Your guide to Christian sects*

Dr. T and I are lapsed Catholics. I mean, we’re practically relapsed. We were married in a United church. We ‘baptised’ our children at home, with no mention of any supreme beings (or, as one of my students once wrote, “super” beings). We regularly take the Lord’s name in vain, for God’s sake.
So you can imagine we’re bemused by the fact that our two sons appear to have captured the essence of the two major divisions of Christianity, as evidenced by a meal at our dinner table:
Colin, the Protestant, carefully arranges his food into separate ingredients, and eats these separate piles in order, from least appreciated to most. In other words, he saves the best for last. The work ethic, as applied to supper.
Meanwhile, Robert, the Catholic, carefully pulls out the best bits to eat first, and then reluctantly tackles the rest. If he’s lucky, no one notices the remainder, and he doesn’t have to atone for enjoying the good stuff. If we do notice, he dutifully eats his penance, and we’re all satisfied in the end.
Take cake, for instance. While Robert enthusiastically eats all the icing first, and frequently eats no actual cake, Colin meticulously eats the cake, leaving an empty shell of icing. Once all the cake has been taken care of, he rewards himself with the icing.
Obviously, this phenomenon explains their behaviour during the papal transition. While the world waited with bated breath, first for the death of JP2, then for the election of Benedict, Colin asked a million questions about the function of the pope, the process of choosing a pope, the path to becoming a pope, and so on. Robert paid no attention whatsoever ~ obviously trusting in the super-being and his representatives on Earth to take care of everything.
Mysterious ways indeed.
*NB ~ that’s sects, not sex. There is no such thing as Christian sex, the missionary position notwithstanding (and definitely never standing). We don’t do that kind of thing. It’s bad. It’s dirty. It’s naughty…