Quote Originally Posted by Bob Carabbio View Post
Any Christian who ISN'T Either Romanist, or "Eastern Orthodox". Some folks make other hair-splitting distinctions, but "Protestant" essentially ONLY means "NOT Catholic".
Any Christian who is not a Catholic, nor belonging to the Orthodox Churches.
Hence, if you join the military and have a chance to visit a chapel service... you are more than likely to attend the Protestant service of which the chaplin could belong to one of numerous denominations. When I was in the Marine Corps, you could either go to the Protestant service or the Catholic M***, or stay with the DI and be miserable. In Camp Bucca, we were lucky enough to have chapel services that were Baptist, Lutheran, Protestant, or Catholic. At any rate, I think you can drop the "Romanist" Bob, it is offensive. The OED shows this under the definition of "Roman Catholic." I do not mind so much if you use Roman Catholic so as to distinguish us from other so-called Catholics as Anglo-Catholic or Old Catholic.

The use of this composite term in place of the simple Roman, Romanist, or Romish, which had acquired an invidious sense, appears to have arisen in the early years of the 17th century. For conciliatory reasons it was employed in the negotiations connected with the Spanish Match (1618–24), and appears in formal documents relating to this, printed by Rushworth (1659), I. 85–89. After that date it was generally adopted as a non-controversial term, and has long been the recognized legal and official designation, though in ordinary use Catholic alone is very frequently employed.]

Oxford English Dictionary
2. a. A member or adherent of any of the Christian churches or bodies which repudiated the papal authority, and separated or were severed from the Roman communion in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and generally of any of the bodies of Christians descended from them; hence in general language applied to any Western Christian or member of a Christian church outside the Roman communion.