innovation associated with Episcopal and Christian Scientist churches, which went in for the shingle style and other American avant-garde movements.

An exception, of course, is the Latin-American regions of the southwest and California, where the early missions and pueblos dominate ecclesiastical architecture.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Protestant vote for Trump ran at over 80%

[quote]Catholicism a cult that has been using fear to control idiots since medieval times. I grew up in a very fundamentalist Baptist church. I was told every Sunday that J was going to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. It took me decades to get over the mind games. I despise organized religion.

Is r29 okay? Blaming the fire and brimstone fundamentalism he experienced as a Baptist on Catholics? You can't make this shit up. Catholicism is largely more intellectual than Protestantism.

Google any random list of the most beautiful churches in the world. Most are Catholic, then Orthodox, with only a few Protestant churches making it.

Episcopalian, AKA Catholic light, all the ceremony half the guilt. The best thing about being Episcopalian is where there's 4 there's a 5th. We're ok with drinking, but wearing white after Labor Day is a mortal sin

[quote] Google any random list of the most beautiful churches in the world. Most are Catholic, then Orthodox, with only a few Protestant churches making it.

This is one of the reasons the reformation happened. A belief that Catholicism was too concerned with earthly matters like wealth. The most important function of a church is cultivating the members' relationship with God, not being a beautiful piece of art.

Also just as a practical matter, many cathedrals were also meant to be the most important thing in their town. Trade happened inside and around it. Town meetings as well, it was the only building that could fit everyone. If noble person's needed to stay overnight, they stayed in the Cathedral. It was also the closest thing to a hospital. Etc. Protestant churches were never meant to serve as anything more than a building were fellow Christians can gather.

Everyone says orthodox and eastern rite Catholic churches are more beautiful

Some people posting don’t seem to know the difference between Protestants and Pentecostals.

[quote]Catholicism is largely more intellectual than Protestantism.

Oh, please. Spare us all this nonsense. Theology is entirely made up. Those of you with degrees in Theology have a college education in wholly fabricated dogma. It's not science. It's not art. It's nothing but rules for brain washing and crowd control with a little bit of Art History thrown in. They dress it up mightily, that much is certain. But it is a study in nothing at all. The only intellectually sound thing to do is reject it.

Pentecostals ARE Protestants, r53; what do you mean?

Well... they are Christians who are not Catholics.

[quote]I sort of feel they're right to feel that way. Most of the "God hates fags" rhetoric in America comes from Protestant preachers. Catholics as a whole tend to be more progressive, better educated and more likely to vote Democrat.

There are TOO MANY Catholic single-issue abortion voters who ALWAYS vote Republican no matter how otherwise heinous the candidate is. These types seem to be mostly old women, so hopefully many will die off soon.

No. We had the most gorgeous candle lit Christmas Eve services. Oh, wait. Those were my Lutheran friends.

I grew up in a mostly Catholic area, and we alway thought of the Protestants as "other" who were practicing heresy.

Mary worship'n idolators!!!

[quote]My partner grew up Irish Catholic and says he thinks Peter may have been the first 'pope', but has no idea where the idea came from.

Jesus told his apostle Peter that he was the "rock" upon which the Church was to be built. So Peter became the first leader of the early Church after Jesus was gone. And all subsequent Popes up until today supposedly have a direct line of unbroken succession from Peter.

There's a Church in Rome on the spot where Peter, the first Pope, was crucified. Paul also died in Rome and there's a church with his relics too.

[quote]A belief that Catholicism was too concerned with earthly matters like wealth. The most important function of a church is cultivating the members' relationship with God, not being a beautiful piece of art.

Are you serious? Prosperity Gospel is a Protestant thing. The Falwells, Osteens, Robertsons and all those millionaire mega-church preachers with their private jets and multiple mansions are all Protestant. The televangelist scam is the biggest in the world. They say that obscene wealth is a sign of God's favor while the poor are being punished for displeasing him. That's fucked up.

