I married a Catholic girl in her church (yes a mixed marriage, but she’s now Methodist). She has an uncle who is a priest, I have a high school friend who is a priest, and my mother in law is the christian education director and RCIA director for her parish.
I was raised M-F as a Catholic as I went to Catholic schools from Kindergarten through high school. The weekends I went to the Methodist church right up the street.
When I was 14, I chose Methodist, and I haven’t regretted it since. I was baptized a few years later, and have a personal relationship with my savior.
Unfortunately too many Catholics view the Church as the only path to salvation - implicitly or explicitly. If only were more open such as most of my family (yes, uncle Brent, the priest, has even come to my church once and thoroughly enjoyed it) to understand that faith is more than doctrine.
I find it interesting that when asked what religion they are, most Protestants say “Christian”. When asked the same question, most Catholics say “Catholic”. That should be telling in itself.
If you were married in a Catholic ceremony, then you would have had to produce your baptismal certificate. Thus, as I stated before, you would be a baptized Catholic..
BTW, this Catholic has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — I think that is one of the biggest misunderstandings between Catholics and PROTESTants.
Well you have a point there. Since something like 85% of America is Christian, when I ask people their "religion" I'm usually wondering their specific denomination. If they answer "Christian", I say "Aren't most people? What branch?" and then I get their religion: "Dutch Reform" and so on. Of course if you ask a Catholic what religion, they almost always reply "Catholic". If you ask what branch they're probably say "Roman"
Well you know the way Catholics see it is that no religion is perfect once man gets to it, nothing will be exactly like the church that Christ intended. Christianity is full of leaky boats, and from the Catholic perspective, Catholicism is the least leaky boat. All the other branches of Christianity stray from what Jesus intended (to varying degrees), and Catholicism is the closest to what Jesus wanted.
Perhaps it is a bit arrogant of Catholics but most of Catholicism views all Chrisitianity as Catholic (after all, Catholic means "universal", the nicene creed says "one holy catholic and apostalic church"), and the Pope as the spokesman for all Christians. From the Catholic POV, the other branches have just slowly strayed from their Catholic roots and are not listening to the guy who is the spokesman for Christianity -- namely, the Pope.
I do tend to think in these terms myself sometimes, as much as I try to be humble. Of course from the Orthodox perspective of course, it's the other way around -- they seem themselves as the "original" church that Jesus started, and say that 4 out of 5 of the original "main centers" of Chrisitanity stayed faithful but then in 1054 the Roman branch got a little cocky and ran off to do its own thing.
And from a historic perspective (taking away my own religious bias), you can really see it either way.
And the protestant branches... well I see most of them as started by guys that had some good intentions, mostly trying to reform corruption within the Catholic church, but ended up doing more harm that good. I mean Martin Luther was totally right about calling the Pope to task for the Catholic church selling indulgences, but later in life he became a rather nasty anti-Jewish bigot and threw out books of the bible that had been around since antiquity. And John Calvin, John Wesley, they all had some good ideas too, but ultimately I think they were wrong on alot of things. Such is the failing of mortal men.