Difference between Protestants and Catholics.

[ShADoW]

Hence the title.
Can someone summarize the the core difference between the two Christian sects?

[The Dude]

One believes in god in shiny robes in halls with funky statues and molest choirboys. The other believes in god in his dark and poorly decorated cellar singing hymns about the coming apocalypse. That's catholicism vs protestantism, respectively. 8D

[Watchman]

Sounds about right...

[ShADoW]

lol

[Romanman]

it funny watching my Dad (catholic) get into fights with protestants, usually my moms family. But basically they differ on views of the sacrements, sin, church law, church organization, morals, anything you can imagine they fight about
in my town we have about 1000 churches serving 14,000 people..... its rediculous

[ShADoW]

What are their views specifically?
I know they have different views on different subjects.

[Spartaaaa]

the main diffrence is that protestants dont believe in including statues and paintings in churches because they beleive its worshopping a idol witch is against christian belefs.

[Celsius]

Purgatory, along with the Pope and the entire Papal Hierarchy, is one of the main things that Catholic believes that Protestants don't.

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

As a Catholic living in the "Bible Belt" of America i can tell you this: Catholics are like the mafia. Protestants are like a Germanic horde. Catholics are more controlled and regimented while the Protestants often work in small groups of diverse beliefs that all seen to dislike the Catholics for something that happened centuries ago, all the while screaming about the end of the world. And Catholics are much more forgiving as a whole than most protestant sects.

EDIT: And how could I forget Mary. Most Protestants are of the belief that we worship Mary while in reality we revere her as the one that brought Christ into the world. And lets not forget Purgatory. Catholics have a grey area called Purgatory where one can pray for years and finally be accepted into Heaven. Protestants are much more into the black and white Heaven or Hell mode. But Protestants also have beliefs that make it much easier to get straight into Heaven than Catholics.

[Celsius]

Perfection.

Most of the people at my school ask me why I worship mary. I tell them I don't, but she is the mother of Christ. We only honor her, we do not worship her

Plus rep

[Miracles]

Hi everyone would like to share a story the following conversation did take place



A Catholic friend some time ago told me that another Christian(a Protestant) argued with Him about having the image of Christ on the cross in the Catholic churches. This Christian friend argued that Christ to the Catholics is always seen as dead since they put the image of Christ on their cross in the their churches.

To this story I asked my Catholic friend that would there be church in heaven.
His answer came swift. Yes he told me there would definitely be church in heaven.
Then I asked him: Do you think there would be a cross or any cross inside that church in heaven?

To this he hesitated for some moment. Obviously I got him to think and think he did. His answer came a while later. He said NO. There would not be a cross inside the church in heaven.

Bingo. My friend is wise enough to tell that there would not be a need for any cross to be present in the church in heaven. Simply due to the fact that God is present in that church in heaven.

So I asked him if there would not be any cross in the church in heaven why bother arguing about the image of Christ on the cross in this world.

He replied back I never thought about that. That was good.

To this I gave him a smile

[Theseus1234]

What I remember from my history class I took this year in school is that Catholics follow the Pope and his "holy" ways while Protestants are a term that encompass all forms of Christianity that don't follow the Pope (such as Anglicanism, Puritanism, Calvinism, and Lutheranism)

[hellheaven1987]

Yap, Protestant is just a general term for those split-off from Catholic church (because there are other ancient Christianity not following Pope even before that) that hold some different belief with Catholics.

[Gromovnik]

What I remember from my history class I took this year in school is that Catholics follow the Pope and his "holy" ways while Protestants are a term that encompass all forms of Christianity that don't follow the Pope (such as Anglicanism, Puritanism, Calvinism, and Lutheranism)

Not true.

[MaximiIian]

Not true.

Well, it's not so much false as a massive, brutal oversimplification of a ridiculously complex subject.

[♔Jean-Luc Picard♔]

Actually before the Great Reformation, pretty much all Christian churches that were not Catholic were Orthodox. There were no Protestants as we know them today, just people that didn't like the way the Pope did things and decided to make their own Catholic Church rooted more in tradition with very little differences.

[hellheaven1987]

Actually before the Great Reformation, pretty much all Christian churches that were not Catholic were Orthodox. There were no Protestants as we know them today, just people that didn't like the way the Pope did things and decided to make their own Catholic Church rooted more in tradition with very little differences.

Yap, althought that is Orthodox??

I don't know what Czechs called their church was in 16th Century...

[basics]

Shadow-X4X,

The answer to that is quite simple. Christians believe that the word of God, the Bible, is sufficient in itself to save anyone out of any creed or religion, even the non-religious. The work of salvation, the converting of any, is solely a work of the Triune Godhead brought about by that word. The original Protestors believed and accepted this. Unfortunately not all Protestant churches now do.

On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church and others believe that the word of God is not sufficient in itself to save. They believe that the priesthood within these churches hold the key or keys as to who gets into heaven and who doesn't. In other words they are the arbiters of salvation, God more or less having very little part in the procedure. Their chances depend on baptism because you cannot be Romanist unless you are baptised.

[Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh]

Both have powerful importance. The catholic church has its vast establishment - I know of a catholic hierarchy, but not of a Protestant one. This establishment and reverence of beautiful things, be them idols or mediums with which to praise to their God is really irrelevant. However, perhaps it is is necessary for the opposite view as well. Pre-Protestantism, there was the Cluniac reform of the Roman Catholic Monasteries in Europe, where the ideals were being simplified and life was not grandeur but simple love of God. Saint Francis of Assisi, by my knowledge, had the same thoughts.

And then the Protestants came along and did this en-masse, whilst also breaking from the Catholic church completely.

What I don't understand is why many nations converted to Protestantism. Yes, I understand an individual monarch would sway thought, and in a democracy/republic public/majority opinion would as well, but isn't the idea of a hierarchy, an establishment and grounding in earthly matters a better thing for a state to be based upon?

--NB: Don't take this as me siding for either faction.

[aorz]

I think there is difficulty in forming a concrete comparison and contrast between the Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity. Protestantism has around 33,000 denominations, so try to pinpoint their beliefs and one is likely to run into a lot of variance. Catholicism has a fairly centralized belief system summarized in the Catechism and claims an unbroken line of Apostolic succession running back to Christ's designation of Peter as Rock of the Church (a.k.a. the first pope of the Catholic Church.)

I'd say that one can't just break the two between one's preference for the pope and the other's preference for singing about the impending apocalypse or whatever. Or Marian devotion. Sure, those are differences, but come on...you really think that's the main difference?

A fairly large difference between traditional Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anabaptists) and Catholicism is the idea of natural law. Catholicism has always believed that the created world is good. Just as God stated in Creation and continuing thereafter, God created man, and fish, and the other things, and said that they were good. Until this point, Protestants and Catholics mostly agree. The effects of the original sin of Adam is where things go awry. Catholics believe that the world is still certainly good just as God created it, but that original sin brought death and decay to the perfect world which God craeted. Part of this is that humans now have a tendency towards sinning. Humans are still good at the core, but the whole race will forever bear the consequences of original sin. The redemptive work of Christ allowed for communion with God, but humans will still struggle with temptation and the pull of our animal-like impulses. Catholicism teaches that humans, through a life of dedication to Christ and consistent receptions of the sacraments, can indeed be raised above the animal-like impulses(or perhaps sinful nature) through grace and back towards the original design that God created us to be. This process is known as santification and it all ties into the idea of purgatory, the sacraments, and how grace and faith and works all tie together. Catholics recognize that works are a part of, while certainly secondary to grace, in the salvific work of Christ for humans. Catholicism teaches that the grace of Christ is the only way to gain eternal life, but that this grace must be accepted and continually pursued in order to grow closer in communion with God. Essentially, the human person's role is to become a "little Christ" and to draw into deeper union with God. Indeed, the Cathechism states in it's first pages that every human person since the beginning of time has dignity simply by nature of being a human called into deeper communion with God. Granted, original sin hurt this union in a big way, but the redemptive work of Christ has opened the path to God. Humans are good and are capable of working through charity (as it says in Galatians) to draw closer to God in holiness. All of this through the grace of Christ.

Protestantism sees the original sin as essentially changes the nature of the world. The original forever marred the Earth and totally took away any of the goodness that God had created. This means that humans are unable to do any good whatsoever because there is absolutely no good in them. The redemptive work of Christ has made possible communion with God, but that has not changed who we are or allowed us to be restored to God's original design. We are still permanently trapped in an evil body. Essentially, humans are mounds of crap covered by the layer of snow that Christ offered to all people through his death and ressurection. IN this, there is absolutely no way for a human to do good. Humans can do bad things because, well, we are, but we can't do good because are God's original design was competely perverted by sin. This led to Luther's doctrine of faith alone (as opposed to grace expressed through faith and works.) The body is evil and almost acts as a permanent burden that human's must bear until the soul is ressurected. The soul, however, is good and Jesus work has allowed for the soul to be redeemed. Essentially the soul is all that matters, the body and generally the material world is just passing away. Catholicism sees the body and soul as essentially united and tied together. The Catechism states that both the soul and the body will be ressurected after the Parousia through the mercy of God alone.

Another fairly large difference is Catholicism's belief that God has revealed Truth though Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. Sacred Scripture being the Bible. The line between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture is blurred because the Bible is more or less the result of Chrurch councils deciding on the canon of scripture. Sacred Tradition is the result of the teachings decided on by church councils. Protestants will almost always deny Tradition as being a form of God's revealed Truth, only finding Truth through scripture alone.

In fairness, we have largely ignored the Eastern Orthodox churchs in our discussion, but considering most of us are Westerners we probably are mainly concerned with Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Oh, and again, I want to reiterate that Protestantism is so varied and spread out that it is hard to nail down it's belief. I was just speaking to it's roots, but those are my thoughts.

Oh, and Basics, with all due respect you are pretty wrong. You do realize that the priesthood was conferred by Christ and that Catholicism teaches that the only reason priests have any ability to confer grace is because grace was given to them by Christ. God is completely, intrinsically tied to the work of salvation and priests would be completely useless without the authority God gave them.