Meanwhile, all the literally priceless art and artefacts in the Vatican and other Catholic churches and cathedrals are nominally valued at $1 because they can't be sold. Pope Francis urged acceptance of the poor, refugees and migrantswhile American pastors rant about "too many Mexicans". 'What would Jesus do?' doesn't seem to matter in this case.

The only Protestant groub that voted against Trump is black people, and that skews the protestant average.

Look at the Milan Cathedral. Built hundreds of years ago and still looks like a jewel.

"Megachurches" explores the arid architecture of America's new sanctuaries.

[quote] Catholics have this weird sense of superiority - oh, I'm Catholic - and that somehow people are supposed to be in awe or jealous of their cult.

Well, since many, if not most, of humankind's greatest masterpieces (church architecture, opera, paintings) were created under commission from Catholics - then, had I been Catholic, I'd feel quite "superior" too, R17 :).

I'm not even RC but, IMHO, the most stunningly beautiful piece of religious music ever written is Verdi's opera-style Requiem. Mozart, Schubert ("Ave Maria") and Beethoven also grew up Roman Catholic.

Most people are indeed "in awe" when they walk into the Louvre - and many the Louvre's greatest historic masterpieces were created either by Catholics or under commission from Catholics. So, yes, people are directly or indirectly "in awe" of their cult.

Irish Protestant here, and let me tell you that any idea we'd have anything to do with so-callled "Prosperity Gospel" and The Falwells, Osteens, and Robertsons of the world is laughable. In no way do they represent Protestantism.

[quote]did you grow up jealous of our beautiful Catholic churches, and our centuries of rich artistic tradition?

I did envy the folk-music masses where I imagined cool young priests and nuns with guitars would lead us all in singing popular songs, like Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", in beautiful melancholy harmonies...

The fact that both Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Catholics report to the pope, but only one insists on celibacy, means there was never a real "Principle" involved, just political expediency. Meanwhile the fact that many American protestant hierarchies do not pay or train their hierarchy means the only "Principle" they have is pure corruption.

To give Protestants some credit, mainline (read liberal or progressive) white ones did not vote for Trump. Problem is they are a truly shrinking demographic. (Will the last Episcopalian please turn out the lights?)

[quote]Most of the "God hates fags" rhetoric in America comes from Protestant preachers.

I guess you weren't alive during the AIDS crisis of the '80s and early '90s. The Roman Catholic church was in courtrooms all over this country trying to deny us the right to exist.

Weirdly, in New York, where archbishop and later cardinal John O'Connor waged a vicious war against us at City Hall and in Albany, he also directed Catholic hospital St. Clare's to open a virtually free AIDS clinic (the first AIDS clinic in the city). They actually offered me a job as the administrator of the clinic (I previously worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Beth Israel (in NY, not Boston), and I wanted desperately to accept the job. It would have been an enormous challenge, as the poorest people with HIV filled every chair of the waiting room every day, which included homeless people, IV-drug addicts, people who didn't speak English, women with babies and young children, gay men who had been abandoned by their families and who had lost their jobs, and every other kind of person with AIDS, as well.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was interviewing, O'Connor was being vocally homophobic about us to the media and the City Council, and when they offered me the job, I felt I just couldn't bring myself to work for that man, even indirectly.

If "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" is not sung, it is not church.

[quote] To give Protestants some credit...

So instead they voted for an old-school Catholic wolf in faux-liberal clothing who happily awarded an "honorary liberty medal" to Bush Jr. and is chummy with Cheney. Wild applause.

They can vote however they like. But I'm not giving them much "credit" for that 'bizarro-world' result, R70.

A masterpiece, r66.

The full Requiem is here if anyone wants to hear it all.

Even the current Pope continues to commission new art. 'Angels Unaware' will now be a permanent fixture at St Peter's Square.

I guess that reference is a passage in the NT saying we should be hospitable to strangers as some have entertained "angels unaware".

