Common Stereotypes About Catholics

I will be describing and exploring my first visit to a Catholic Church. I attended Sunday mass with an ambassador in our class, CCC, on April 13, 2014 at noon. The service was actually called Palm Sunday because it is the Sunday before Easter. The service lasted about an hour and a half and took place in the interfaith portable on campus at UCI. I have grown up in a house that is not religious and have not attended a church before. My family’s race is Caucasian and I am independent when it comes to religion. I decided to attend a Catholic Church for my cultural plunge to get the experience and to see what it is like to attend church. I have always listened to my friends tell me they are going to church and that they are this religion. But I have never been able to experience what going to church is like.

Common Stereotypes about Catholics

Stereotypes are very common in the world, especially when it comes to religion. My understanding about common stereotypes for Catholics mainly comes from personal interaction; where people have told me the stereotypes they believed about Catholics or from the internet. One stereotype that I commonly hear is that Catholics pray to Mary and the Saints, but instead they worship Christ alone. My attendance at the Catholic Church showed this when the priest was reading from the bible, he would stop and the audience in the church would know to say either “Lord you are in our prayer” or “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” depending on what the priest was reading. The next stereotype that I have heard before is that Catholics do not read the bible; which was true in the Middle Ages but does not hold true today. At the church Mass that I attended, I noticed bibles in the room so th...

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...our class. I was able to remember the common stereotypes that are addressed at Catholics and notice if they supported or refuted these stereotypes. My cultural plunge showed many aspects of culture, cultural assimilation, and cultural pluralism. I learned a little bit about the Catholic religion and this assignment made me realize all the different religions and possibilities out there that people believe in.

Works Cited

Banks, J. A. (2013b). Multicultural education: Characteristics and Goals. In J. A. Banks & C. M. McGee Banks (Eds.). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (pp. 3-23). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Convertino, C., Levinson, B. A., & González, N. (2013). Culture, teaching, and learning. In J. A. Banks & C. M. McGee Banks (Eds.). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (pp. 25-41). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.