Asklemmy

just about every christian I know sees other sects and offshoots as a separate religion. it's very sneech-like.

Because the Anglosphere was so xenophobic that even the Irish and Italians were too culturally exotic to them and thus demonized their entire belief system.

Catholics and Christians

The Orthodox:

Schism was the very first thing the Christian church learned to do.

same shit different pile?

Catholics believe in a religious hierarchy, Cardinals, bishops, Pope e.t.c.

Christians USUALLY think hierarchy in religion is almost blasphemous. But really it's just so they can kinda just do whatever the fuck they want and not worry about the Pope excommunicating them.

as someone that grew up in the South and was surrounded by evangelicals, Catholics were seen as weird/possibly satanic, depending on the person, and not really Christians because of the saints and Mary worship. They're polytheistic since they don't just focus on Jesus Christ.

I've heard "Protestants and Christians" too. It hasn't been that long really since some of them openly hated the other.

Platypuses and mammals.

Platypuses are mammals, but they're weird enough that you can't usefully generalise from them to anything else, to the point that lumping them in together could be actively misleading.

Same deal.

The Christians are just whiny Catholics. Protesting all day.

Think of it as two different tribes

You are correct, Catholics are a subset of Christianity... But similarly how people assume a "doctor" is a medical practitioner, Christians has become the informal name for "Protestant" or "evangelicals"

Basically "Christians" tend to mean, anything not "Catholic" (which is old school, visibly indistinguible from others in the Christendom)