Do Catholics believe that protestants are Christians?

Answer 1

Some are and some are not, I think this is true of both groups.

A Christian is someone who believes and helps spread the teaching of Christ - the term 'disciple' means an 'imitator' of Christ. But the problem arises with what is the teaching of Christ? If you look at the New Testament you can read that it wasn't long after the first churches were established that error started to creep in. Many of Paul's letters were written to correct errors.

Throughout the years different churches, Protestant and Catholic, have added to God's word until you have the situation now where many churches are like the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus time, they have added their own rules and rituals to to what the Bible teaches and they are more religious than Christian.

Answer 2

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Catholic AnswerTo the best of my knowledge, there are no official statements of the Church on this issue. Vatican Council II spoke of "degrees of incorporation" and noted that protestants and Eastern Orthodox are partially incorporated in the church and so in various degrees enjoy an imperfect communion with the Catholic Church. Vatican Council II basically said that separated Christian by their baptism do belong to the Church in some way, but they still lack "full incorporation", St. Robert Ballarmine identified this "full incorporation" as "actual membership." It is the opinion of the best theological minds, on this subject, that protestants are Christians to the extent that they are validly baptized and believe in the Nicene Creed in its traditional interpretation, but they are seriously handicapped as to grace as they have no access to the sacraments. Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. wrote his doctoral thesis on "A Comparative Study of Bellarmine's Doctrine on the Relation of sincere non-Catholics to the Catholic Church." This nearly 200 page thesis only discusses their membership in the Church, not if salvation is possible for them. That has been discussed elsewhere and the Church does hold, to the best of my knowledge, that salvation is possible, but it doesn't seem likely for anyone past the age of reason. This is a very serious issue with many ramifications, much more than can even be summarized on a quick answer site like WikiAnswers. Bottom line, the Church has always infallibly taught that there is no salvation outside the Christ's Church. For a complete discussion of this, please see Salvation Outside the Church by Rev. Petger M.J. Stravinskas. Whether they are members of the Church or not is moot if salvation is not likely. It becomes a matter of semantics having no impact on reality. The other thing to consider is that the word "Christian" as used in the 21st century is basically meaningless, rendering the question itself moot.