protestants and catholics

allyourbase

My father is catholic and my mother is protestant. I attended both services as I grew up and frankly didn't think they were that different (I realize this comment in iteslf may bring the house down). While I understand the origine of the problems between catholics and protestants ( deep rooted, though extremely unfortunate since both are christian ) I have no sense as to where the conflist is today, and what if anything is being done to close this rift, or, does it in fact continue with as deep venom as in the past?

Zillah

Some people end up fighting for the sake of fighting. It's like a decades long war, and no one remembers why it started, but they'll be damned if they let the other guys win.

I'd bet money that 80% of protestants and catholics that hate/fight the other side don't actually know why. It's way too easy to hate, especially if your grandfather did it too.

SantaHoe

It always puzzles me why the perpetrators of political violence are known chiefly by their catholic or protestant beliefs... if they're so religious - why do they ignore basic christian teachings and commit acts of hatrid and violence in the first place?
Why not just remove religion from the equation alltogether, imo it just confuses the issue and makes it sound like some holy war.

CathyMoran

I don't get the problems either...I am a mix of Catholic,Proestant and Jewish and have friends who are Buddist. People are people.

bus77

CathyMoran wrote:

People are people.

And people will allways act like people...


The differnce in religion and even the past history itself is nearly irelevent.

Two sets of people with seperate National/Curtural identities can get along ok if the conditions are right. But if one is backed up by a foreign power, foreign hands you cant see. People will allways strike in that situation.

Nationalism can be just as powerfull as a religious idelology. Look at what happend to the Germans, the notion of one nation/one race was built up to such an extent that every other foreign identity(and race) became a threat.

Im not trying to make light of the situation, or make excuses for anyone but Ive come to the conclusion it's compleatly natural, left over from our past when we were going around in tribes and bunching up, where being wary of any group that was differnt really was essential to survival.

article6

bus77 wrote:

The differnce in religion and even the past history itself is nearly irelevent.

Two sets of people with seperate National/Curtural identities can get along ok if the conditions are right. But if one is backed up by a foreign power, foreign hands you cant see. People will allways strike in that situation.

Nationalism can be just as powerfull as a religious idelology.

Perfectly right. Especially in the North Ireland or the Cyprus contexts, "religion" is just an off-shoot of "nationality". Naturally, in some contexts (like Israel and the Arabs) it's less so.

omnicorp

Well, it's really all to dop with the Reformation.
Protestants think that the Catholic Church was corrupt, Catholics didn't.
The Protestants were right at the time, and may even have a valid point now but that doesn't justify ANY war.