The Protestant Reformation literally began 500 years ago. There are churches, faiths, denominations, that have history connecting them to the Protestant movement.

The Bakkers, Falwells, Osteens, Robertsons, et al, do not connect to that religious movement. Just because they do not report to the Catholic Pope, it is absurd to argue that they are in any way Protestant. Jews do not report to the Pope and they are not Protestant. Ditto Islam. Not Protestant.

Neither are the modern televangelists and their small time brethern Protestant. Their history connects them to a much longer history of false piety, conning the faithful, threatening the weak, an on and on. The second historical source for these people is radio and television. They used the electronic media to raise up their grifting to levels unimagined by their historical predecessors. But they have no tie to Martin Luther. No way. Not reporting to the Pope is no longer enough. Thinking that way is not thinking at all. And it greatly confuses what we are confronted with in these parasites and vermin.

Everyone is allowed to interpret non-physical however they want.

But thinking human-designed religions have anything to do with the reality of "all that is," is like thinking members of an ant colony -- as ingenious as they are at building phenomenally intricate nests -- understand how human governmental structures work.

It's just mythology. Often meaningful, useful, and illustrative, it doesn't matter if it's the myriad variants of Christianity, Aesop's Fables, African origin stories, or Native American tales about what happened when Thunder met Turtle and why 'Possum has no hair on his tail, it's all mythology. Enjoy it if it works for you, but don't try to tell anyone it's the truth of the universe, because we humans are not equipped to understand the truth of the universe.

And that's the truth!

To the people who think that just because religion is made up, it's useless. Please rethink that.

Christianity is an example of how to live and how to behave. When practiced correctly (which it rarely is), it is the correct way to behave. Why can't people understand that?

Really, R81? Who gets to say whether it's practiced correctly? Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s and Joel Osteen's followers, as well as the people who send their sons to be alter boys at the local Catholic church, believe *they* are practicing it correctly.

And if you think building your life around mythology is the only way to live a moral life, you need to get out more. There are plenty of people with the utmost integrity who don't follow any religion at all.

Exactly, R82. An ethical approach to one's life and one's actions requires no religion. We can learn and grow and learn these experiences for ourselves.

All R81 is advocating for is obeisance. His repeated use of the word "correct" makes that abundantly clear.

[quote] Also, priests who died of AIDS while the church did everything possible to condemn gay men.

It was the Catholic Church who started the first hospital dedicated to caring for AIDS patients. I was getting my BS at the time (already had an AS) and a nurse who worked at Bellevue told us about a meeting she attended.

The nurses wanted an AIDS unit. The top docs & administrators turned down the request. Though Bellevue was a public hospital, it was associated with NYU’s medical school & residency program. Meaning Bellevue’s med students & residents were the same med students & residents at NYU. Since NYU was a private medical school, they attracted some of they best students & residents in the country. AIDS wasn’t a big problem in many other areas of the country & NYU feared that Bellevue would get a reputation as an “AIDS hospital” and the parents paying for their kids’ medical school education would shun NYU due to its affiliation with Bellevue. They wouldn’t want their children risking their lives if they got a needle stick in a “yucky” AIDS unit.m

So the Catholic Church turned one of their hospitals into an AIDS hospital at a time when NYC’s largest public hospital refused to even have an AIDS unit.

I grew up attending a United Church of Christ church. Our parent's friends were mostly comprised of people who also were members. While the services were formal, they were in no way elaborate or full of rituals or processions. Just a minister with a weekly sermon, a nice choir and we sang a few hymns. Before service people attended study groups and after each service most gathered for coffee and socialization. The church building had a gothic influence with beautiful stained glass windows and a beautiful pipe organ with majestic towers of pipes. Was heartbroken when the interior was modernized a number of years ago which didn't reflect the exterior at all and they painted the wonderful wood entrance door lavender. Lavender!

