Guest 6:07: That may be the correct terminology technically, but I think calling non-RC Christians "catholic" is just going to confuse an already volatile issue.

I live in Ireland now but was born and raised in California (only about 40-50 miles south of where Joe is, as it happens). A lot of my friends in school were RC and they just said they were Catholic, while the rest of us were Protestant or Jewish or whatever. (And we did have quite a few Whatevers.) I also spent 20 years in and around London and it was a similar situation there. Is there anything actually incorrect with just using the term "Catholic" (capital C) when referring to followers of the Church of Rome? It's become received usage and we already have enough policitally-correct linguistic hoops to jump through.