222
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Hextubewontallowme@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
222 points (95.5% liked)

Asklemmy

43803 readers
910 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS