| The Enlightenment is a direct consequence of the Protestant Reformation that preceded it a few centuries prior. The key ideas of Protestantism was that faith should be a) based on reason and b) involve a direct communion with God, without intervening priests, ritual or hierarchy. If this sounds appealing to you, you are basically a Protestant, possibly a post-God Protestant aka "atheist"/"agnostic"/"secular". In Catholicism, as with most religions, God (or gods or spirit) is intertwined with every aspect of life. The idea that religion is purely about beliefs is a Protestant idea - for most people, their religion is about community, ritual, and accessing deep emotions or altered states of consciousness. Protestantism rejected most of this in favour of a purely 'rational' faith, from where it's baby steps towards giving up faith entirely in favour of pure reason. (Evidence: atheism flourished in the traditionally Protestant countries of Northern Europe and the Anglosphere). "People are going to have to choose to believe that their religious beliefs are "just religious" and have no serious relevance to the material world (the exact notion their religion decries as the ultimate heresy) and join the modern world" Has no relevance to the material world === "not real"; in other words, people are going to have to give up their religions. "Those ideas are absolutely and totally required to support the idea of coexistence of peoples of different faiths." I.e., for people of different faiths to co-exist they have to give up their faiths (in favour of 'secularism' or 'moderate-ism' aka Protestantism). Much more on this idea here: http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/how-... Related point: the West has 'Protestant-ised' several world faiths (in fact the concept of 'world religion' is arguably the creation of 19th century Protestant missionaries and scholars). e.g. Buddhism: http://meaningness.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/protestant-buddh... And Hinduism: http://mitrailleuse.net/2014/08/08/the-westernization-of-hin... |
In my experience people of protestant denominations tend to be more irrational/faith focussed than catholics who tend to question more. An example is that in my country the people trying to prevent gay marriage are protestant and believe homosexuality an abomination (because of bible teachings) whereas the catholics (and some more rational protestants) want to legalise it (obviously not priests/bishops etc. but the politicians involved in the decision making).
I guess my point is that when it comes to religion every single person has slightly different beliefs or puts slightly more emphasis on some beliefs over others.