This anecdote, by William Pike, comes to us by way of the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog (who knew?).
My wife, who works in education, was sitting in on a world history class at one of our county’s public high schools last week when she heard a student ask, “Are Catholics Christian?”
Don’t laugh, it gets worse.
Her young, college-educated teacher responded, “No. Christianity is a Protestant thing. There are Christians and there are Catholics.” To say the least, my wife’s jaw dropped to the floor.
One person I know suggested that this teacher’s answer was a symptom of Indiana’s proximity to the Bible Belt (bet you never considered Indiana as proximate to the Bible Belt, did you?). But that is, in effect, to stereotype a stereotype – to say that people living in the Bible Belt (the non-Catholic ones, presumably) distrust and dislike Catholics, and are either too ill-informed or too biased even to see Catholics as Christians.
Mr Pike suggests that responses like this are less likely the result of anti-Catholic intolerance than sheer and woeful ignorance. It goes without saying (although I will say it anyway) that the root of intolerance and bigotry is ignorance. This applies equally to anti-Catholic bigotry as any other type of intolerance.
Archbishop Sheen famously said “There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church.” Well maybe more than 100, but the point is well taken. So what do you do about it. Mr Pike suggests that students need to be taught about religion in school, not what to believe but what people believe. But of course, that is a problem.
But such religious ignorance is unfortunately not confined to his example. Stephen Prothero, in his 2007 book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t (see a Washington Post review here), spells out just how little Americans know about the world’s major faith traditions…
Prothero’s proposed answer is to introduce more religious coursework to American public schools and colleges. Rather than teach religion in order to promote it or to undermine it, he believes schools should teach religion so that students will understand it, and the place it holds in the world around them, from their neighbors’ dietary habits to scriptural allusions in Shakespeare.
His proposal, however, is not easily accepted by many. A paper in the World Conference of Philosophy’s Paideia Project points to the 1963 Supreme Court decision banning mandatory morning prayer in public schools:
“Schempp/Murray distinguished between teaching about religion and the teaching of religion. Although the distinction is believed to be a clear one…it is unable, in practice, to provide an adequate means of determining which courses would be acceptable and which would not.”
Teaching about religion in schools is probably a good idea, but very difficult to implement in practice. So how does a Catholic deal with displays of ignorance as demonstrated in the anecdote above. First and foremost, by not being ignorant themselves. If a well informed Catholic had been able to give a politely brief but factual response to the teacher, it may have done much to counteract the negative impact of the teachers response. Instead, when Catholics are ignorant or timid, ignorance spreads. If you want to combat religious ignorance that leads to intolerance, know your own faith and history.
Thanks to Theodore Pappas and Encyclopedia Britannica for bringing this to our attention.
October 23, 2008 at 12:46 pm
As one of the very few Catholic teachers in my public school I find that the genuinely devout Protestant teachers and kids understand that Catholics are Christians. As C. S. Lewis says, it is those on the margins who fail to understand.
— Mack
October 23, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I don’t know about the whole “ignorance” business. I think to much these days is blamed on “ignorance” (for example, the crisis in the Church is often blamed on the failure of catechesis – if people only knew more they would be faithful – and often political disagreements are blamed on ignorance) and not nearly enough on people willfully rejecting the Truth. I think many Protestants believe that Catholics are not Christians because if they admitted it, then they might have to face the possibility that the Church has the Truth. If there’s ignorance, I think it is willful.
October 23, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I agree with DCS. I have had a great deal of experience with Protestants, namely “evangelicals” and Baptists. They are pretty brainwashed from the moment they are big enough to thump a bible. They all say the typical catch-phrases and this includes “whore of Babylon” which means the Catholic church. No matter how you try to reason with them or how much YOU quote scripture to them, their conditioning is too strong. So, it is pretty willful.
October 23, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Well to separate Christianity from Catholicism (as they are interchangeable) is quite Protestant indeed
October 23, 2008 at 8:31 pm
As a Catholic convert and the only Catholic in a hugely Protestant family, I can assure you that Catholic bigotry is alive and well. But lets not forget our American roots–there was tremendous anti-Catholic sentiment, even persecution, in Colonial America. It remains, in many circles, to this day.
October 24, 2008 at 6:10 am
I’ll never forget my 10th grade student asking me that question: “Are Catholics Christian?” Apparently she had been talking to some Protestant friends and she really had no concept of the Church and Her role in Christianity. I was happy to give a little history/apologetics lesson, but it strikes me that our Catechesis must not be that successful if a Catholic doesn’t know she’s Christian.
