Greetings,
Suddenly this thread seems to have become all about me! I feel embarrassed. Maybe these posts could be moved by a helpful mod...? I don't know what the new thread would be called - "the religious views of czgibson's parents" doesn't sound too interesting, does it?
What gives you this impression? You can't get through a philosophy degree without thinking long and hard about these kinds of questions!
I suppose you'd need to take it up with them! I think it could have something to do with the fact that most Christians don't take their religion very seriously - my father certainly doesn't, and my mother doesn't object to that.
They believe in the same god, as all Christians do.
Priests are kind of intermediaries to god. For instance, Catholic priests supposedly have the power to absolve you of your sins, if you repent that is. Also, Catholics believe that the Pope is god's representative on Earth. I don't know what Protestants believe - and neither do they half the time.
There are several different types of Protestant - for the purposes of this discussion, when I use 'Protestant', I mean 'Church of England', which is the faith my father (allegedly) belongs to.
To answer this fully I'd need to give you a complete history of Christianity, which I don't have time to do. Basically, Catholics have to go to church once a week - Protestants don't. Catholics believe that when they have Holy Communion with bread and wine during the church service they are actually eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus. Protestants believe the bread and wine that are used are merely a symbol to suggest this. Catholics tend to be more conservative when interpreting Christian doctrine - Protestants seem to change their minds all the time. This doesn't mean that Catholic doctrine is never changed though - for example, the Vatican decided in 1870 to enforce the view that Mary was born without sin, and continued in this state during her life; just last year they abolished Limbo, which was a sort of half-way house between heaven and hell.
Those are a few of the differences. Here's a webpage that discusses them in more depth:
http://www.geocities.com/aprofaith/
It discusses them from the perspective of "Which is the true church?", eventually settling on the Catholic Church. Of course, being an atheist, I think they're all wrong.
Here's another site that displays the differences using a table:
http://www.whiterobedmonks.org/schem2.html
I hope all that's of some interest to you.
Peace