Presbyterian vs Catholic: Every Real Difference, Compared

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Presbyterians are Protestants of the Reformed tradition, not Roman Catholics, though their Westminster Confession still speaks of “the catholic or universal church.” The two share the Nicene Creed, and what divides them is who decides what it means. Almost every other difference between them follows from that one.

To see what Catholics teach beside what Presbyterian and Reformed churches teach on 55 questions, open our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations.

Where Presbyterians and Catholics differ

Each answer is quoted from the church’s own documents or from one of our articles.

Authority

Presbyterian and Reformed

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1.10

Catholic

It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others.

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 95

Salvation

Presbyterian and Reformed

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 11.2

Catholic

Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy.

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992

God's choosing

Presbyterian and Reformed

As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power, through faith, unto salvation.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 3.6

Catholic

To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of "predestination", he includes in it each person's free response to his grace

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 600

Communion

Presbyterian and Reformed

The Lord’s supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to Christ’s appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.

From Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 96

Catholic

In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained."

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1374

Sacraments

Presbyterian and Reformed

There be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, baptism, and the Supper of the Lord: neither of which may be dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 27.4

Catholic

Christ instituted the sacraments of the new law. There are seven: Baptism, Confirmation (or Chrismation), the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony.

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1210

Leadership

Presbyterian and Reformed

This church shall be governed by presbyters, that is, ruling elders and teaching elders (also called ministers of the Word and Sacrament).

From PC(USA) Book of Order 2025-2027, F-3.0202

Catholic

The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful."

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 882

Women ministers

Presbyterian and Reformed

Ruling elders and deacons are men and women elected by the congregation from among its members. The nomination and election of ruling elders and deacons shall express the rich diversity of the congregation’s membership and shall guarantee participation and inclusiveness (F-1.0403).

From PC(USA) Book of Order 2025-2027, G-2.0401 (the PCA confines these offices to men)

Catholic

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

From Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), 4

Purgatory

Presbyterian and Reformed

the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 32.1

Catholic

All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030

See all 55 answers for these two churches

The word “Presbyterian” describes how a church is governed, not what it believes. It comes from the Greek presbyteros, elder, the word the New Testament uses for the men appointed to lead local congregations.

Presbyterians see in Acts and the epistles a church led by a plurality of elders rather than by a single bishop, and they order their churches the same way. Each congregation is governed by a session of elders, the sessions send representatives to a presbytery, and the presbyteries send theirs to a synod or general assembly. So authority moves upward through elected courts, and no one person holds it alone.

Catholics read the same texts differently, and their structure runs the other way. Their bishops stand in an unbroken succession from the apostles, the Bishop of Rome holds the office given to Peter in Matthew 16:18-19, and the authority to teach, which Catholics call the magisterium, belongs to the bishops in communion with him. So both are reading the New Testament, each in its own way, and neither church’s order is an accident of history.

The Catholic Church traces its continuity back to the community of the apostles, and in the West it has gone by that name through the whole of Christian history.

Presbyterians belong to the Reformed churches, the ones that descend from the reformation in Switzerland rather than the one in Germany. Their theology came from John Calvin’s Geneva, and John Knox carried it to Scotland, where the Reformation Parliament of 1560 adopted the Scots Confession and the Church of Scotland took its Presbyterian form.

The document that defines them came later. The Westminster Confession of Faith was drawn up in London in the 1640s and completed in 1646, with its Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and most Presbyterian churches still hold it as their standard, though usually as a subordinate standard, one that answers to Scripture.

Catholics have no single document to set beside it, but a whole body of teaching: the councils, above all Trent (1545-63) and the two Vatican councils, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992.

Presbyterians hold to sola scriptura, Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. They value creeds and confessions, sometimes very highly, but those answer to the Bible and can in principle be revised.

Catholics hold that the apostolic deposit reaches us through Scripture and Sacred Tradition together, and that it is the living teaching office that interprets it authentically. Vatican II’s Dei Verbum sets the three side by side rather than one above another, Scripture, Tradition and magisterium, none standing without the others.

You can see the difference whenever a new question comes up. A Presbyterian body debates it in assembly and argues from the text, while for Catholics the answer comes from the magisterium and is binding.

The two traditions do not use the same Old Testament. Catholic Bibles contain 46 Old Testament books, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, plus longer forms of Daniel and Esther. These were in the Greek Old Testament the early church used, and the Council of Trent affirmed them as canonical in 1546.

Protestant Bibles follow the Hebrew canon and contain 39, and the Westminster Confession (1.3) says “the books commonly called Apocrypha” are no part of the canon of Scripture and carry no authority in the church. On the New Testament they agree, and both have the same 27 books.

Here the two differ most sharply in doctrine, and here too people most often describe the difference wrongly. Catholic teaching is transubstantiation: at the consecration the substance of the bread and wine becomes the body and blood of Christ, while the appearances remain. The Mass is understood as the same sacrifice as Calvary, made present rather than repeated.

The Reformed position is not the memorial view, though people constantly take it for that. Calvin held that Christ is truly present and truly received in the Supper, but spiritually, by the Holy Spirit, through faith, with the believer lifted to Christ rather than Christ brought down into the elements. The Westminster Confession says the elements remain truly and only bread and wine while worthy receivers really and indeed receive Christ. So both traditions say something real happens in the Supper; they disagree about what it is.

It follows that a Presbyterian is not admitted to communion at a Catholic Mass, because sharing the Eucharist is understood to express a unity of faith that does not yet exist. Most Presbyterian churches, by contrast, practise an open table.

