Yeah a lot of u.s Christians don’t consider Catholics as Christians but more like a Jew or Muslim. No joke.
Believing that there are intermediaries between a person and the deity is complete anathema to any kind of Muslim (well, there used to be some veneration of Sufi saints, but they didn’t pray for them to intercede). The Jewish religion is also strictly monotheistic, honors its prophets but doesn’t ask them for help.
Catholics are not real Christians because they worship Mary and saints.
All non-Protestant Christians (Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian, etc) ask Mary and the saints for a kind word to the Guy Upstairs. Some Protestants even do it, though in a toned-down way compared to Roman Catholics. And it’s not quite worship, more veneration, though extreme RC manifestations of the cult of Mary might be an exception. Not that fundies can handle nuance. They’re people who don’t believe communion involved actual wine, that material wealth is a reward from God (with contorted fanfic trying to explain away the proverb of the camel and the eye of a needle), that having any sort of images or things of beauty in a church is idolatry (another belief shared with extremist Muslims), that the King James Bible is God’s inerrant word (despite its dodgy sourcing, occasionally shoddy translation, and obolete English usage that fundies don’t understand) and that their weird 19th-century heretical fractally schismatic sect somehow preserves the practices of the early Christians.
Believing that there are intermediaries between a person and the deity is complete anathema to any kind of Muslim (well, there used to be some veneration of Sufi saints, but they didn’t pray for them to intercede). The Jewish religion is also strictly monotheistic, honors its prophets but doesn’t ask them for help.
All non-Protestant Christians (Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian, etc) ask Mary and the saints for a kind word to the Guy Upstairs. Some Protestants even do it, though in a toned-down way compared to Roman Catholics. And it’s not quite worship, more veneration, though extreme RC manifestations of the cult of Mary might be an exception. Not that fundies can handle nuance. They’re people who don’t believe communion involved actual wine, that material wealth is a reward from God (with contorted fanfic trying to explain away the proverb of the camel and the eye of a needle), that having any sort of images or things of beauty in a church is idolatry (another belief shared with extremist Muslims), that the King James Bible is God’s inerrant word (despite its dodgy sourcing, occasionally shoddy translation, and obolete English usage that fundies don’t understand) and that their weird 19th-century heretical fractally schismatic sect somehow preserves the practices of the early Christians.
I know they don’t “worship” Mary or the saints. But most protestants believe they do.
I’ve even tried to educate people on this. I’m an atheist mind you. But it falls of deaf ears.