I thought that. But I want to know the exact details that make it different.

Wrong. Or at least, not completely correct. Something kind of similar would be saying "what's the difference between doctors and bleeders or leechers?" bad analogy, but it kind of gets the idea. and by leechers and bleeders I mean people who believed they could pull the illness out of the body by purposely cutting people or putting leeches on them.

Just like doctors are actually healers while leechers and bleeders are attempting to heal, Catholics are actually the original Christians. Everybody else started splitting off after Martin Luther jumped overboard, but we did all originally believe all the same things. It's just that the people who started the new branches didn't agree with parts of our faith and couldn't accept them on faith.

and if you accept the authority of the bible, there was actually a reading saying how the term Christians came about this past week in Acts: "... and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians." Acts 11:26. As Catholics, every single one of our bishops can trace a direct line to one of the apostles, and it was their disciples that this passage is talking about. I hadn't had a chance to post this yet, but this is a free online bible that I use when I'm on the computer, and you can look it up.

All Christians (or at least I hope all Christians) believe in Jesus Christ as the Saviour. But the other denominations all had issues with one part or another of the Church's teachings.

Does that answer your question?

I do not agree with all your statements. The Christian Religion did evolve during time, some rules where created during Late Antiquity, the Middle-Ages, and after, so the Catholic faith that exist today is not the faith of the first christians (I do not think any faith that exist today is really the same as the faith of the first christians). The rules that christans bishops, priests etc could not marry exist since the Middle-Ages for example, early Christians bishops could marry.
There were splittings before Martin Luther was born. (the first was the splitting between Nicaeans and Arians in the 4th century, and the major one between Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxes in the 11th century, for example.).
Also Martin Luther was a Catholic, who did not plan to create a new religion at the beginning but wanted to denounce the misuse of indulgences made by some corrupted members of the Church at the time, and who ended up being excommunicated after years of debates. He did not simply 'jump overboard' (I think that if members of the Church started to do the things that Luther denounced today again, it would make a lot of Catholics cringe).

I am not saying that one faith is better than the other, I respect all of them, and I respect your faith. But I don't think we can say one faith is equivalent to doctors or healers and the others to bleeders and leechers (Well, you've said yourself that it's a bad analogy). But it is interesting to know why you have chosen to believe the Catholic faith.

By the way, I like how you have said in a post that we can believe both in god and in evolution, I have personally never understand why if we believe in one it would mean we can't believe in the other.

Everything evolves over time. What I was saying earlier was more of a brief overview to explain the differences.

To explain how the Catholic faith is still the one of the original Apostles, I think I might have to use another analogy. Would that be alright with you?

And yes, there have been a lot of splits in the Church, but none of them have been quite as major as the Reformation started by Luther. And while in the beginning that might have been his intention, that is certainly not what happened. He actually followed in Jeroboam's footsteps in going too far the other way. Yes the Church had problems in his day, and it has a lot of problems today as well. That's the beauty of it. If it had been a purely human effort, it would not have lasted 2,000 years.

And I'm actually a Cradle Catholic, so I didn't have as much choice as you might think. But I have been blessed with a rather thorough understanding of my faith thanks to a bunch of good religion teachers and my Dad's lighthouse CDs. My favorites are "Facing your Fears," "The New Conversation," "Jesus is," and "Why am I Catholic when I could be anything else."

And thanks! I think the problem most people have is that they assume that if we say everything evolved from a few things in the beginning then humans actually are animals. The truth is that the Church teaches that humans have always been distinct from animals, not that we never could have looked different. And then a lot of people assume that the "Creation in 7 days" story is literal. It isn't. The way it's been explained to me is that human language is being used in a metaphorical way to describe something that it can't in order to communicate a certain message.

I am lost and confused.....

There are a lot of differences between the many denominations of Christianity, so, its kinda hard to speak for the other branches, but I can try to explain a few things. So, for starter's, Purgatory. Purgatory is a place never mentioned in the Bible, as far as I know, that the Catholics believe holds the souls of the unsaved, and you can pray for their salvation and release into Heaven. I'm a Baptist Christian, a sub-division of Protestants, and we believe in Heaven and Hell, and that you can only go to one of those places and when you get there you aren't getting out.

Next up: Fathers. Catholic Priests are called Fathers, and when you've committed a sin you're supposed to go to a Father and ask forgiveness. Christians believe that God is the only one to call Father and that He is the only one who can forgive our sins.

Another thing is Mary, the Mother of Jesus. There is absolutely no disputing that Mary must've been an incredible woman, however, we can't see eye-to-eye on her either. Catholics not only believe that she remained a virgin after Jesus' birth, but actually have prayers to her. Christians, on the other hand, believe the Bible when it says she had other children (None of whom were divine) and that praying to anyone besides God is idolatry.

On that evolution topic, we believe that God isn't stupid and more than capable of explaining difficult subjects, and that the Bible should either be taken at it's word or used as a paper weight, or to prop up the short leg of a table. If you aren't going to believe what it says there isn't any point in it.

I'm certainly not a theologian, and I've never spent much time with any Catholics, so that's about most of what I know, but I hope I helped a little.

Sorry for the confusion, Griffinlokison, it's kind of hard to think of all the differences, so I guess in my first answer I just gave a broad overview of why they have differences.

Good points, Solani! Want to hear the Catholic response?

School's pretty busy right now, though, so I'll be answering those points one at a time.

First, the Bible: there are a couple, if not a lot, of denominations out there that believe that the Bible should be the only authority on Church teaching, or, basically: "Everything we need to believe is in the Bible." Catholic response: "Where does it say that in the Bible? Plus, where did you think the Bible came from?"

I'm not sure what you mean by your last point, Solani, about the Bible. Do you think you could clarify that a little?

And please, if anything is ever unclear or you have any questions, please ask. THIS is why I made this thread. Go ahead, *throws arms wide* attack me! I don't mind. It means you will get a chance to hear the answers, and it gives me a reason to grow in understanding of my faith (besides the obvious). THIS is why I am here.

Hmm, I can understand why you might be a little confused about what I said. Most of the things I say make sense to me and leaves everyone else in the dark. You said that the 7 day creation period didn't have to, and indeed, didn't mean "Days" literally. What I was trying to say was: God is more then capable enough to explain hard subjects to us. If he meant "Years" or "Eons" He would have said that. Also, here: https://creation.com/how-long-were-the-days-of-genesis-1

The thing I said about using the Bible as a paper weight, was me trying to say: If you're not going to take the Bible at it's word, then it's just a useless book.

And please, take your time! Like I said, I've never spent time with any Catholics before, so I would like to hear what you have to say!

Ok, I'm going to stop filling you guys' notifications with pings starting my next post. Just try to check back once in a while for continuations. And please ping me if you have more questions so I will know for sure that you asked.

Griffinlokison: Solani pointed out a couple of good examples of differences. Here's a couple more: we believe the Pope is the successor of Peter, and the Vicar of Christ, so we respect him and obey him on matters of faith and morals. We believe that the Church is infallible on matters of faith and morals, we have statues of saints and Mary and Jesus, we follow Tradition as well as the Bible, ... um, there's more, including dogmas that we have to believe to be Catholic, but I can't really think of them right now. Let's just say that like I said before, we all started out believing mostly the same things, but people started disagreeing and splitting off, so there's lots of differences and not necessarily all the same for all other branches.