General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Can anyone point me to any actual persecution or mass discrimination of Catholics in the US today? [View all]ButterflyBlood
(12,644 posts)Here in Minnesota there isn't much ethnic difference between Catholics and Protestants, because the Catholics are mostly German, who are just as likely to be Lutheran. So you can't identify one's religious background just by last name or anything like that. Also they immigrated a lot longer ago, and these type of ethnicities have mostly faded. Same for Scandinavians, you might have a last name with a j somewhere in a weird looking spot or that ends in "-son", but you don't think of yourself as anything but a white Midwesterner. There's a definite Midwestern culture, but it's based on any type of ethnicity or heritage because those things are weak influences now, and most people have had some intermarriage at some point in their ancestry and no one is 100% German or Swedish or Norwegian or whatever. Because of this there isn't much in terms of a Catholic identity amongst most people, and especially not amongst people my age. If you are raised in the church and don't like it, you leave and that's that. It's not in any way controversial or uncommon.