My Catholic identity is permanent, unleavable. It was passed down generations, traced back centuries through my ancestors and felt deeply in the home I grew up in. My Irish line and Polish familial lines had nothing to do with each other geographically until they immigrated to the Midwest. They were parts of different countries, different migration waves, different histories, and yet they arrived into the same American religious landscape. Despite my efforts to deconstruct the religious faith I grew up with, the identity of being a Catholic has never left. I'm starting to think that it's ingrained within my DNA.

To those on the outside, Catholicism and Protestantism seem like they should be the same thing. Two flavors of the same religion. I mean, they believe in the same God. But they're are forever divided by their structural framework and how it's been used in the geopolitical landscape.

Let's talk structure first. Catholicism has one central authority, the Vatican and the Magisterium. So a Catholic in Vietnam or France has the same religious rules, tenets, and beliefs as a Catholic in Poland, or Ireland, or Brazil. Protestantism has no equivalent central authority. In fact, that's why Protestantism started, to be able to change bits and pieces of one's beliefs when the Catholic Church wouldn't. Thousands of denominations have splintered off, each capable of reshaping its theology and messaging independently. This difference is why the two very similar religions are so at odds.

Those who are not part of the Catholic Church may believe that the Church cares so much for tradition that it doesn't allow change or growth with the times. While the rhetoric used by the Church maintains the appearance of unchanging continuity, the Church has actually adapted its doctrine many times over the last two thousand years. They changed their position on slavery, usury, and religious tolerance to give a few examples.

A more specific example is their changed stance on vernacular Mass which was introduced in the 1960s at Vatican II. Instead of being framed as a change of beliefs, this change in doctrine is framed more as an improved and deeper understanding of what has always been. It's rhetorically framed as continuous unfolding of tradition rather than reversal or adaptation. The little framing strategy maintains institutional authority and a sense of unbroken continuity while substantive change occurs underneath it.

The rhetorical strategy of many Protestant faiths is louder and more obvious than the Catholic Church's. Protestant rhetoric markets their faiths as adaptable, open to growth and change. Individual Protestant denominations and even individual congregations can and do shift messaging to align with contemporary political and cultural movements. Essentially, they can change whatever they need to change whenever they want to change it to appeal to their community, congregation, or current issues. Prosperity Gospel, something that popped up in America during the rise of capitalism, is the perfect example of this. Some Protestant churches began teaching that donations to the Church would result in material and spiritual prosperity for the individual, essentially saying, "Give us your money, and you can go to Heaven." Crazy work in my humble opinion.

Another example is megachurches. You know, those nondenominational churches that are big on loud, flashy marketing that screams all are welcome and that church can be fun too. Quick story time: One time my dad and I went to one of these churches for a year growing up while he was dating a woman who went there. They had a full band, played movies for us every Sunday, and and served popcorn while the pastor zoom called in from his beach vacation. My high school religion teacher at my Catholic School told me this was blasphemy. It was a confusing time for 15-year-old Abigail, because at least this church was entertaining, unlike the incensed Latin masses I was used to at the time. No wonder teenage me felt this way. The language and design used for these worship experiences appeal to younger, contemporary audiences. This ability to change the faith into whatever fits is one of the main selling points of Protestantism. I mean it's why the Protestant reformation happened with Martin Luther and his rules nailed to the door in the first place.

The Protestant Reformation was the first denominational split from the Catholic Church. Leaders of the reformation challenged papal authority, accusing the Catholic church of corruption, and advocating for individuals to read the Bible in their own languages and practice at their own discretion. Since then, the Protestant faith has split many, many more times.

In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention split from the northern Baptist over the problem of slavery. The Southern churches developed a theological rhetoric to justify the institution of slavery instead of accepting that the northern Baptist faith believed it immoral. A more modern example occurred within the United Methodist Church in 2020. The main cause for the split was LGBTQ+ inclusion. Factions on both sides developed competing rhetorical frameworks to claim biblical authority for both sides of their position: Love Is Love, or Same Sex Love Is Sin. Protestant churches can split over many different issues they find relevant enough to have a negative impact on their faith. It's a demonstration of their direct rhetorical response to social and political pressure. They are able to accomplish this within their congregations in ways Catholic Doctrine simply cannot, not with its internal structure. There's no way for a faction to break off and rebrand. You're either Catholic, or you're not.

Protestant principle of scripture, the sola scriptura, separate and free of the Magisterium's interpretive authority, is the theological root of its rhetorical flexibility. Anyone with enough conviction and a congregation can interpret scripture independently and start a church. As a result, theology becomes far more responsive to whoever's interpreting it and what cultural pressures they're under and attracts a more diverse group of believers.

