Christiains and Catholics

I work in a state prison.  Because freedom of religion is a constitutional right, religious services have to be offered in prison.  There is a Chaplaincy program which organizes that, but many of the services are provided by volunteers.

Recently, the Chaplain posted the new schedule for religious services:  They are on Saturday morning (which is not uncommon, because the volunteers who lead the services need to be available to provide Sunday services for their own parishes/congregations.)  The Christian service was first, and then the Catholic Mass. 

We talked about this notice this week in our staff meeting.  The general comment was that Catholics are Christians, aren't they? This reaction surprised me, because many people on our staff are or were Catholics at some time.  The comment was it should have been Protestant and Catholic. 

That is what I would have thought, in 1977 when I moved to West Texas from Western Massachusetts.  Where I grew up, we had Catholics, and we had Protestants.  And, we had Vatican II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council, which taught us to think in terms of ecumenism, inclusiveness in religion, and eventually opened the doors for some other religions (Lutherans and Episcopalians, for example) to be invited to share in the bounty of the Mass and Communion with Catholics, and vice versa.

When I moved to West Texas, I quickly learned there was no such thing as a Protestant in West Texas.  There were Catholics, and Christians (it seemed the Episcopalians did not count!)  The Christians included the Baptists, the Assembly of God, the Church of Christ, the Methodists, the Lutherans, even the Episcopalians.  The Catholics seemed to be an entity by themselves.  This was so foreign to me, but became so "normal" to me.

I am so glad my coworkers are so liberal thinking that they do not accept that Catholic and  Christian are mutually exclusive.  Neither do I, but my reality is that as I have dealt with people in my professional and personal life, the general sentiment in West Texas is very much that:  Catholics and Christians are two different categories. That is so sad.