Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.

“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

  • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Catholics are not the major Christian group, it’s 2nd place in the US. 69% of US residents claim to be Christian, 45% of which Christians claim to be Protestant while only 22% of which say Catholic (Gallup 2020). It’s regional too, I beleive centered around Italian and Irish immigrant communities, or at least the suburbs around where those city diasporas used to be. Protestants specifically do not give a shit about the pope.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Evangelicals are the most vocal, and they are very much opposed to the Pope.

    • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      So Catholics are the major Christian group based on that.

      Protestants are broken up among several dozen sects and don’t often form a single block on issues. Catholics are one group that do often form a voting block.

      It’s well past time we stop breaking up Christianity into Catholic and Protestant. It’s not a useful metric anymore. A Lutheran and a Baptist are just as different as a Quaker and a Catholic. Like come on the reformation was like 4 centuries ago, let’s categorize better

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        OK, but if all Protestants reject the pope, then it’s a useful metric for the question about whether or not Americans would generally be upset about threatening the pope

    • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
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      3 days ago

      Are US protestants the same as UK Anglicans? Like is it the same church? I thought for sure most US Christians were nutjob baptists or other what would similarly fringe sects anywhere else in the world. Wait, are baptists protestants?

      • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Anglicanism is sort of Protestantism. It forked off of the Catholic Church after the start of the Protestant Reformation, but wasn’t really part of the movement. The king of England at the time specifically had a problem with the Pope and essentially took over the churches in England, keeping the Catholic traditions and power structure but changing the head of the faith from the Pope to the king. The English monarch is still officially the head of the Anglican Church.

        Americans are very much not Anglican and many of the people who emigrated to the colonies were religious minorities from proper Protestant groups.

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Generally yes, but what are called mainline Episcopalians are “in communion” with the Church of England, so they’re kinda sorta Anglican. If an observant Anglican were to want to attend church in the US, that’s who they would look up.

          Some red-state suburban churches broke off a few years back and are in communion with one of the churches in Africa that also broke off because they didn’t like the ladies and the gays and whatnot. Very classy of them all.

        • Paragone@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Now I understand: Mom was devout Christian, & we went to Anglican churches, until Dad ditched us, then Catholic ones…

          Finally I understand the 1st Christianity I was brought-up in…

          Thank you for your explanation.

          It clarifies why Protestantism always seemed … broken, somehow: I’d only ever known Anglicanism & Catholicism, so my view wasn’t as diverse as I’d assumed.

          _ /\ _

      • Rothe@piefed.social
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        3 days ago

        The Episcopalians are the American Anglicans, which is a Protestant denomination. But Baptists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Lutherans and lots of others are also American Protestant denominations.

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Alright, so I had to check my understanding. Yeah, that’s all Protestantism, but they’re all different and all disagree with each other. Baptists are the largest single Protestant group in the US, overlapping to classic original southern US states. Honestly, I thought Protestants were a distinct group but I guess the group I’d assume them to be would actually be Lutherans, assuming they’re adherent to the original protesting Martin Luther.

      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        The US has a version of Anglican referred to as Episcopal. Both it and Baptist are under the protestant umbrella.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        If a Christian is neither catholic nor orthodox they’re protestant unless they’re in some small middle eastern sect that predates all that