That doesn't mean they were compassionate toward the gays. My BF ended up in the clutches of a Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital that tried to send him home with pneumonia in both lungs and with nurses who refused to change his bedpans. No religion was our friend in those days.

[quote] I wish someone would explain where the entire concept of popes, nuns, and celibacy can be found in the scriptures. My partner grew up Irish Catholic and says he thinks Peter may have been the first 'pope', but has no idea where the idea came from.

There is no evidence that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, which is what the Pope is...the Bishop of Rome. There is no evidence that Peter or Paul actually died in Rome. These traditions can only be traced back to a century after Peter and Paul lived. And there is no reason to think of the church in Rome as being the primary seat of the Church then. Paul describes the leaders, or as he calls them The Pillars, as meeting in Jerusalem (though Peter also was centered out of Antioch) and they consisted of James (Jesus' brother), Peter, and John. If any of that three was leading the earliest church it was James.

[quote]The Bakkers, Falwells, Osteens, Robertsons, et al, do not connect to that religious movement. Just because they do not report to the Catholic Pope, it is absurd to argue that they are in any way Protestant. Jews do not report to the Pope and they are not Protestant. Ditto Islam. Not Protestant.

Come on, r78. What flawed logic. You know very well that they are Protestant and represent the largest chunk of that denomination in America.

Protestant = ANY Western Christian movement that does not recognize the authority of the Pope or specifically claim to be "Catholic".

r87 This article breaks down historical evidence for Paul the Apostle. It's generally believed that the New Testament Paul is actually four people. But the main, authentic Paul is believed to have died in Rome in the 1st century.

Wikipedia has Paul dying in Rome circa 64/67 AD.

Lots of goy-on-goy hissing in this thread

[quote] It's generally believed that the New Testament Paul is actually four people. But the main, authentic Paul is believed to have died in Rome in the 1st century.

That's not an accurate way of putting that. There were not four different guys named Paul. There was one Paul who wrote likely 7 of the letters in the New Testament in his name; there is whoever wrote three other letters in Paul's name; there is another whoever who wrote three additional letters in Paul's name; and there is Paul as he is depicted in Acts.

As that linked article says, the real Paul was apparently on his way to Rome for trial in the last of his authentic writings. None of the letters in Paul's name nor Acts relates Paul's death.

And if you read that wikipedia article, you will see that the belief that Paul was executed in Rome comes from the 2nd century.

[quote] The apocryphal Acts of Paul (160 AD),[100] Tertullian (200 AD),[101] Eusebius of Caesarea (320 AD),[98] Lactantius (318 AD),[102] Jerome (392 AD),[103] John Chrysostom (c. 349–407)[104] and Sulpicius Severus (403 AD)[105] describe the martyrdom of Paul citing that Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation at Rome.

Paul is dead.

[quote]Protestant = ANY Western Christian movement that does not recognize the authority of the Pope or specifically claim to be "Catholic".

That would include Mormons, which is unacceptable to most mainline Protestants.

Our lord and savior is alive, and if you believe and ask him, he will come into your heart and lift you to the right hand of that great white masta in the sky, praise his blessed holy name, and let him live through you, that all who hunger and thirst for the pow'r of the LORD, may seek succor from your breast, oh, and how we bow in supplication in the name of our king, Amen.

[quote]did you grow up jealous of our beautiful Catholic churches

you mean the old catholic churches they have to swing the incense around in to mask the dank musty smell?

[quote] did you grow up jealous of our beautiful Catholic churches

Fuck off you Dogan cunt.

r10 I'm not religious but I genuinely think the assured certainty of faith in the CofE and Anglicanism is more convincing to me than Evangicals screaming about "The Lord (TM)". Getting on with it, and nice hymns work for me apparently.

I grew up in an upper middle class family that was Irish/Italian-American and Roman Catholic. We went to parochial schools, then private Catholic schools. I knew Protestants who were WASPs...Episcopalian or Presbyterian. Never felt superior to them, but wondered at times as a kid why they did not go to church at odd times (Holy Days of Obligation) like we did. The Jewish people I knew were all secular. The Protestant and Jewish families whom I knew had the same socio-economic outlook as my own.

