Catholic school

If Protestants and Catholics were high school students:

1. Protestants are like the faithful and hard-working student who tries to learn the class material to the best of his ability.

   He accepts the class textbook as it should be accepted. He tries to understand the textbook on its own terms, not how he wishes it to be.

   He reads and studies the class textbook using his God-given reason.

   He doesn't pick and choose which parts of the textbook he wants to study and which parts he doesn't, but he looks at the whole, and he tries to understand how the whole fits together, and what the whole means, as well as its parts.

   If certain parts confuse him, he looks at competing arguments for and against a particular passage. He sifts through the evidence for this or that.

   He consults other students who have studied different chapters of the book in greater depth than he has to ask them what they think.

   He learns the original languages the textbook was written in.

   He visits the locations mentioned in the textbook to try to get a better sense of what the textbook is describing.

   And so on and so forth.

2. By contrast, Catholics are like that one know-it-all student who doesn't truly know it all but who nevertheless thinks he does.

   He thinks he's always right. More than that, he wants to make sure everyone else always thinks he's right too.

   Sure, maybe sometimes he's right, but other times he could well be wrong. Indeed, dead wrong.

   Regardless, he expects everyone to pay attention to him, right or wrong. He expects everyone to accept his interpretations.

   It doesn't matter if his interpretations are strained, illogical, unreasonable, even fanciful. It doesn't matter if he changes his interpretation from day to day. It doesn't matter if his interpretations bear an uncanny resemblance to what's trendy today far more so than anything written in the class textbook. All that matters is people pay attention to him because (hey! listen up!) he's talking now!

   He has many reasons why people should pay attention to him. For one thing, he has seniority. He's been around the longest. He's the oldest. Yes, this works just as well as when any older sibling tells his or her younger siblings that they're always right because they're the oldest and have been around the longest.

   For another, he has the most number of other students following him. Not that all the students following him really believe anything he says, but he doused them with water when they walked through the door into the classroom so he thinks that means they're with him.

   He's really good at drawing pretty pictures, building grand projects, and man can he sing!

   Still another reason he gives is because he was chosen by the Teacher. That's right, the Teacher appointed him to be the class spokesperson to speak on behalf of the Teacher. How do we know the Teacher appointed him? Because the textbook (as interpreted by him) says so! (I mean it's not like he was elected class president. That's not how his system works!)

   In fact, the Teacher not only chose him, but the Teacher also chose his older brother, likewise his older brother's older brother, and his older brother's older brother's older brother, all the way back to the very beginning of the school itself.

   Moreover, not only was he chosen by the Teacher, but the Teacher's own Magnificent Mother has even appeared to him as well as many other fellow students and confirmed that he is indeed the one whom the Teacher selected to act in the Teacher's stead.

   Not to mention he has a seat in the center of the classroom which the Teacher specially gave him and which he has loyally occupied since class began. At one point, he had even occupied several other seats and desks in the classroom, so that he had his own mini-classroom within a classroom, but then one of the other students named Constantine took over all the seats to the east of him. (The brat!)

   Now, as far as the class textbook, while the words in the textbook have come from the Teacher, the fact is he was the one who collected the chapters of the textbook, he was the one who came up with the table of contents for the textbook, and he was the one who organized the chapters into the textbook as it is today, all on behalf of the Teacher.

   Granted, the original textbook the class was using when class first began had fewer pages and chapters than his textbook, but since he was the one who helped organize the textbook in the first place, then it follows he knows what should be in or out of the official class textbook. Oh yeah, his version is the official textbook, in case you didn't know.

   All in all, the Catholic student knows best. He is the center. Everyone needs to look to him.

   And anyone who doesn't agree and doesn't want to be friends with him should be kicked out of the classroom and into the utter darkness of the outer hallway where they will be tormented by the school bullies and other delinquents forever and ever! However that's only the case if they were born before the year 2001.

   If they were born after the year 2001, then even if they do not agree with him, and even if they don't believe in the Teacher at all, and even if they are part of a completely different teacher's classroom, it's totes cool my nun from a different penguin, because someday all the classrooms will be one big classroom anyway.