Why do people say "Catholics and Christians" in (USA) when Catholics are also Christians, as if they refer to it as a different religion.

Is this some sort of remnant of evangelical puritan protestant ideology?

I don't understaun this.

If you ask me, it'd make as much sense as Orthodox and Christians.... or Shia and Muslim...

I know not all Christians are Catholics but for feck's sake...

They're all Christians to me....

Edit:

It's a U.S thing but this is the sort of things I hear...

https://www.gotquestions.org/Catholic-Christian.html

I am a Catholic. Why should I consider becoming a Christian?

I now know more distinctions (apparently Catholicism requires duty and salvation is process, unlike Protestantism?) but I still think they're of a similar branch (Christianity) so I just wonder the social factor

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Catholics aren't Christians by many definitions, it is a different religion.
- That is totally new to me.
  Can you give me one or two of those many definitions for my understanding?
  
  Many protestant churched consider themselves churches of Christ, Catholicism is the church of Paul, and isn't strictly monotheistic, trinitarianism and unitarianism aside. They pray to beings other than God as a matter of course. Anglicanism and Orthodox are the same religion as Catholicism. Most of the protestant churches are not. Then you have stuff like Mormons and Jehovahs Witnesses which are a different thing again, if you call those Christian, then Islam is Christian (Jesus is an important prophet in Islam) but no one would say that.
  
  Catholicism is the church of Paul, and isn't strictly monotheistic, trinitarianism and unitarianism aside.
  That is just plain wrong, no two ways about it.
  To me it sounds like you listened to some protestant that doesn't care much for the catholic church and just repeat his rant without questioning it much.
  And don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less about christian infighting. I was just curious about the reasoning how the catholic church, which is one of the oldest and most "original" christian churches, could be considered not christian at all.
  After your post I don't believe there is much basis to this claim at all.
  
  FFS read a book. I am Catholic, btw.
  
  So by your own claim you are part of the polytheistic church of Paul?
  That just is not catholicism.
  Which is so easy to prove because the catholics love to write down their many rules.
  So I honestly would just answer right back at you:
  FFS read a book.
  And btw, while I have been an atheist for many years now, I was raised strictly catholic in a highly religious area by my catholic family that included a catholic nun and the headmaster of a catholic school and I intensively studied christianity before I made my break with this religion.
  You can't bullshit me.
  
  Oh look. An atheist that thinks he's clever but doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. How original.
- Roman Catholic is the original Church, so you tell me
  
  Fucking bingo dude. The original church was Catholic*. The Christian church came later.
  
  I guess you are trolling man
  
  This sounds like a semantic backflip.
  Catholics themselves see themselves as Christian and since they are the largest Christian denomination, saying they aren't is just No True Scotsman.
  
  Ask a catholic what religion they are and they answer Catholic, while protestants say Christian.
  
  Maybe in your part of the world, not in mine. Christians normally just say Christian unless they're trying to recruit you (they are less than half the population).
  Anyway that's like saying if you ask me what my meal is and I say "steak" that means it's somehow not meat because I was specific about the kind of meat.
  
  Try it sometime
  
  Mystery solved, see OP's edit.
- I might quibble about the Catholic Church being the "original" church since Catholicism only came about after Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman state in 380. You could argue that Catholicism started a bit earlier under Constantine I at the First Ccouncil of Nicaea in 325, which is when the Roman state started to consolidate the various early Christian beliefs under an official "catholic" orthodoxy. The word "catholic" literally means "including a wide variety of things". The point being that there was already a wide variety of Christian sects prior to the Council of Nicaea.
  The Protestant argument against Catholicism boils down to the belief that the Catholic Church is a corrupted Christianity, not that it is non-Christian. And there is some truth to that. The pre-Nicaean churches were free-wheeling spiritualists with a wide variety of beliefs, but that all changed when the Roman state decided to create an orthodox, singular religion under its control. Protestants argue that this adaptation of religious belief to the needs of maintaining state power is the original corruption of the Catholic Church.
  Now, two key facts influenced the early history of Roman Catholicism:
  The Roman state recognized the descendants of Caesar, the Emperors, as the Pontifex Maximus, or head priest, of the Roman state. They also required that everyone adhere to the cult of the Emperor. This was purely ritualistic and was meant as a bulwark to the power of the state.
  The vast majority of the Empire's citizens were pagan.
  Because of #1, the Roman Emperor became the head of the newly formed Catholic Church, which was a unification of Church and State. This is called Caesaropapism, and is also why the Catholic Church retains a hierarchical structure to this day and its seat is still located in the heart of the Western Roman Empire. The Pope is the spiritual successor of the Western Roman Emperor.
  Because of #2, Catholicism is highly ritualistic, like paganism, and early Catholicism adopted the worship of saints, which are basically small gods. Saint worship was the bridge between paganism and Christianity.
  During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Luther and others made the point that the union of state power with Christianity was a corruption of "original" pre-Catholic Christianity, which was more spiritually-oriented and valued personal conviction over state orthodoxy. Interestingly, the split between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe also more or less follows the geographic outline of the Western Roman Empire, with southern Europe largely retaining Catholicism and northern Europe largely adopting Protestantism. This implies a political dimension to the schism, not just a religious one. England is the odd man out here because their response to the schism was to create the Church of England, which is basically Catholicism without the Pope, substituting the English monarch as the head of the Church and toning down the saint worship.
  The great irony of any Protestant movement that craves Christo-fascist state power is that they are advocating to become the very evil they swore to destroy back in the 1500s.
- Care to share these definitions?

176 comments