Never knew an Evangelical Christian, until I was an adult. Always thought they believed my people were going to hell. My grandmother was the daughter of Irish-American farmers in a northeastern state. Most of her family's neighboring farmers were Dutch Reformed. More than a few were members of the Klan, and she was subject to prejudice and bigotry as a child and young adult, because she was Irish Catholic. Best way to describe them was that they were simple folk.

r100 The Klan was started by Presbyterians before spreading to other Protestant groups. Anti-Catholicism has been woven into the fabric of America since it's founding with a majority growing up in families that liberally spat out r60's insult. That's why Maryland was founded as a Catholic colony. And Catholics went on to build the strongest network of schools and hospitals in the country. Even after the child abuse scandal, Catholic schools and hospitals remained unaffected and respected by even Protestant families.

The reason why there is such a strong Catholic presence in the social services is because of the millions up on millions of dollars paid to these organizations through public contracts. All for work that could be done by public employees under a collective bargaining agreement, with excellent health and retirement benefits, but won't be so long as religious organizations are in these businesses.

And then they take the profits they make and hire lawyers to help them discriminate against gay people. Burn the fucking religious organizations to the ground.

[quote]The Klan was started by Presbyterians before spreading to other Protestant groups.

I forgot to specify that it was Scottish Presbyterians. Explains early America's hatred of the Irish, Italians and Jews.

Even as a kid, walking into church, I realized, wow, this is a whole bunch of bull shit

The advantage to having a secular upbringing because of having a lapsed Catholic mother and a father who was the atheist son of a Baptist convert is that I find most of these historical grievances pretty ludicrous. OTOH, it hit me at an early age that Protestants had no self-referential humor (the jokes about Episcopalians and top shelf liquor are more about WASP ethnicity) and later I realized that this was a bout an inability to really look at themselves and their assumptions (grace, good works being meaningless, etc.) critically. There's also a need to grasp onto Protestant privilege regardless of one is a snake handler or some high minded Unitarian who doesn't believe in much of anything. That snobbishness used to be enough to keep the Protestants together against the Papists. Unfortunately the cycles of giving up nonsense and then embracing it far too much seem to be the Protestant tradition that we are stuck with. The Catholic church is stuck with all kinds of internal contradictions and an authoritarian structure that's often hid atrocities that exited in plain sight, but the average megachurch doesn't exactly provide a much of a moral alternative and sexual exploitation seems to be a figure of all faiths, perhaps because clergy are selected at a young age and are given power and moral authority without much life experience or self-knowledge.

[quote]As a lapsed Catholic I can attest that almost every church built in that dreadful mid-century modernist style is hideous. [bold]Some look like spaceships readying for takeoff.[/bold]

Part of St. Mary’s in Rockville, MD has that spaceship look.

I love churches like the one in R106. Especially when they have liturgical dance troupes with dancing nuns.

Those are the best.

My father’s church (Episcopal) uses two buildings for religious services, one of which only holds services during the summer because it’s in it’s original 1735 condition with no electricity or heat.

R108: they don't hide the moneybeg do they? How many slaves did it take to build the place.

So WHY does the possum have no hair on its tail?

[quote]As a lapsed Catholic I can attest that almost every church built in that dreadful mid-century modernist style is hideous. Some look like spaceships readying for takeoff.

The Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. Its resemblance to a washing machine agitator gave it the nickname "Our Lady of Maytag."

I grew up Episcopalian. Nice churches. Waspy folks. Loathe Baptists and evangelical fundies..

Oh, R110, it's way too long to do it justice, but I'll try to be as brief as possible. This is a Cherokee legend, and in the fully told version, there are many characters and life lessons about how to behave with others.

