Protestant vs Catholic: How Their Beliefs and Worship Differ

Catholicism DemystifiedSee all 45 articles in this series

Catholics and Protestants share the Scriptures, though not the same list of books, say the same ancient creeds and worship the same Lord. They part mainly over authority (Scripture read with Tradition and the Pope, or Scripture alone) and over how a sinner is made right with God. The other differences follow from those two: the sacraments, Communion, Mary and the saints, and Purgatory.

“Protestant” covers many churches: Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians and other Reformed churches, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals and independent congregations. On most points they share one view, and where they part, we let each speak for itself. For five centuries Catholics and Protestants have argued over faith and works, and it has been a real quarrel. Yet all that time both have read the same words of Paul, that in Christ Jesus what counts is “only faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).

Topic	Catholic	Protestant
Final authority	Scripture and Tradition, interpreted by the Pope and the bishops	Scripture alone; creeds and confessions stand under it
Head of the church	Christ, with the Pope as Peter’s successor and visible head on earth	Christ alone; no pope
Justification	By grace, received in faith and Baptism; forgiveness and inner renewal together	By grace through faith alone; Christ’s righteousness credited to the believer
Good works	Done in grace, they merit growth in grace and eternal life	The fruit of saving faith, not a cause of justification
Sacraments	Seven	Two: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Communion	Bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood (transubstantiation)	Lutheran: truly present; Reformed: spiritually present; Baptist: a memorial
Bible	73 books	66 books; the Apocrypha left out or read only for instruction
Mary and the saints	Honored and asked to pray for them	Honored as examples; prayer goes to God through Christ
After death	Purgatory purifies some of the saved before heaven	No Purgatory; believers go straight to God
Origin	Holds that it is the church Christ founded on the apostles	Holds that it reformed that church, from Martin Luther’s protest of 1517

Where Protestants and Catholics differ

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

Authority

Protestant (in general)

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 1.10 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

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

Protestant (in general)

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 11.2 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

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

Communion

Protestant (in general)

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death

From Westminster Confession of Faith 29.7 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

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

Protestant (in general)

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 27.4 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

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

Women ministers

Protestant (in general)

We recognize that there are different views sincerely held by those who seek to be faithful and obedient to Scripture. Some interpret apostolic teaching to imply that women should not teach or preach, or that they may do so but not in sole authority over men.

From Cape Town Commitment (Lausanne Movement, 2010), part II-F, 3B

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

Confession

Protestant (in general)

Moreover, the prodigal son and the publican in the Gospel, when compared with the Pharisee, present us with the most suitable pattern of how our sins are to be confessed to God.

From Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chapter 14 (CCEL text)

Catholic

According to the Church's command, "after having attained the age of discretion, each of the faithful is bound by an obligation faithfully to confess serious sins at least once a year."

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1457

Praying to saints

Protestant (in general)

Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creature: and, since the fall, not without a Mediator; nor in the mediation of any other but of Christ alone.

From Westminster Confession of Faith 21.2 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

Catholic

In prayer, the pilgrim Church is associated with that of the saints, whose intercession she asks.

From Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2692

Purgatory

Protestant (in general)

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 (Reformed)

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

To see what Catholics teach beside what Protestants teach on 55 questions, open our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations.

The Catholic Church teaches that God’s word comes down in two ways, written Scripture and the Tradition handed on from the apostles. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the Church “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” The task of interpreting both belongs to “the living teaching office of the Church alone,” which means the bishops in communion with the Pope.

Both sides agree that salvation is God’s free gift, won by Christ, and that no one can earn it. They disagree over what happens when God justifies a sinner and what part good works play.

The Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530 teaches that people “cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith.” In the Protestant view God declares the sinner righteous by crediting Christ’s righteousness to him. Faith alone receives it, yet, as the Westminster Confession adds, it “is no dead faith, but worketh by love.” Protestants point to Paul: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28).

The Catholic Church teaches that justification is given in Baptism and changes the person inwardly: it “is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.” No one can merit the first grace of forgiveness, but the Catechism teaches that, moved by the Holy Spirit, “we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification,” including “the attainment of eternal life.” Grace can be lost through mortal sin, a grave sin committed “with full knowledge and deliberate consent,” and restored through the sacrament of Penance. Catholics point to James: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). Both sides also read Galatians 5:6, which speaks of “only faith working through love.”

The gap has narrowed since 31 October 1999, when the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in Augsburg, Germany. Together they confessed: “By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.” The Declaration says that the 16th-century condemnations on justification do not apply to the teaching each side sets out in it, though differences remain. The World Methodist Council joined in 2006, the Anglican Consultative Council affirmed its substance in 2016, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches joined in 2017. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which is not in the Lutheran World Federation, answered in 1999 that “Lutherans cannot speak of consensus on justification” while Purgatory, the papacy and devotion to Mary remain unsettled. Most Baptist and Pentecostal churches are not parties either.

The Catholic Church counts seven sacraments: “Baptism, Confirmation (or Chrismation), the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony.” It teaches that “for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation,” because through them Christ gives the grace each one signifies.

Most Protestant churches recognize two. The Westminster Confession says: “There be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.” The Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles treat the other five as “commonly called Sacraments” rather than sacraments of the Gospel, and Anglicans still confirm, marry and ordain. The Augsburg Confession says Lutherans teach “that Private Absolution ought to be retained in the churches,” which is close to Catholic confession.

At the Last Supper Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Christians agree on those words, and they differ over what the words mean.

The Catholic Church teaches that in 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.” The substance of the bread and wine changes while their appearance remains, and that change is what the Church calls transubstantiation.