Behind Rome’s answer lies a judgement about ministry. Vatican II’s decree on ecumenism holds that the Protestant communities have not kept “the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders” (Unitatis Redintegratio 22). In 2000 Dominus Iesus (17) called such bodies “ecclesial communities” rather than Churches in the proper sense, while holding that their baptised members are “in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.”

Both baptise infants, and for related reasons: baptism is the covenant sign given to households, and both hold that grace comes before any response of ours.

The Catholic Church recognises Presbyterian baptism as valid, provided it was performed with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so a Presbyterian received into the Catholic Church is not baptised again.

In the United States the recognition is also in writing. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism in November 2010, and four Reformed churches had ratified it by 2011: the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ. Their representatives signed it together in January 2013. On the sacrament that makes a Christian, then, each tradition recognises the other’s work.

On salvation, the ground the Reformation was fought over, Presbyterians hold to justification by faith alone. Christ’s righteousness is imputed, or credited, to the believer and received by faith, and good works are the fruit of salvation rather than a contribution to it. The Westminster Confession also teaches election, God’s choice of those who will be saved. It is the doctrine most often used to caricature the tradition, yet within it election is treated as a ground of comfort rather than of fear.

Catholics teach justification by grace through faith, in which grace is infused rather than imputed and the believer genuinely cooperates with it. The sacraments are means of that grace, and merit is real, though it is the fruit of grace already given.

Since the Reformation the ground has shifted more than most people realise. In 1999 Catholics and Lutherans signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification at Augsburg, stating a shared understanding of justification by grace through faith and declaring that the sixteenth-century condemnations no longer apply to the teaching each now presents. Methodists associated themselves with it in 2006, and on 5 July 2017, at Wittenberg, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the body most Presbyterian denominations belong to, became the fourth party to the declaration and added its own statement linking justification to justice.

The difference is still there, but the two traditions have now said together, in writing, that the quarrel as it was fought in the sixteenth century is not the quarrel they are having now.

In the Latin Church, Catholic priests are celibate as a matter of discipline rather than doctrine; Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men, and the rule has changed before. Only men are ordained, and the Church teaches that it has no authority to alter that.

Presbyterian ministers marry as a matter of course, and whether women are ordained depends on the church. The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., a forerunner of today’s PC(USA), ordained its first woman minister in 1956, and the Church of Scotland opened ordination to women in 1968. More conservative Presbyterian denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), do not, and the disagreement is still alive within the tradition.

The two offices also differ in kind. A Catholic priest is ordained to a sacramental office, while a Presbyterian minister is a teaching elder, serving alongside ruling elders who are not clergy and who carry real governing authority.

Catholics venerate Mary and the saints and ask for their intercession, on the understanding that those in heaven are alive in Christ and can pray for the living. Two Marian doctrines were defined comparatively recently: the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950.

Presbyterians honour Mary, and the Westminster tradition affirms the virgin birth and the creeds without reservation, but they do not pray to her or to the saints, because they hold that Scripture directs prayer to God through Christ alone. They reject purgatory and indulgences as well.

A Mass is ordered around the Eucharist, follows the liturgical year, and is substantially the same wherever it is celebrated.

A Presbyterian service is ordered around the preaching of the word. Most congregations celebrate communion less often, many of them monthly or quarterly, though weekly communion has become more common. In the past the tradition followed the regulative principle, that only what Scripture positively warrants belongs in worship, and that is why some Presbyterian churches sang only psalms and used no instruments. Most no longer hold that line.

The differences take up more room than the agreements, and that can leave a misleading impression.

Both believe in one God in three persons, and in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, crucified, bodily raised and ascended, who is returning. Both receive Scripture as the word of God, and both confess the forgiveness of sins by grace, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Both say the Nicene Creed without amendment, except on one ancient clause about the Spirit’s procession, and that clause divides East from West rather than these two.

Both baptise in the name of the Trinity, and the Catholic Church recognises Presbyterian baptism, as most Presbyterian churches recognise Catholic baptism.

Are Presbyterians Protestant?

Yes, Presbyterians belong to the Reformed branch of the Reformation, which descends from Calvin’s Geneva and Knox’s Scotland.

Do Presbyterians and Catholics worship the same God?

Both confess the God of the Nicene Creed, one God in three persons. They disagree about authority, the sacraments and how salvation works, not about who God is.

Can a Presbyterian take communion at a Catholic Mass?

Ordinarily not, because Catholic teaching treats sharing the Eucharist as an expression of a unity of faith and church order that is not yet present. In the other direction, most Presbyterian churches practise an open table.

Do Presbyterians believe in predestination?

The Westminster Confession teaches election, and the tradition presents it as a ground of assurance rather than of fear, though how strongly it is emphasised varies a great deal from one denomination, and one pulpit, to another.

Is Presbyterian baptism valid in the Catholic Church?

Yes, when it was performed with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and someone received into the Catholic Church from a Presbyterian congregation is not baptised again.

How many books are in each Bible?

Catholic Bibles contain 73 books and Protestant Bibles 66. The difference lies in the Old Testament, for the 27 books of the New Testament are common to both.

• Episcopal vs Catholic: The Real Differences, Compared
• Presbyterian vs Baptist: Infant Baptism, Elders and Congregations Compared
• PCUSA vs PCA: Which Presbyterian Church is Right for You?
• What Do Catholics Believe? God, the Mass, the Pope and Mary
• What Do Presbyterians Believe? Scripture, Grace and Elders

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