The American "Catholics aren't proper Christians" was not something I ever came across until @knirirr.bsky.social showed me some Chick Tracts. I still don't entirely get it (though I did so The Reformation at A level and have some knowledge of the nuttier C18 stuff...) - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

gwenynen.bsky.social • 59 days ago

The American "Catholics aren't proper Christians" was not something I ever came across until @knirirr.bsky.social showed me some Chick Tracts. I still don't entirely get it (though I did so The Reformation at A level and have some knowledge of the nuttier C18 stuff...)

Reposted from Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty

Right-wing American Catholics *really* do not get how much right-wing American Evangelicals hate them.

Comments

florilegia.bsky.social•59 days ago

It’s utterly bonkers, isn’t it? I’ve read stuff where they’re basically arguing that Catholics are satanic

sianp.bsky.social•59 days ago

I mean they join the ranks of monster energy drink, pokemon and palmolive soap...

florilegia.bsky.social•59 days ago

What did Palmolive soap do? I mean, I can understand why they’d misguidedly attack stuff with monster in the name, but soap?

sianp.bsky.social•59 days ago

Oh that was a classic

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/procter-gamble-satan-conspiracy-theory

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Wut

florilegia.bsky.social•59 days ago

Good lord. Today I learned my soap is satanic

sianp.bsky.social•59 days ago

Yet another reminder that people's ability to stop and ask 'really?' Was fucked long before the internet.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Don't forget line dancing. Though I'm not certain I disagreed with that one.

sianp.bsky.social•59 days ago

I went for some of my personal favourites, I had forgotten about line dancing.

florilegia.bsky.social•59 days ago

There’s a distinct “Cigarettes and alcohol and rollerblading” vibe

booleanunion.bsky.social•38 days ago

Well... I mean... they did assassinate Abraham Lincoln, after all.

Comment image

florilegia.bsky.social•38 days ago

Good grief, that’s bonkers

janetifimust.bsky.social•58 days ago

I used to teach an intercultural theology course at a British University. One year, it started with a student declaring that Catholics weren't Christian... and at a meeting, a pastor turned to me and said,

janetifimust.bsky.social•58 days ago

"We know Catholics don't pray, but would you pray for us just this once?". I did not give him the rosary in my bag, as I thought that wouldn't appeal but, seriously.....

janetifimust.bsky.social•58 days ago

It's not only a US thing, is what I'm saying.... Unfortunately.

yrieithydd.bsky.social•59 days ago

Oh it's around over here too. Definitely a thing in CUs IME. Here in Aber a NI friend generously said "Catholics can be Christians but it's harder for them..." and CICCU had a talk during their mission week in 2002 or 2003 entitled "Roman Catholicism: another religion?"

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Be ddiawl?!

yrieithydd.bsky.social•59 days ago

Argymhellodd y siaradwr yng Nghaergrawnt llyfr "The Reformation's Fight with Rome and why it must continue".

Roedd darlithydd Catholig yno a heclodd a gerddodd allan. Ro'n i'n 'na gyda grwp eciwmenaidd o'r grwp Gweddi Taize i glywed beth yn union y dywedwyd!

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

😳

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

Bangor’s Welsh-language CU operated separately from the nationally-affiliated English-language one because the latter was so sectarian and bigoted.

yrieithydd.bsky.social•59 days ago

Roedd Undeb Cristnogol Cymraeg Aber chwarter canrif yn ôl yr un mor geidwadol ag yr un Saesneg. Pobl dda ond lot yn mynd i eglwys efengylaidd annibynnol yn adeilad yr Urdd. Pawb arall yn rhy Rhyddfrydol.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

I'll have to ask mam how it was there in the 60s... 🤔

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

I was once made to go on a Catholic pilgrimage to Walsingham. It was picketed by very angry evangelicals calling us evil, amongst other things.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

...ye gods. Such things are just so incredibly odd to me happening now rather that, you know, sixteen-whatever. 🥺

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

It’s not just Northern Ireland! There was also a 20thC group called the Kensitites (?) who specialised in raiding High Church Anglican churches to strip out anything that smelled Romish.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

This lot?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Truth_Society?wprov=sfti1

Tbh they could have just set up camp in Oxford...

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

That’s them. Still going!

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Some people have way too much time on their hands.

adamchapman.bsky.social•59 days ago

But Walsingham *is* very odd in lots of ways (please make your own Norfolk joke), in profoundly modern ways. 'Smells, bells and petticoats' is the line of my grandmother's mum always quotes, but that ignores the Anglicans (and the Orthodox church in the old railway station...).

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

Sadly that’s all I’ve seen of Norfolk, and it was last century. Must go back one day.

adamchapman.bsky.social•59 days ago

You must, it's a very interesting - and varied - part of the world, but it's the family heartland, and I went to UEA: I would say that.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Beware the agoraphobia, the whole place is entirely too flat for my comfort. (M's family are by P'boro)

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

*gestures expansively at MANY MANY Oxford Anglican churches...*

adamchapman.bsky.social•59 days ago

Well, yes. Cambridge is similar in its variety, I gather. Christianity in Norfolk is a many-flavoured thing, too. The Dukes of Norfolk and Lestranges have long, Catholic, shadows, but there's all sorts of radicalism, too.

plashingvole.bsky.social•59 days ago

No accident that the Parliamentarian leaders were East Anglian gentry.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

