By ROSIE WATERLAND
For a very brief moment in my life, I was a Mormon. Also a Catholic. And briefly a Christian. And I think there was some Wiccan thrown in there too. And I also tagged along to some Hare Krishna meetings because I liked the food.
I wasn’t born into any religion, I know that much. My mum was meant to baptise me Catholic like my grandparents, to stop me ending up in baby-limbo, obviously. But her concern for my eternal soul must have been minimal because she never quite got around to it.
So until I was about five, I wandered the earth with no spiritual protection, like some kind of godless devil child.
Then the Mormons knocked at the door. I’m not exactly sure how it happened but I like to think my mum looked at the eager, sensibly dressed young men holding their bibles, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Yeah. Alright.”
My sister and I were then subjected to weekly sessions at some place called a ‘church’, where we were sent to a room with other kids to colour in cartoon pictures of some OCD dude called Noah who needed everything to be done in pairs. Meanwhile, our mum was next door wearing a floor-length skirt and participating in some kind of intensive chanting group.
Top Comments
Christianity is the religion, Catholicism is the subset. If you're a Catholic, you're a Christian, you're not either/or. Sorry, just had to clear that up, seeing as it was written incorrectly in Rosie's piece, and one of the commenters has also made that mistake.
Christians can be Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists etc. They're all a type of Christians and the centres they attend are churches :)
Not that it matters, but it is my inderstanding that Catholics, Angligans and Presbyterians etc are all individual religons that all happen to believe in Christ but also have differing beliefs, yes they are all Christian religions but are religions in their own right. There are other Christian faiths that actually refer to themselves as Christians. If I need to fill in a form that requires me to state my religion (maybe in hospital?) I would not say Christian I would write R/C or C of E etc. because I imagine the point would be ,if in the case of impending death, who do I want to see (if anyone) an Angligan minister or a Catholic priest etc? Somehow I can not imagine too many non Catholics wanting a Catholic priest turning up to administer the last rites or to whip through a quick rosary. So, in my perhaps ignorant opinion, they are different religions.
Hi Anon2, sorry but they are definitely still part of the same religion. The religion is Christianity ie those who follow and believe in Christ. And since Christianity has been around a while, all those Christians started disagreeing a bit over time in the best way to honour their commitment to Christ and so the different subsets started - otherwise called denominations. So sometimes you can have a 'non-denominational' service which basically means it's Christian, without being specifically for Catholics, Protestants etc. So although for instance Catholicism may be the most well known and possibly the biggest (need to check that, that's a guess on my behalf), they are still part of the wider religion Christianity.
Yep, you're right.
Agree. Catholics, Protestants, etc are to Christianity like Shiites, Sunnis, etc are to Islam. And Protestant is really just an umbrella term for a number of non-Catholic Christian denominations. As I understand it.
So funny Rosie! Love your work :)