{"id":112,"date":"2025-06-20T14:01:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T14:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/06\/20\/are-catholics-christians\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T14:01:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T14:01:03","slug":"are-catholics-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/06\/20\/are-catholics-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Catholics Christians?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fellow philosopher writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

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While reading Clarence Thomas\u2019s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: \u201cAmericans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.\u201d I\u2019ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren\u2019t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is said about Mormons.) Have you written about this (about whether Catholics are Christians)? What must one think Christianity is in order to believe that Catholics aren\u2019t Christians? Strange.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I haven't written about this topic because it is perfectly obvious that (Roman) Catholics are Christians.  Proof: The Catholic Apostle's Creed<\/a>. Every Catholic is a Christian, but not conversely.  Calvinists, for example are Christians but not Catholics. Similarly for all the other Protestant sects. No Protestant is a Catholic. That too is obvious.  <\/span><\/div>\n
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Did Justice Thomas, for whom I have great respect by the way, cite anyone who claimed that Catholics are not Christians?  Who would say such a thing?<\/span><\/div>\n
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People say the damndest things. There are people who say that math is racist. Now that does not even begin to make sense, involving as it does a Rylean category mistake. Not making sense, it cannot have a truth value, that is, it cannot be either true or false. Mathematics does not belong to the category of items that could sensibly be said to be either racist or non-racist.  Compare: 'How prevalent is anorexia nervosa<\/em> among basketballs? More prevalent than among footballs?' Those questions involve category mistakes.  Other examples: What is the volume of the average thought? What is the chemical composition of the number nine?  What size shoes does God wear?<\/span><\/div>\n
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People who assertively utter 'Math is racist' are using those words to say something else, although it is not clear what. Perhaps they  mean to say that since blacks as a group are not good at mathematics, giving them math tests is a way of demeaning or oppressing them and can have no other purpose. Or something.  Speaker's meaning<\/em> in this case strongly diverges from sentence meaning<\/em>.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Can this distinction help us explain what people mean when they say that Catholics are not Christians?  Going by sentence meaning, the claim is obviously false.  But one might use those words to express the proposition that Catholics are not true<\/em> Christians, where a true<\/em> Christian is defined in some narrow and tendentious way, as, for example, someone who refuses to accept the Hellenically-tainted doctrines emanating from a magisterium<\/em> (teaching authority)  that interposes itself between the individual soul and God as revealed in Holy Writ.<\/span><\/div>\n
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We are now in the vicinity of No True Scotsman<\/a>.  Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman.<\/em> Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"<\/span><\/div>\n
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Similarly, A says, "No Christian is a Roman Catholic." B replies, "But my Uncle Patrick is a Roman Catholic."  A responds, "Your Uncle Patrick is no true Christian!"<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fellow philosopher writes, While reading Clarence Thomas\u2019s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: \u201cAmericans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.\u201d I\u2019ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren\u2019t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is … Continue reading “Are Catholics Christians?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,6,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic-corner","category-language-matters","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}