• Tachanka [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I know that a lot of protestants in the US basically consider Catholics to be pagans

    ... not really. Anti-catholic sentiment was very strong when the country was founded (American protestants used to burn pope effigies in an annual holiday called "Pope Night.") and it remained strong even when JFK was elected president, but I would never go so far as to say Catholics were regarded as Pagans. Protestants typically understand that Catholics worship Jesus, but to the extent that they form a negative opinion on Catholics, it's usually centered around resentment of the Vatican. Catholics are historically accused of having dual loyalty to the pope, and therefore incapable of being nationalist (enough) when it's important.

    does it also workin reverse? Like, do american catholics consider protestants heretic unbelievers, or do they just consider them misguided?

    I mean, yeah, some of 'em probably do. You're asking questions that go back to Martin Luther, or even proto-protestant movements like the Hussites. This is less of a question about America and more a question about religious history in general.

    • CTHlurker [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Obviously I don't know this for a fact, but I do remember seeing a lot of catholics who grew up in the Evangelical hotspots complain that their classmates more or less called them pagans, since some of the baptists/weirder protestants consider the existence of sainst to be idolatry, and thus making catholics savage pagans. However I don't really know how much of that is down to just Evangelicals being weird as hell and suffering because the've been on a crusade against public education ever since Bown v. Board of Education.

      • Tachanka [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        yeah, maybe anti-catholic sentiment in the US is worse than I thought, if that's the case. Shit's weird. Not my wheelhouse, I'll admit.

        • CTHlurker [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          From what I gather, it's mostly in private that they dislike each other. In politics, the catholics and evangelicals have been solidly Republican since Newt Gingrich and the whole Moral Majority (though I know that the stats for catholics get kind of skeewed by the mostly catholic immigrants from Mexico and Central America). Same sort of weird truce that a lot of the evangelical churches have with each other, despite also hating each other for both valid and non-valid theological reasons.

      • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        catholics who grew up in the Evangelical hotspots complain that their classmates more or less called them pagans, since some of the baptists/weirder protestants consider the existence of sainst to be idolatry, and thus making catholics savage pagans.

        I have personally experienced this, and can vouch. The classmates in question were a mix of Baptists, Methodists, and members of some weird Church of Christ youth cult. Oddly enough, we had Lutherans and Seventh Day Adventists around, and the aforementioned evangelicals generally left them alone.

        Edit: To add, this wasn't even in some evangelical hotspot like the frigging Bible Belt. Just a rural area in the Midwest.