Catholicism Vs. Fundamentalist Christianity

[Guest JP]

I'm not sure which is worse between Catholicism and Fundy Christianity (Baptist, Pentecostal, Non-Denominational.)

 

I myself was a victim of the fundy type, with someone who claimed visions about me from God and who seemed pretty charasmatic. Other people were mentally (possibly physically?) abused by priests.

 

They're both pretty crappy in my opinion.

 

That's all.

[Alexandrian]

Fundies are pretty much universally bad.

 

With Catholics, it depends. Some are nice normal people who do a lot of good for the world and aren'r really a problem at all.

 

But then, in my religious days I did know plenty of catholics who thought that Democracy was an evil system, Catholicism should be the official religion, heresy should be a crime punished by the State, and defend past atrocities such as the inquisition.

 

So you basically have a range from a benign religion to something just as bad as the most hard-core fundies.

[Guest Shiva H. Vishnu]

Erectile dysfunction Vs. testicular lesions. Which is worse?

[duderonomy]

I was ready to answer with a six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other type of post, then I read Shiva'sanswer.

I can't top that.

 

[snookums]

whats worse...

fucked up the arse at 12 by a catholic

or fucked up the arse at 13 years of age by a baptist

 

eh.....never mind...I took too long thinking about it..............they all look the same with their pants down.

[RHEMtron]

I grew up Catholic... fundies are worse. Every Catholic i know seems more of a deist than Christian. Nobody disputed science... we all had premarital sex... divorced... drank... partied... didnt take the bible literally.... werent even required to read the bible.

 

And i enjoyed the sermons better. It was never about "Jesus died for you". It focused more on the positive things he did and how we should strive to grow and better ourselves each day.

[Lycorth]

Yeah, what RHEM said.

 

I also grew up Catholic. It was a very relaxed atmosphere - science and evolution taught in Catholic school, no guilt-based sex ed, no beating you over the head with the Babble™. It was easy to stay Catholic since the only thing we were expected to do was go to Mass on Sundays and other holy days, show respect for Big Momma Church™ and anything related to her, and never play with other religions. Other than that, it was pretty laid-back - which is a huge danger on its own.

 

Being more laid-back gives people less to gripe about. Catholicism in the kind of communities like the one I came from really fosters loyalty by not going thermonuclear with the fanaticism. It's hard to hate something that is kind and gentle towards you, at least on the surface. The danger is that you end up accepting, living in, and defending this deathcult, all the while not understanding what you're a part of. The rituals and the otherwise kindly atmosphere (in most places) really help cement the usual Xian brainwashings about dependence on Jebus and your own human worthlessness deeply. They aren't in your face at all, so people don't see that there is something to fight against. Even though it cajoles you into believing the same Xian bullshit as most fundy Protestant sects do, it does so in such an easy fashion that you never realize what's going on until you're totally sucked in - and often, not even then.

 

It's like a Trojan horse effect, to me.

[The Sage Nabooru]

Fundies are worse, by far. Catholicism and its eastern equivalent, Orthodoxy are pretty much the only Christian denominations I have any respect for.

 

I'm from St. Louis, which is about as Catholic as Ireland, and people can be pretty religiously Catholic around here - and yet I've never, ever had even a religious Catholic tell me I was going to hell for not believing in the *right* Jesus or the *right* God, even. Even the people with the postcards of JPII set up on little shelves with candles in their houses and concrete Marian statues in their gardens (no St. Louis yard is complete without one) didn't put "God votes LIFE!" signs out in their front yards (although they might have the bumper stickers with the roses on them). I find Catholics in general to be very open-minded, liberal, and capable of realizing that their religion is merely one of many.

 

I felt jealous of them a lot growing up in the Lutheran church.

 

Although I've never met one, I have heard of a few fundie Catholics; however strangely they're usually strongly opposed to their own popes due to their meeting with such leaders as the Dalai Lama and admitting that evolution is possible, etc. From what I hear a lot of them join breakaway Catholic sects like the one Mel Gibson runs.

[RHEMtron]

Catholic church = conservative church practices, but non-conservative living

 

Protestan denominations = non-conservative church practices, but conservative living

[Ex-COG]

What about EWTN, which I always thought of as the "Fundamentalist Catholic Network"? They seem to be awfully fundy in nature, or are they just a fringe group, like Mel Gibson's Catholicism? EWTN looks no better than the local Charismatic TV station. Both want you and your money, whether it's for a $160 Our Lady statue from Mother Angelica (donations to go toward a new satellite feed to Africa in order to save more heathens) or a Benny Hinn prayer cloth anointed with olive oil from the Holy Land for a love offering (but if you give at least $100, you'll receive Benny's new book "The Healing Power of Jesus Through My Hands", autographed by Brother Benny himself).

[The Sage Nabooru]

EWTN does seem very fundy, but I would say the majority of Catholics (and I'm including priests, monks, and nuns in here) dismiss its more fundamentalist and money-mongering leanings with a grain of salt. And it's paradise compared to TBN.

 

Jim Gaffigan summed up Catholicism pretty well on his Beyond the Pale CD: "Catholicism's like, "Don't eat meat on Fridays! ....... Unless you forget!"

 

What I mean by that is that Catholicism has a lot of rules, but it's a lot more forgiving about those rules than other sects are about theirs. "Go to confession! ....... Unless you forget! Hear mass on Sundays ........ Unless you forget! Say your rosary ....... Unless you forget!" Whereas the fundy Protestants are more like, "Give money to the church! .......... Unless you want to ROT IN HELL, you filthy sinner!"