October 24, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I think one of the struggles here is defining what it means to be a Christian. For many evangelicals or other Bible Belters, a Christian or a “believer” is someone who has “personally accepted Christ as his or her personal Savior.” Because we Catholics don’t use the same language when we talk about salvation (nor do we agree with their two big pillars, sola scriptura and sola fide… both of which are non-Biblical…..) many (certainly not all) Protestants could easily believe that Catholics aren’t Christians. Addionally, there’s lots of anti-Catholic propaganda claiming the usual- we “worship Mary,” “practice idolotry,” and “don’t read the Bible.”
October 24, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Maggie – you make some very good points. Unfortunately, Catholics never bought the royalties for the word Christian. So, basically anyone (see: Mormons) can use it and of course claim it as their own. There are some basic/standard definitions (i.e. follower of Christ, believer in the trinitarian formula etc) but that’s as far as it goes. When I lived in London, I even saw a group called “Christian atheists”. So, unfortunately the field is wide open for anyone to define themselves as “Christian”.
October 24, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I’ve heard Catholics say the same thing. Somehow they’ve gotten it into their head that “Christian” means “Protestant” and that “Catholic” is a different religion.
Go figure.
October 26, 2008 at 1:01 am
Oh yes, there are many anti-Catholics out there who seem to think Christianity began with them. They never stop to think they wouldn’t be called “PROTESTants” if they hadn’t been protesting the first and only Christian Church Jesus Christ founded on earth. Very few Protestants bother to study the Reformation or even know what that is, let alone the history of the Catholic Church. I find that very sad.
October 28, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Growing up, I knew very few Catholics. In College, the ones I met would have NEVER identified themselves as “Christian” as that was a label for evangelicals. “No, I’m CATHOLIC,” they would say. In spite of this either ignorance or intentional stupidity, they also almost never used the word “Protestant” as it had no meaning in relation to most of the evangelicals they knew; evangelicals whose faith tradition was far removed from protesting against a largely marginalized and socially irrelevant sub-group in that area of the country.
As a convert in a now mixed-marriage, it’s a source of irritation to listen to evangelicals speak of Catholics from a position of almost complete ignorance. But it’s a source of shame to listen to Catholics speak of non-Catholics from a position of preening, masturbatory arrogance, especially considering the miserable, squalling near-abortion of a catechism that has been squatted and strained out in the US over the past 50 years by the vast, VAST majority of Bishops, Priests, Religious and Lay people.
Doug Sirman
doug_sirman@yahoo.com
January 7, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Hello,
I happen to be the person who wrote this post for Britannica Blog. I just stumbled across this conversation and was quite interested to see what others had to say. Please allow me to add a point or two.
First, regarding the teacher noted in this story, one thing which is important to mention is that he is notorious for teaching wildly incorrect “facts” about history and even current events. As I mention in the original blog post, how he can be a teacher when he has such a poor grasp of his subject is another issue, but it certainly amplifies his religious ignorance.
I find it interesting that everyone sees the issue so much in terms of Catholic/Protestant in these current times. This teacher may very well have no religious affiliation at all (I really don’t know). As “religious” as America is characterized to be, there are still vast numbers of people with nothing more than a vague faith identification, if any at all. For these, we must find new avenues of approach than “Protestants need to understand more about Catholics,” as they may not know what a Protestant is either.
Is there still anti-Catholic bigotry out there? Of course there is, though my own observation (as an evangelical Protestant) is that it is far, far less so among the younger generations. I have come across instances of ingrained bigotry from septuagenarians, but I certainly haven’t seen the same sort of thing from 30somethings. On the flip side, listen to EWTN consistently (as I do), and imagine what a faithful and thinking Protestant’s reaction would be.
Finally, I found Anonymous’ comment intriguing, in relation to Catholic views on being called “Christian.” My best friend, and roommate in college days, came to our freshman year straight from 12 years in a Long Island Catholic boys’ school. Our discussions of religion were constant and lengthy. Though he realized he was a Christian, it was certainly not how he thought of himself, and not what he would have called himself. Even to our third roommate (an Orthodox Jew) he referenced himself entirely as a Catholic. To this day, I believe I thought of him more as a Christian than he did himself!
Bill