I will admit the bust of Newman in my/our college is somewhat hidden Away....

seabeard.bsky.social•58 days ago

I did Walsingham as High Anglicans. Got picketed too. Nothing like a frothing elderly man shouting in the face of a 10 year old girl that she’s an idolater.

plashingvole.bsky.social•58 days ago

How to win friends and influence people.

commonmugwort.bsky.social•59 days ago

American religious identity is so odd. I’m half American and lived there for most of my childhood and I still don’t get a lot of what everyone there seems to take for granted.
Maybe the Puritanism really is that deep in the cultural dna; it distorts everything.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

This would not surprise me, really. The "Papists are the antichrist!" thing was super-odd to me, then I ended to reading Welsh C18 Protestant pamphlets, and...yeah. "What is Methodism but bringing down once more the BLACK SOOT OF PAPISTRY on our heads?"

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Lord, how these Christians love one another, etc etc... 🙄

matthewkilburn.bsky.social•59 days ago

I'd encountered Methodism (my family tradition) as crypto-Catholicism too. Very odd, but it goes back to the time of Wesley.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Yep, the people I was reading were 1750-1790 ish.
Dad ef Wesleyan, but we didn't go chapel bc where I grew up was all Calvinists so we went with mam to Church in Wales...

purlewe.bsky.social•59 days ago

I first encountered it when in High School. A boy informed me I wasn't Christian bc I worshipped "idols" (I had statues of saints at my church.) More recently a friend confessed it was weird we were friends bc she didn't usually like "papists"; including refusing to eat fish bc it was "too papist"

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

purlewe.bsky.social•59 days ago

I will also say that "converted catholics" are even more different than those raised in the church. I often refer to them as born again catholics or neo catholics. Their fervency is more akin to born again Xtians. I saw a thread earlier today about it & it rang true. they use more proselytizing

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Oh yeah, I've seen the various comments on those guys and it totally rings true 😬 Nowt more fervent than a new convert.

purlewe.bsky.social•59 days ago

My grandfather married his 2nd wife she converted for him and to be a nice guy he went with her to the classes. And WHOA it radicalized him in a truly awful right wing way and that was in the 90s. It was hard to hold a conversation with him without him going off on a huge religious sidetrack.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Oh boooooy...😬 😬 😬

cpgorski.bsky.social•59 days ago

I grew up in the south. It's here. It was more confusing than oppressive for me, but I def have that little thing in the back of my head reminding me how easy it is for an evangelical to create a religious test I would fail...

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

😬😬😬😬
I'm sorry x

cpgorski.bsky.social•59 days ago

Thanks. Raleigh is a big place, I'm fine--as an adult that little voice does more to inform my understanding of other people's religion and politics than anything else

acerbicotter.bsky.social•59 days ago

I once very quietly responded to someone who referred to Catholics as "mackerel-snappers"* with "I have much loved relatives who are Catholic" (in fact: a cousin was contemplating the priesthood). Not that it seemed to matter

(*much older man but still, wtf?)

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

That is not a phrase I have ever come across, good gravy that's weird...😬

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

TIL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackerel_snapper?wprov=sfti1

booleanunion.bsky.social•38 days ago

I first read this term in Stephen King's novel "Needful Things" and it has lived rent free in my head for the last 25 years at least.

acerbicotter.bsky.social•59 days ago

I presume it had to do with the tradition of eating fish on Friday? It was WILD

my prep school always served fish or other meatless dishes on Fridays. It was not Catholic aligned but it was a nod to students who still might do Friday fasting

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Yeah, Oxford colleges still reflexively do fish on Fridays, it used to smell very distinctive when I worked in the centre. My Catholic pal will tell me off if I mention having bacon or something on a Friday too 😆

acerbicotter.bsky.social•59 days ago

even my maternal grandma, who was very New England Protestant in her ways, did not eat meat on Good Friday....

knitswithcats.bsky.social•59 days ago

My very Jewish husband expects fish or seafood on Fridays and always has. He even makes sure the cats get seafood treats - usually salmon - on Fridays.

booleanunion.bsky.social•38 days ago

Oh, they HAAAAATE Catholics. Pretty much every hortible thing which has befallen humanity in the last 2000 years is placed directly at the feet of Catholicism in at least one Chick tract or comic.

https://boolean-union.com/dissections/boolunion/BU.CHICK.WHYI.DISCT.html

Comment image

zuzusunshine.bsky.social•59 days ago

I once told my MIL a story about a Funeral Fiasco, she got stuck on the phrase, "funeral mass," and went off on an anti-Catholic rant.

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

...ooooof....😬 😬 😬

zuzusunshine.bsky.social•59 days ago

It's a really funny story, too! The hearse got lost! I was trying to entertain her, not provoke her!

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Friend of mam's launched a career as a playwright by doing a play about silly incidents at funerals he'd heard from the vicar at their am Dram group...

winidavies.bsky.social•59 days ago

I've heard some very bigoted stuff about Catholics without going to America. (By people who identify as Christian.)

gwenynen.bsky.social•59 days ago

Rywsut oeddwn i ddim yn meddwl mod i'n nabod neb o gwbl nes imi ganfod yn y 6ed fod fy athrawes dosbarth yn Babydd... Ac wedyn do, darllenes i ddigonedd o stwff wrth-Babaidd drwy astudio llên Saesneg (a Chymreig yn hwyrach fyth)