As someone who grew up in both the Protestant and Catholic faith, depending on which parent's house I was at that Sunday, I experienced both in full and know many people on both sides. There's an undertone of hate between the two sides. I remember snide remarks from my father's extended family about how Catholics think they're better than everyone and are prudes with too many rules. I remember criticism from my Catholic school teachers growing up towards Protestant and nondenominational churches. They regularly referred to them as blasphemists, that deep down the pastors of those churches were disrespecting God and His Church. Underneath this casual prejudice is a real and centuries old rhetorical divergence about how religious authority should work and how messaging should respond to the world changing around it.

It's not up to me to decide if one tradition is more true or more honest than the other, though I've been urged by both sides to conform and disown the other. They are simply two extremely similar faiths with extremely different structure and leadership. Catholicism sells stability, tradition, and continuity even while quietly (kind of) evolving. Protestantism sells responsiveness and relevance even while claiming the same unchanging biblical foundation as everyone else. Both are managing the same fundamental tension every religious institution faces, staying true to something ancient while remaining legible to people living in the present.

That tension plays out differently when a faith is carried not just by choice, but by survival. While the Protestant and Catholic faiths have a long, bloody history in Europe that spans centuries, they have a more recent history in America as well.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America, despite its rhetoric of religious freedom, was functionally a Protestant nation. Catholic immigrants were treated as racially and culturally suspect: the Irish, the Italian, and the Slavic Catholic. The Know-Nothing Party and other explicit anti-Catholic platforms were popping up all over the country in the 1850s. The Ku Klux Klan even added anti-Catholic activity alongside its barrage of racism and hate in the 1920s. To be American is to be fully American, and there was persistent rhetoric being spread throughout non-Catholic communities that Catholics owed their allegiance to the Pope, not to the President of the United States. Any American whose loyalty wasn't absolute, was suspect. Go figure.

This discrimination functioned identically across unrelated immigrant groups. Irish Catholics and Polish Catholics, along with Italian and other Southern and Eastern European Catholics, were lumped together by nativist rhetoric despite having distinct cultures, languages, and histories. Immigrants who had fled to America in order to practice their faith under the protections of religious freedom, were being persecuted again. In a time wrought with racist ideation, Catholics from these immigrant groups were treated as "not quite white." This depiction can be found in period cartoons, newspapers, and immigration debates between political groups. New immigrants struggled to adapt to life in a new country amidst the political landscape they were landing in. To be Catholic was to be mistrusted and less respected.

As a response, the National Catholic Welfare Conference was established. It was a national organization made up of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy (think Bishops, Priests, etc.). Among other services, they ran port offices in cities like New York through their Bureau of Immigration. The work this office did helped newly arriving Catholics with their immigration and refugee legal paperwork and work through financial resettlement issues. In addition to this nationally established group, Polish parishes functioned as necessary community infrastructure in growing cities with growing Polish populations.

Catholicism gave these immigrant communities structure and support under the immense pressure and prejudice they experienced. Parish churches functioned as the infrastructure of immigrant community life, mutual aid societies, schools, language preservation in some cases, a built-in social network in a country that didn't want them. The institution of the Church genuinely helped these communities survive and later thrive.

The identity, the smell of incense, a rosary, Catholic school, certain holidays, certain language around guilt and grace, embedded itself deeper than the level of theology. It was a way of life, a culture that connected entire communities and neighborhoods. Discrimination forced these communities to hold the identity tightly for generations, and that tightness doesn't dissolve just because personal faith becomes uncertain. I inherited the grip, even if I didn't inherit the certainty.

It's because of these differences between the two branches of the Christian faith, mixed with the history of how the two treated each other, that I finally understand the tension running between the two to this day. A history like that doesn't disappear in just a few hundred years.

Catholicism has been the rare thread winding through my family history. It was passed down on purpose by people who had every external reason to abandon it. They held tight to their belief and their identity, and in some ways they succeeded in passing it to someone who might not fully believe but can't fully leave either.

Because while I may not be the most devout and religious Catholic, I always will be one culturally.

‍

Sources I read:

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/protestant-reformation/

https://reformationbiblecollege.org/blog/the-five-solas 

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-im-catholic-the-foundational-error-of-sola

-scriptura https://www.usccb.org/about/a-brief-history-of-usccb 

https://cmsny.org/archives/cms_026/

Matthew Frye Jacobson, "Whiteness of a Different Color"