Did you read the article? Because if you did, it would be easy to understand what’s going on here on the religion forum. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that not only are beliefs of Roman Catholics and non-Catholics ‘different’, they are POLES apart. If you would care to share how you think they are similar, and how that could be our path to unity, please, by all means, tell. I’m interested in what you have to say.
Except it's not what we believe. It's not what I believe, and I know my own heart and mind better than someone who's never even met me. And it's not what the Church teaches or practices. So I can tell you what I do believe, and I can site references as to what the Church actually teaches, but it will always fall on deaf ears. Tomorrow the same people will be publishing the same falsehoods, and any discussion will have been absolutely futile.
That's not how thinking works. That's not how intellectual honesty or integrity works. And such tactics should be beneath the standards to which Christians hold themselves. If a discussion is to be at all fruitful, the deliberate misrepresentation has to stop as a minimal prerequisite. Then we might have a chance of discussing our actual differences rather than the imagined propaganda of Protestant fever dreams.
Yes, we disagree on many issues, but we are facing together the annihilation of Christian culture in our country. It behooves us to work in concert against it, not waste our time with internal bickering. Divide and conquor is the devil's strategy, and it seems to be working well enough without our help.
Obviously the way forward is to begin by what we have in common. It may be more than you think. We probably share a belief in the Trinity. We accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We believe in the power of prayer. We honor the scriptures.
If we can put the sledgehammers down and stop bashing each other, but instead approach each other with humility and charity, we have a chance of actually coming to an understanding. Otherwise, Western civilization is going to continue to disintegrate.
Why, practically speaking is that a problem? Consider our legal system. If there is no common moral standard against which we can judge whether or not a law is just, then legislatures are free to pass any law they wish. Until recently, the prevailing Christian moral consensus applied. Now it's gone, and things are becoming increasingly tyrannical. It's happened before. The Nazi persecution of Jews was completely legal - the Reichstag actually passed the Nuremburg Laws which precluded Jews from certain professions, business activities, etc. Legal, yes, but totally immoral.
So we can try to be decent to each other, actually listen to and understand each other, or we can squander that opportunity and continue the bashing. If we choose the latter, everyone loses.