Well, Paul, the wording hasn't been completely been worked out. In general, priests no longer "say" Mass and parishioners no longer "hear" Mass - collectively, they "celebrate" Mass. Individuals "attend" Mass, for lack of a better word. One can say that priests "celebrate" Mass, but individual parishioners do not.

At least in the United States, Catholics say they "receive" communion - and outsiders say Catholics "take" communion. Catholics call the bread a "host," and outsiders call it a "wafer."

Catholics go "to THE seminary" to learn to become priests, while Protestants go "to seminary" to learn to become ministers.

I'm sure usage is quite different in the UK.

I used to give a little lecture to new Catholics on terminology - they usually got a kick out of the differences. Of course, if they enede the Lord's Prayer with "for Thine is the kingdom...," that was a dead giveaway that they were Protestant spies.

But back to Obama and Goatfell's comment, I think race could have something to do with it. I thought it interesting that Randall Terry's puppet bishop referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama." I also thought it interesting that Randall Terry and his bishop and others refer to Obama categorically as "pro-abortion." In every Obama statement I've heard on the subject, he has been careful to state that he does not think abortion is a good thing. Maybe that's why they just label him "pro-abortion," and don't ever quote him to back up their allegations. But yeah, I think that in some cases, the "abortionist" label is just a cover-up for racial hatred. Many conservative Christians seem to think the election of Obama is a horrible evil that has been inflicted upon the United States, possible because we are no longer a Christian society.

Oh, and don't get me started on the unholy alliance between fundamentalist Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants. Protestant fundamentalists still refer to the Catholic Church as the "whore of Babylon" - but they do it quietly now, because they want to appear to be friends with the Catholic fundies.

-Joe-