The basics are that 'Possum was vain about his bushy tail, all the other animals were sick of his arrogance. Rabbit and Cricket conspired against him, and before a special dance, Cricket offered to dress 'Possum's tail, after which he wrapped it with ribbon. At the dance, everyone asked 'Possum to show his tail, and he untied the ribbons only to discover Cricket had nibbled off all the hair and his tail was bald. Everyone laughed at him, and 'Possum ran away, ashamed and humiliated, which is how he still behaves.

R112 again. Wanted to add that we also thought it odd that nuns and priests couldn't marry and that Catholics had too many kids that financially hindered them. We also thought the baptist tithing 10 percent of their income with contracts weird too.

There is only one true Christian church and that is the Catholic church. Protestant "churches" were created by men as a protest against the Catholic church and are simply not legitimate.

Oh, honey, R115. That's like Zeus telling Odin he's a pretender.

R11. That architecture might be referred to as a Maytag Agitator by some, but it's the Bishop's Hat that most in SF agree it unintentionally resembles most.

This would never happen in a Catholic church.

Thanks, R101. you were informative. I knew about the deep strain of anti-Catholicism in this country, which is an inheritance from our British foundations

My dad is Catholic and my mother was fundie Protestant. I was baptized Catholic because my mom wanted to appease my dad's family, but they divorced when I was a toddler, so I was never confirmed. I was later taught that Catholics weren't "real" Christians because they were idolaters who didn't believe in "accepting Jesus as your personal savior." Also, those weird extra books in the Bible.

I grew up in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (an offshoot denomination that rejected predestination) because we lived less than a block from the church and it was convenient. My grandma (who raised my sister and me because of my mom's mental illness) attended as well, but in her youth she and my mom attended churches of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Assemblies of God, so she found the mainline-y CPC services on the not-terribly-spicy side. She used to give the pastor a hard time (only half-jokingly) with comments like "What I wouldn't give to hear an 'Amen' once in a while!"

Another wrinkle: My grandmother and my mom both attended an Anglo-Catholic private school run by Anglican nuns.

My dad's mom used to say in her Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, accent, "I tink da Catlick Choich is da best choich," which of course raised my mom's and grandma's hackles. LOL

[quote] My grandmother and my mom both attended an Anglo-Catholic private school run by Anglican nuns.

Huh?

People don’t know this, but the concept of a godparent, affirmed during a child’s baptism, is actually a Catholic tradition, taken very seriously by Catholics, but now casually appropriated by non-Catholic Americans unaware of its significance. They just throw the word around: “that’s my godson” without even a ceremony to hold them to that role.

I’m not R121, but Anglo-Catholics are Episcopalians and Anglicans who lean more towards catholic theology. The A-C movement has been around for 180 years or so, often known as high church. There have been Anglican nuns and monks since the mid-Nineteenth Century.

[quote]People don’t know this, but the concept of a godparent, affirmed during a child’s baptism, is actually a Catholic tradition

People know this, it’s a Christian tradition.

^ No. It’s Catholic.

Other Christians do it, R125. Almost all Christian denominations baptize babies with god parents taking the vows.. And the Eastern Orthodox which actually dunk the baby under water.

Oh, you silly Catholics, with your one true church nonsense.

As a Catholic friend of mine said "The Eastern Orthodox are the liturgical drama queens of Christianity".

[quote] They just throw the word around: “that’s my godson” without even a ceremony to hold them to that role.

Some people take it even further -- I've heard people refer to their "godcousin" and "goduncle."

^ They don't know what it means. All it says is that Catholic culture has become so widespread that it's been co-opted by the mainstream. Like St Patrick's Day is now so big that the original meaning doesn't matter anymore. Heck, I've seen non-Catholic athletes cross themselves on the field of play.

Which, R130, because of the First and the 14th Amendment, they are free to do.

The Catholic Church doesn't own any of it. Not in the US, anyway.

