Never Forget Your Roots

I sat next to a very attractive young blonde recently on my way to Chicago, and struck up a conversation with her. She was a very pleasant, well spoken conversationalist, and I was enjoying our talk until the following exchange took place:

her - "So how were your holidays?"

me - "Well, I worked all of the holidays."

her - "Do you always work holidays?"

me - "I worked all the important ones this year: Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years."

her - "Easter? Are you a Christian?"

me - "Yeah, I'm Catholic."

her - "Catholic? That's not Christian. Don't you worship the Pope and Saints?"

Rather than try to assuage her ignorance I simply unbuckled my seatbelt and moved to a different seat on board the aircraft. Unfortunately, after having had nearly this same discussion with several different Protestants, I no longer have the energy to challenge her reply with the facts of Catholic teaching.

It confuses me that so many Protestants have such a disdain and hatred for the Catholic Church despite the fact that every single Christian Religion on Earth is somehow or another rooted in Catholicism. Truth be told, of the 2000+ year history of Christianity, Protestants have only existed for about 500 years. Despite this fact, so many of them take far too much pleasure in condemning Catholics. In my experience, the great majority of their malice towards the Catholic Church is rooted either in arrogance, or ignorance, two words that too often go hand in hand.

Protestants refer to their movement in the early 1500's as the "Protestant Reformation." Catholics refer to the event more accurately as the "Protestant Revolution." I say more accurately, because at its core the revolution was mostly a political event marked by many rich midevil lords revolting against Papal taxes and indulgences. One must remember that the Catholic Church of the period was a powerful and currupt political machine, and therein lay the seeds of the Protestant Revolution to a far greater extent than any dogmatic difference of opinion. The movement gathered strength as more and more land-owning nobles seperated from the Catholic Church in order to avoid paying taxes to Rome. The teachings of Martin Luther and others like him would merely be historical footnotes were it not for the politicaly motivated support they received from powerful individuals interested entirely in personal and financial gain.

The end result of these bitter precedings from 5 centuries ago is that too many people who call themselves Christians carry themselves with a remarkably aloof attitude. Too many factions of what was once a unified faith have taken it upon themselves to refer to themselves as the only path to salvation. Too many hypocrites run around asking truly faithful people if they have been, "Saved." Too many people are too quick to cast judgement because of a 500 year old feud during which it was fashionable to hate and mock the Catholic Church.

Not enough people remember where they truely came from.