It gives one hope that what seem to be profound differences between tribal camps can, sometimes, be worn away until they not only are cause for bloody wars and prejudice, but are actually forgotten as to even being differences.
The conflict between Catholics and (the many variations of) Protestants was for many centuries a literally bloody one in Europe. Even in this country, anti-Catholic prejudice was a feature of Colonial life (except in Catholic dominated enclaves like Maryland) and through the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Centuries. The Founders who believed in religious freedom always pointed out that Catholics should be considered fully American. The Klan (and the Know-Nothings) were vitriolically anti-Catholic (though a lot of that was driven by nativist dislike of Irish and Italians, and later Mexicans, as much as from theological differences).
Much of the rapport between Protestants in the 19th Century of the US was in opposition to Catholics — the use of particular Bibles and Bible passages in schools, and interfaith charities were done explicitly to counter Catholics and their private church schools.
Catholic presidential candidates faced a huge uphill struggle — Al Smith’s Catholic faith likely lost him the 1928 election against Hoover, and John Kennedy had to repeatedly disavow allegiance to the Pope in order to win in 1960.
Indeed, Protestant animus toward Catholics only seemed to largely abate (as something active) in the 70s-80s, when GOP strategists made anti-abortion planks a major factor in Republican politics to draw in Catholics — and managed to rope in evangelical Protestant power brokers and leadership into treating abortion as a major issue (it had not been for evangelicals prior to that), creating an alliance of cause that swamped theological and doctrinal differences.
And so we get to today, when — aside from perhaps some looking askance at having a Pope, or at all the statues and Marian “worship,” most Protestants except on the zany wing not only don’t consider Catholics all that bizarre, but seem to have significant problems even articulating the doctrinal differences between the Catholic Church and the Protestant movements of Luther and Calvin (per the linked article).
That’s probably a good thing.
The lesson of history is that what seems to be of the greatest import and conflict of present ideology is, in a later age, trivialized at best, forgotten at worst. That doesn’t mean that good and evil are ignored, just that the definitions (or the focus) are changed. I suspect that the things that I get so torqued today about will, a few centuries hence [1], be seen as silly or missing some fundamental moral point.
Not that that means I should stop being enraged today, but confusing my personal morality with some timeless, eternal, objective ethos is demonstrably a mook’s game. It’s hubris, which never ends well.
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[1] Whether in a high-tech arcology or sitting in the ruins of civilization bar-b-cuing lizards.
2/3 for me; I fell at the post. I thought sola fide was a belief of fringe sects only and connected to the concept of 'election'. I didn't know Luther preached it.
+Travis Bird Yup. Not quite as extreme as Calvin (who took Luther's concepts to the next logical step), but it's there.