[Lycorth]

I used to be huge into EWTN when I was serious about Catholicism. Yes, it represents the fundy side of Catholicism well, but even then is occasionally tolerable. But they still excuse every thing the Church™ did and recast it into the best light, as well as still push the "turn or burn" ultimatium.

 

But most Catholics are indeed as Sage described. EWTN will complain about them often, but they are still the majority. Cultural Catholics raised to be so mostly as a matter of culture and identification with their families. Again, that sadly can keep a person hooked, since the true evil of the Xian ethos is masked by the easy-goingness of Catholicism, so the door swings both ways...

[Rosa Mystica]

I used to be huge into EWTN when I was serious about Catholicism. Yes, it represents the fundy side of Catholicism well, but even then is occasionally tolerable. But they still excuse every thing the Church did and recast it into the best light, as well as still push the "turn or burn" ultimatium.

 

But most Catholics are indeed as Sage described. EWTN will complain about them often, but they are still the majority. Cultural Catholics raised to be so mostly as a matter of culture and identification with their families. Again, that sadly can keep a person hooked, since the true evil of the Xian ethos is masked by the easy-goingness of Catholicism, so the door swings both ways...

 

Don't even get me started on EWTN...

[Lycorth]

Don't even get me started on EWTN...

 

Let it out - it's healthy, and you know you want to

[Toxic]

My Mum had some friends who were ex cathos turned fundies. After their conversion they thought the Catholic church was the beast in revelation or something.

[Lycorth]

My Mum had some friends who were ex cathos turned fundies. After their conversion they thought the Catholic church was the beast in revelation or something.

 

Yup - I was like that when I did my Protestant expirment.

 

And when I turned Catholic fundy after that, I thought the Protties were under the influence of Satan™.

 

[Llwellyn]

I grew up a fundamentalist Protestant and had to leave after I started to think about the theology of Divine Wrath. As I was leaving, I was trying to find a church which rejected this theology. One of the things I was surprised to find out is that within the past 40 years, the Roman Catholic Church has, by and large, rejected the traditional doctrine of Divine Wrath (that it is punishment not intended to correct). Modern Roman Catholic Theologians such as Hans Urs Van Balthasar and Karl Rahner teach that God punishes to correct only and that a "hell" of bad character is locked only from the inside.

 

In other words, modern Roman Catholic theology is becoming much more liberal in comparison to Biblical Protestantism. A good place to investigate this is an article by John R. Sachs, “Current Eschatology: Universal Salvation and the Problem of Hell,” Theological Studies 52 (June 1991). See also John R. Sachs, “Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology,” Theological Studies 54 (1993). See also the sermons on hell by Pope John Paul II. Roman Catholic theology of God-man relations is much more humane in comparison to Protestantism. Even more humane is the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church which teaches that God shall bathe all humans in the lustrating light of divine love in the eternal world, which shall be experienced as "burning" only to those who would prefer to cling to their evil. See the article "The River of Fire" by Alexander Kalomiros.

 

I ultimately decided that I had to leave Christianity entirely, but if I ever returned (for family or professional reasons), I would likely go to a Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican Church rather than a Protestant Church. Finally, to conclude, I will quote observations by Robert Ingersoll on the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, observations that have proved prescient when we consider the shifts that have occurred in Roman Catholic Theology in the past 40 years:

 

"The Catholics have a Pope. Protestants laugh at them, and yet the Pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the Pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their Pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever." --- Robert G. Ingersoll, "Talmage Interview 4"

[SilentLoner]

I grew up Catholic (in a nearly 99% catholic country). I was inclined to say that they were worse of the lot, but since I have a relative lack of experience with Baptists and stuff I guess I really can't judge fairly on the issue.

 

Having grown up seeing too much negative catholicism (example: I had a friend in middle school whose father would beat her for the slightest misbehavior in church) and from what ive heard of the other fundy groups I say they're equally bad.

[Alexandrian]

The "hardcore" faction of Catholics that exist despise Cultural Catholicism and Liberal Catholicism much more then Atheism or Protestantism. Those people insist on hearing priests preach on how users of birth control are going to hell, and to want to have people who dissent from any major teachings of the Church excommunicated.

 

In determining who is worth, I think it matters far more how hard-core a person in his own religious belief, then what type of religious belief it is- be it Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, or whatever...

 

(Well, for most religious beliefs anyway. We've yet to have any fundamentalist buddhists blowing themselves up in a crowd of people or launch a war to claim new lands for the glory of Buddha.)

[The Sage Nabooru]

I ultimately decided that I had to leave Christianity entirely, but if I ever returned (for family or professional reasons), I would likely go to a Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican Church rather than a Protestant Church. Finally, to conclude, I will quote observations by Robert Ingersoll on the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, observations that have proved prescient when we consider the shifts that have occurred in Roman Catholic Theology in the past 40 years:

 

I agree entirely. It's not just a laxness of the laity - the thinking itself within the modern Catholic church is refreshing compared to other churches. I made the same decision - I just couldn't be Christian anymore, period - but I still feel at ease in a Catholic church, as compared with my family's Lutheran church.

 

I believe it was actually JPII who said that hell was a state of being brought on by people themselves rather than by divine punishment - then said that it "cannot be known" whether or not anybody is actually in hell, Christian or not. When I was Lutheran that was one thing our pastor told us that proved the Catholic Church followed Satan - its highest leader said that it's quite possible that non-Christians can enter heaven, or at least avoid hell.

[Toxic]

II ultimately decided that I had to leave Christianity entirely, but if I ever returned (for family or professional reasons), I would likely go to a Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican Church rather than a Protestant Church.

 

The Anglican church has it's fair share of fundiegelical Billy Grahamist types too.