Replies

I don’t think ministers usually talked about Catholics because Catholics were sort of a non-presence in those places...

I was just referring to my experiences here in the South, such as when I was talking with an Evangelical friend about going to church (I was just saying something I heard in the homily that morning) and she asked me when I had gone. When I said 7:00 am, she was horrified, because only Catholics have early masses or services and she asked me if maybe I was Catholic. She, like several other people I had met in this town, was shocked.

I was also very upset when some Evangelical or Pentecostal group used to drive a van around town and park it in front of the Cathedral...since the sides were painted with slogans like “Whore of Babylon,” “The Beast,” and even fouler things. They parked really early and did this so that parishioners could see it as they came out of mass. It was very upsetting; I’ve never seen Catholics parking outside of a Protestant church to harass the members!

But getting back to my friend, we had a cowboy preacher who came out to see her sometimes and hold a little service, which I had always attended, and he told her that it was OK if I was a Catholic and that I was still a Christian and could be her Christian friend. Since then we have become very good friends and I think she now knows that Catholics are Christians.

So I’m not saying that this is institutionally promoted (except perhaps among Hispanics, because I have read some seriously anti-Catholic material from Hispanic Evangelical groups), just that there are some attitudes that I had never met before. And I do think personal contact overcomes them. We then all realize that we are Christians, serious Trinitarian Christians who believe in the Resurrection and all that hard stuff.

We’ve got to get together and hang in there!