Catholic vs Christian

A Catholic is baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, confesses that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died and rose, and professes the Creed at Sunday Mass. By any definition that has been in use since the fourth century, that is a Christian.

The phrasing comes from how Americans talk. In much of the country, Christian on a church sign means a Protestant congregation of some kind, and Catholic is treated as its own separate box. Pew's 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found 62 percent of US adults identifying as Christian, made up of 40 percent Protestant, 19 percent Catholic, and roughly 3 percent belonging to other Christian groups. The vocabulary splits a category that the survey itself keeps whole.

The Catholic Church answers the question in the other direction and does so in writing. Paragraph 818 of the Catechism says of Christians baptized outside its communion that "All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church."

Some Protestants do dispute it, usually on the ground that Catholic teaching on justification or on Mary compromises the gospel. That is a real objection and it belongs in the sections below. It is a claim about doctrine, and it is worth keeping separate from the historical and creedal question of who counts as a Christian, where the answer has never seriously been in doubt.

This is the disagreement underneath all the others. When two Christians read the same chapter and reach opposite conclusions, what settles it?

The Protestant answer is scripture. The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it this way in its first chapter: the whole counsel of God is "either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men."

The Thirty-Nine Articles say the same in shorter form, that whatever is not read in scripture nor may be proved by it "is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith." Councils and creeds are honored, and they are answerable to the text.

The Catholic answer is scripture and Tradition together, read by the Church's teaching office. Catechism 80 calls them "bound closely together," flowing "out from the same divine well-spring." Paragraph 82 draws the conclusion the Reformers rejected: the Church "does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence." The Council of Trent said it in 1546, receiving the written books and the unwritten apostolic traditions "with an equal affection of piety, and reverence."

Each side has its verses ready. Protestants point to Paul telling Timothy that all scripture is God-breathed and sufficient to equip. Catholics point to the same Paul telling the Thessalonians to hold the traditions taught by word or by letter, to the church called the pillar and ground of the truth, and to the keys handed to Peter. Neither reading is careless, and neither is going to be dislodged by a proof text the other side has already answered in print for five centuries.

Catholics count seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, matrimony. Most Protestants count two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and treat the other five as good practices without sacramental standing.

The deeper split is about what a sacrament does. Catechism 1127 says that "Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify," and 1128 explains the phrase ex opere operato, meaning the grace comes by virtue of Christ's saving work and acts "independently of the personal holiness of the minister." Applied to the Eucharist, Catechism 1376 quotes Trent teaching that by consecration "there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord."

Reformed and Anglican confessions reject that account in blunt language. The Thirty-Nine Articles say transubstantiation "cannot be proved by holy Writ" and that the body of Christ is eaten in the Supper "only after an heavenly and spiritual manner," received by faith. The Westminster Confession holds that the elements "still remain truly and only bread and wine, as they were before," while worthy receivers "really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified." Lutherans occupy their own ground, confessing the true body and blood present with the bread and wine and declining the Roman explanation of how.

Confession is the second flashpoint. Catholics bring grave sin to a priest, who absolves in Christ's name. Protestants confess directly to God and often to one another, and read James 5:16 as mutual confession among believers with no ordained middleman required. Both sides can quote John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11 at each other all afternoon. What actually separates them is the prior question about authority, because each side is reading those chapters through a settled account of who gets to say what they mean.

The practical consequence shows up at a funeral. A Catholic parish will usually ask that people who are not Catholic come forward for a blessing instead of communion, and that request is about the Church's understanding of what the sacrament expresses, not a judgement about anyone's faith. If a mixed family is planning a service, ask the parish office in advance and let them tell you how they handle it.

This is the difference most visible from the outside. There are statues in the church and a rosary in the glovebox. What Catholics say they are doing with them is narrower than it looks.

Catechism 956 describes the saints in heaven as continuing to intercede with the Father for those still living, offering the merits they gained on earth through Christ. Paragraph 971 calls the Church's devotion to Mary intrinsic to Christian worship, and says in the same breath that this devotion "differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit." Paragraph 970 insists that Mary's role takes nothing away from the one mediation of Christ and depends entirely on it.

Asking a saint to pray for you is, on this account, the same act as asking a friend to pray for you, addressed to somebody the Church believes is alive with God.

The Reformers refused the practice and said so in their confessions. The Augsburg Confession grants that the saints may be remembered so that believers imitate their faith, then states that scripture does not teach the invocation of saints or asking help of saints, because it sets before us the one Christ as mediator. The Thirty-Nine Articles put invocation of saints among the doctrines they call a fond thing vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of scripture. The Westminster Confession says religious worship belongs to God alone, and is to be given "not to angels, saints, or any other creature."

