Christians and catholics

Well, I'm a Catholic.

Catholicism is a Christian religion, the oldest, as is said. And the only 'true', as some Catholics still think.


However, not only the Roman Catholic Church but also the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church, and a variety of national and other churches claim to be members of the holy catholic church, as do most of the major Protestant churches.

(Catholic, btw, (from Greek katholikos, "universal"), is the characteristic that, according to ecclesiastical writers since the 2nd century, distinguished the Christian Church at large from local communities or from heretical and schismatic sects.)

Christianity is any belief system which uses Jesus (Christ) as the the central authority.

All Catholics are Christians. Not all Christians are Catholics. Christians also include Protestants, Orthodox groups, and other minor sects.

A very few Protestant groups - in the minority- consider that Catholics (as well as Orthodox and some other Protestant groups) are not "true" Christians because they don't share the same beliefs or manner of worship. Among other reasons, they often point to Catholic veneration of saints, use of holy images, and reverence for the Pope as idolatrous and ungodly practices.

Similarly, some few Catholics -in the minority- consider that non-Catholics are not "real" Christians. They point to New Testament references to Peter founding the one true and only authorized (catholic means universal) Church, and therefore any non-Catholic observance is ungodly.

Some Christian sects with unusual ideas, (I was brought up in one of these) are rejected by BOTH exclusionist Protestant and exclusionist Catholic groups as not truly Christian. Among these, but not limited to, are Mormons (Latter-Day Saints), Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists.

That is probably why, when speaking colloquially, and in the media, you see the reference to "Christian", the reference is to Protestant groups.

In the USA, perhaps.

Here, in Europe, we speak of Christians (all), Muslims (all), Hindus (all) ....
e.g. the 'Jewish-Christian-Society' is is open for all persons of all Christian and Jewish beliefs.

Yes. But again, you have to know how the term is being used. In the US, you might very well have a Jewish-Christian Society, which includes all Christians. When One reads of the "Christian right" in the media, people know that the story is not referring to Catholics.

Hmmm..................I think that what has happened is that the media in the US has politicized the term "Christian", so that in some contexts the meaning is more political than religious.

Hmm - Christian right here (in Germany) refers both to Catholics and Protestants/Evangelicals .... and is not political at all (but nevertheless referring to conservatives - Cardinal Ratzinger, e.g. is a Christian right ).

Catholicism holds the concept that Jesus declared Peter as his representative on Earth and that he was the first pope. Thus catholicism can move on from the bible through papal decree.

Protestantism split off because they felt that catholocism was moving too far away from the bible.

Modern day born-again christianity tends to draw more from the protestant side of the fence and often considers catholocism to be a non-christian religion.

That's it in a nutshell. Does that help?

The primary difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants tend to belief in what is called "sola fide", meaning salvation by faith (in Christ) alone, and that good works are unnecessary. They also tend to believe in "sola scripture", meaning Christian truth can only be divined through the Scripture. I'm not sure how many Protestants believe this anymore though, many of the denominations have changed so much, and I'm not a Protestant. But that was pretty much the original philosophy.

Catholics, on the other hand, believe in salvation through a combination of faith and good works. Catholics also believe that in addition to the Scripture, Christian truth is held in the sacred Tradition of the Church.

Finally, you have to be careful with the Catholic/Christian thing. It's not your fault or anything. It's just that a lot of fundamentalist Protestants claim that Catholics aren't really Christians, and they use that claim to try to stigmatize Catholics. It's a false idea, Catholics are most definately Christians (as are Protestants; they're both kinds of Christians).

Catholics also have 4 more books in their Old Testament.

Not only Protestants and Catholics have different ideas about which books belong to the canon of the Old Testament, e.g. the Eastern Orthodox have yet another opinion.

Reason re Protestants <> Catholics: the Reformers (Luther etc. in the 16th century) threw out the Old Testament Apocrypha. However, the Old Testament is very rarely (if ever) used to form Christian doctrine, since Christianity is not the Old Testament but started with the person Jesus Christ (New Testament).