Protestants hold three main views:

• Lutheran. Christ’s body and blood are really present. The Augsburg Confession teaches “that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord.”
• Reformed and Presbyterian. Christ is present spiritually. Believers “inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified,” in the words of the Westminster Confession.
• Baptist and many evangelical churches. The Supper is a memorial. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000 calls it “a symbolic act of obedience” by which church members “memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.”

Catholics ask Mary and the saints to pray for them, as they would ask a friend on earth. The Catechism teaches that the saints “do not cease to intercede with the Father for us,” and that devotion to Mary “differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit.” Catholic teaching holds that Mary is truly the Mother of God and ever-virgin. Two further teachings were defined by popes: the Immaculate Conception in 1854, that she was kept free from original sin from her conception, and the Assumption in 1950, that she “was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory.” Those two are the Marian dogmas Protestants dispute most, questioning both their grounds in Scripture and the papal authority that defined them.

Protestants honor Mary and the saints as examples of faith but pray to God through Christ alone. The Augsburg Confession says that “the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor.” Protestants often cite Paul: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Catholics accept the verse and hold that the prayers of Mary and the saints depend on that one mediator. The Catechism says Mary’s influence “rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it.”

The Catholic Church teaches that “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.” So Purgatory is not a second chance, because everyone in it is saved. The Catechism points to 1 Corinthians 3:15, which says a builder whose work burns “will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire,” and to the prayer for the dead in 2 Maccabees 12, a book Protestants do not accept as Scripture.

Protestants reject Purgatory. The Westminster Confession teaches that at death the souls of the righteous are “made perfect in holiness” and received into heaven, and it adds: “Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.”

The Catholic Old Testament has 46 books and the New Testament 27, for 73 in all. It includes seven books that Protestants call the Apocrypha and Catholics call deuterocanonical: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. Catholics also keep the Greek additions to Esther. The Council of Trent defined this list on 8 April 1546. Protestant Bibles have 66 books, and the Westminster Confession says the Apocrypha “are no part of the canon of the Scripture.” Anglicans take a middle place: their Articles say the church reads those books “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” The history is told in why Catholic Bibles have 73 books.

On 31 October 1517 Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at Wittenberg, sent his Ninety-five Theses on indulgences to the Archbishop of Mainz and asked for a debate. The dispute soon widened to authority and justification, and Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther on 3 January 1521. In 1530 the Lutherans’ Augsburg Confession claimed that its teaching held “nothing that varies from the Scriptures, or from the Church Catholic, or from the Church of Rome as known from its writers.”

As to which came first, the Catholic Church holds that it is the church Christ founded on the apostles, with bishops in succession from them. Protestant churches date from the 16th century as separate bodies, but Protestants hold that they reformed the one church and keep the apostles’ faith as Scripture records it.

The Catholic Church answered at the Council of Trent, which met in stages from 1545 to 1563. Trent affirmed Scripture and Tradition together, fixed the canon, taught seven sacraments and defined transubstantiation. Its decree on justification of January 1547 condemned the teaching that the sinner is justified “by faith alone” in the sense “that nothing else is required to co-operate.” It also corrected abuses, among them abuses of indulgences, and set up seminaries to train priests.

The Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism of 1964 said that for the separation “men of both sides were to blame,” and that people born into Protestant communities “cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation.” It said “the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation,” while maintaining that the fullness of those means is found in the Catholic Church.

Catholics and Protestants ordinarily do not receive Communion together. The Catechism says that the churches of the Reformation “have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders,” and that for this reason “Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible for the Catholic Church.” The rule runs both ways, for canon law lets Catholics receive Communion from non-Catholic ministers only in churches whose sacraments it counts valid, which does not include Protestant churches. A Protestant may receive from a Catholic priest only in danger of death or another grave necessity, as judged by the diocesan bishop or the bishops’ conference, when no minister of his own church can be reached, and only if he shares the Catholic faith in the sacrament.

Among Protestants the practice varies. The United Methodist Church keeps an open table, and its invitation welcomes “all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin, and seek to be at peace with one another.” The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which reaffirmed closed Communion in 2023, asks for full agreement in doctrine, so it can exclude other Protestants as well as Catholics.

A Catholic may marry a Protestant with the bishop’s permission. The Catholic party promises “to do all in his or her power so that all offspring are baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church,” and the Protestant spouse is told of that promise but makes none. The wedding normally follows the Catholic form, though a bishop can dispense from it. The Catholic Church recognizes Protestant baptism in the name of the Trinity, and canon law holds that a valid marriage between two baptized people is a sacrament.

The Lutherans and the Anglicans are closest. The Augsburg Confession says that “the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence,” and Lutherans also hold the real presence and keep private absolution. The differences that remain are set out in Lutheran vs Roman Catholic. Anglicans have bishops and read the deuterocanonical books in worship.

The Republic of Ireland is mostly Catholic: 69% of people gave their religion as Roman Catholic in the 2022 census, and the Church of Ireland and other Anglicans, the largest Protestant group, numbered 124,749. Northern Ireland is more evenly divided. In its 2021 census, 42.3% were Catholic and 37.4% Protestant or other Christian, and 17.4% had no religion. Counting the religion people were brought up in, 45.7% were Catholic and 43.5% Protestant or other Christian. So in Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants, nearly equal in number, share one small country, and Paul’s words belong to both of them: “only faith working through love.”

• Catholic vs Christian
• Catholic vs Protestant vs Orthodox
• Anglicans vs Catholics
• Catholic vs Evangelical
• Why do Catholics “pray” to Mary?
• What Do Catholics Believe? God, the Mass, the Pope and Mary

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