So the dispute has two layers. One is whether the distinction between honoring a saint and worshipping God survives contact with actual practice at an actual shrine. The other is whether asking a dead believer to pray is warranted at all. A Catholic will answer the first with the distinction the Catechism draws and the second with the communion of saints. A Reformed Christian will answer that the distinction is unstable and the warrant is missing. Both are arguing in good faith, and the argument is four hundred years old.

This was the fight that split Western Christianity, and it is the one place where the two sides have since put a signed document on the table.

The Reformation position is stated at Article IV of the Augsburg Confession: people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, and are freely justified for Christ's sake through faith. The Westminster Confession sharpens the mechanism, saying God justifies "not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous."

The Catholic account holds the two together. Catechism 1989 describes justification as the remission of sins together with the sanctification and renewal of the interior man, and 1992 says justification is conferred in baptism, the sacrament of faith. Grace does something to a person, and the change is part of what the word means.

In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. Its paragraph 15 states the shared confession: by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit. Paragraph 40 says the remaining differences in language, theological elaboration, and emphasis are acceptable, and paragraph 41 states that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching set out in the declaration. Paragraph 43 adds that questions of ecclesial authority, ministry, and the sacraments remain open.

Three other world communions have joined since, the Methodist in July 2006, the Anglican in April 2016, and the Reformed in July 2017, which makes five. The declaration binds those five and nobody else. Confessional Lutheran and Reformed bodies outside them, including Lutheran synods that do not belong to the Lutheran World Federation, are not party to it and hold the original disagreement.

Open a Catholic Bible and a Protestant Bible side by side and the Old Testaments have different tables of contents. Both have the same 27 New Testament books, and English Bibles print them in the same order.

A Catholic Old Testament carries seven books a Protestant one does not: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with longer forms of Esther and Daniel. Catholics call them deuterocanonical. Protestants call them the Apocrypha.

The Greek Old Testament, which is the text form the New Testament writers usually quote from, was copied and circulated with these books in it. Jerome doubted them and translated them anyway. The Council of Trent closed the question for Catholics in 1546 by printing the list itself, book by book, so that no doubt could arise, in the decree's own words, over "which are the books that are received by this Synod." Its list includes "Jeremias with Baruch" and both books of Maccabees.

The Protestant confessions went the other way. The Thirty-Nine Articles list the canonical books and then say the church reads the others "for example of life and instruction of manners," while not applying them to establish any doctrine. The Westminster Confession is blunter: the apocryphal books, "not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the church of God."

One practical consequence is worth knowing. 2 Maccabees 12 describes prayer and sacrifice offered for the dead, which is one of the texts behind Catholic prayer for the dead and the doctrine of purgatory. A Protestant who does not have the book in his Bible is not refusing an argument; he is working from a shorter shelf.

The Nicene Creed is the shortest answer to the original question. Catholics and most Protestants recite the same text: one God the Father almighty, one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten and not made, of one being with the Father, crucified, buried, risen on the third day, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.

The Lord's Prayer is common ground too. Protestants usually add the closing doxology about the kingdom, the power, and the glory, which the oldest manuscripts of Matthew do not carry. Catholics say it at Mass with a short prayer in between. The words in the middle are the same.

Both traditions baptize with water in the triune name and recognize each other's baptisms on that basis, which is why a Catholic parish receiving an adult convert from a Protestant church does not baptize again. That courtesy does not always run the other way, since many Baptist and nondenominational congregations do baptize an adult convert who was baptized as an infant, on the ground that baptism follows profession.

Catechism 838 says that with the Orthodox churches Catholic communion is so profound "that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord's Eucharist." The Catholic and Protestant comparison is one division among several, and it is not the oldest.

The disagreements survive all of it. What changes is who is having them: baptized people who say the same creed and read most of the same book, arguing about how it is settled and what happens at the altar.

Most people searching this phrase have a specific situation. Somebody is marrying a Catholic, or a daughter has started going to a Baptist church, or a funeral is coming and a family cannot agree on what the service should look like.

For those, the useful move is local and concrete. Call the parish office or the church office and ask what they actually do. Priests and pastors field these questions constantly, and their answer for your particular wedding or funeral will be more accurate than any page comparing two traditions in the abstract.

If the question is about your own faith, say the quiet part out loud to a person who knows you. Ask a priest or a pastor for twenty minutes and tell them which claim you cannot get past. That conversation goes somewhere. Reading a comparison page at one in the morning usually does not.

This site is software published by a company. It carries no ecclesiastical approval and no teaching authority, and it takes no side between traditions. Where your own church teaches something different from what you read here, follow your church and check the primary sources below, all of which are published by the traditions themselves.