Asklemmy

If you are curious look up the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and his 99 Theses.

I'm paraphrasing and my thoughts on what I experienced this but it came down more to the idea that Catholics worship the pope and the saints more than god and jesus. If you were the leader of a nation that called themselves Catholic you could find the Pope telling you what to do when it came to war and if you declared war on another Catholic country the Pope could tell you to stop or to declare peace. To not do so was in danger of having all other Catholic nations declare war.

Not to mention the many saints you are required to pray to, Purgatory and praying for the dead, all of the rituals, services in Latin, worship of the virgin mother, the schism that split the church between two Popes who excommunicated each other, etc.

Protestantism did away with all of that. No single leader, the ability to create different sects that didn't make you an apostate of the church, etc. Now don't get me wrong even the same sect don't always believe the exact same things and it can get pretty nit-picky, but Protestantisn can change with the times more easily than Catholicism can.

The goal was to make less of a ritual cult like Catholicism had become, and more of a focus on the meaning of the the actions of jesus, being able to actually get to heaven without all of the pomp and circumstance that really meant nothing, and all that crap.

The worry is the President would be more loyal to the other Catholics than the rest of the nation and would be bound by cult rules than the will of the people.

Ironically enough right now it's the Catholic President trying to stop rights from being taken away while there are both Protestants and Catholics in the Supreme Court and other facets of the government that are working so hard to do the opposite.

Probably because depending on the context "Christians" is likely referring to "Protestants." There are some very significant differences between Catholic and Protestant Christianity, moreso than between Protestant denominations, whose differences tend to be a bit more trivial. Other comments make some good points, but it is not too far of a stretch to say that Catholicism may be different enough to be considered a separate religion (I don't know who gets to draw these lines). But in the most technical sense, yes, Catholics are a subset of Christians.

It’s because Protestantism is the dominant form of Christianity in cultures where this language convention exists, and it is a deliberate tactic to other Catholics by labeling them non-Christian. Especially in previous times, Catholics were subject to large amounts of discrimination and antagonism by Protestants, and we’re still dealing with the remnants of this ideology today. I think the only reason it has subsided is the rise of secularism and other more foreign religions that are seen as a greater threat by Christians, forcing them into an uneasy alliance with their former enemies. But remember that tons of Christians used to murder each other over which sect they belonged to.

Interestingly, in Central America, the opposite convention exists, where you are either “Cristiano”, meaning Catholic, or “Evangelico”, meaning Protestant (usually Pentecostal). This is because the dominant group is reversed in that society.

Personally, I view Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as three branches of one religion since they are clearly very similar. But that is the view of an outsider.

Hundreds of years of infighting

some sort of remnant of evangelical puritan protestant ideology?

Yes. It's weird.

Cocaine and crack are different, technically, but they come from the same shit.

Platypuses and mammals.

Platypuses are mammals, but they're weird enough that you can't usefully generalise from them to anything else, to the point that lumping them in together could be actively misleading.

Same deal.

I have never heard anyone say that. Presumably they say it because they don’t know any better.

They have the next outgroup to eliminate lined up in case they run out of minorities to discriminate against.

Growing up in a "non-denominational", independent fundamental Baptist house I was always taught that Catholics weren't Christians because they worship idols. Now that I've left the faith I would easily classify them as being Christian.

While I think many people actually do classify them as Christians they do have some significant differences in their beliefs and practices than most Protestant denominations; and being themselves the largest Christian denomination by far it can be useful in some analysis to treat them as a distinct entity (the answer to "percentage of global population that subscribe to a particular religion" is much more interesting when broken into "Christian Catholic: %" and "Christian Other: %").

Catholics are Christians, but Christians are not necessarily Catholic. For example, Orthodox Christians are not Catholic. Being Catholic requires, at the bare minimum, agreement with the Holy See and implicitly the dogma he endorses. Even this "minor" difference can be used to find non-Catholic Christians.

Precisely, Catholic ⊊ Christian.

The reason why this is the case has to do with the history of Christianity, specifically the various schisms throughout the ages as the Christian faith evolved. That's an incredibly complicated topic which I'm not qualified to discuss.

Catholics see themselves as the root form of Christianity that other versions forked from. Whilst it's not technically true, as there are many versions of Christianity that pre-date Catholicism, in most countries where the term "Catholics and Christians" is used, it's accurate enough