R130. how do you know they weren't Catholic? Because they are Black? There are Black Catholics, even non-Hispanic ones. You sound like the sort of Catholic chauvinist who thinks real Catholics are Irish and Italian although in a good mood you will tolerate Hispanics and Poles.

r132 Not because they're black, but black American. Stats don't lie.

R130 what makes you think we don't know what it means? My Godmother was present at my baptism and pledged to do every she could to support me and push me to lead a godly life. What part did we not understand?

Anglican. Real wine for communion. I`m good thanks.

Nope, never been jealous of anyone or anything Catholic, OP.

My family didn't attend church regularly, but we did belong to the United Church of Canada which is a progressive and liberal church. In the 1980s, the minister at my family's church was openly gay and in 1977, the United Church began to lobby Canada's Parliament to be more inclusive and protective of gay and lesbian rights. Same sex marriage ceremonies have been available in the United Church since 1992, well before other denominations.

Though we weren't regular church goers, at least I didn't feel ostracized or ever felt that I was a sinner bound for hell because I was gay. People were supportive and although I have always been an atheist at heart, at least I felt loved and comfortable when I did go to church.

Those beautiful buildings you speak of are built on and paid for by fear, hatred, and on this continent (and others too) colonialism. So again, why would I be jealous of anything Catholic?

"There have been Anglican nuns and monks since the mid-Nineteenth Century. "

only some of whom were sex-crazed psychos

That bouncing around that r7 describes is kind of how I assumed Protestants were, when I was younger, ready to switch religions, though I thought based on social class. The poors are Baptist or something loud and evangelical, the middle class become Presbyterians, the rich become Episcopalian (wishing they could go all the way and be Anglicans).

Episcopalians ARE Anglicans

"The Episcopal Church is part of Anglican Communion as its roots have been traced to the English Reformation and the Church of England. The Anglican Church is mainly centred in the U K and and has the Archbishop of Canterbury as its head."

Anglican. Our church is basically a pride parade during the procession to the alter each Sunday.

yes OP, we certainly felt deprived of the beauty and rich artistic tradition of dressing skeletons up in velvet, jewels and gold and putting them in glass cases

actually that's pretty cool r141. This sharp division with the dead, this hiding of the dead, this terrified avoidance of the dead may actually be odder, culturally, but of course is very much a part of modernity. I'm not sure it's so much Catholic versus Protestant as Mediterranean versus Northern European. Maybe the Day of the Dead types have the better idea.

It's not a "mediterranean" thing, the Peter's Church in Vienna is fulf of dressed up skeletons

OP believes all Protestant churches resemble Depression era shacks in Alabama surrounded by swamps.

and OP also believes that we are as ignorant as he

I grew up Southern Baptist. They have always been racist and continue to be racist. TO THE CORE

Well that would be better than those dreary megachurches r144

As a child who grew up Catholic, little-atheist-me-in-training grew up a little envious of Serbian Orthodox Churches (the buildings, not the religion). Very ornate. There are quite a few strewn about the LA area.

I recall going into a opulent Catholic Church and realizing how much was lost from Jesus' teachings about the poor inheriting the earth,

Not a believer nor confirmed, but the episcopal church which employs me is SUPER duper left-leaning. Also, very “bells and smells” so the ceremonial part of services is off the charts. The vicar is a out gay man, the rector a woman. Both are super nice and very leftie liberal.

"I recall going into a opulent Catholic Church and realizing how much was lost from Jesus' teachings about the poor inheriting the earth",

go to Vatican Museums and see the billions, if not trillions in (often ill-gotten lucre). and the american dioceses are declaring bankruptcy and stiffing lay teachers to pay off the claims against the predatory clergy.

On an average weekend in the early 1970s, there were: 20M Mainline Protestants 30M Catholics 17M Evangelicals in the pews.

By 2020 it was: 11M Mainline 17M Catholics 37M Evangelicals.

There are more evangelicals at church on Sunday than Catholics and Mainline combined now.