A question about what my (college) students are saying - help would be appreciated.
Obviously, I have no close familiarity with what is being taught in churches these days, so admit I'm perplexed about the following.
I teach history. Naturally, the topic of religion comes up and often - usually in the survey US history classes - when we turn to discussing the Reformation (sometimes it doesn't pop up until we're discussing the Puritans/Separatists) a student will say something like:
"But Catholics aren't Christians, are they?"
The first time I heard it I was gobsmacked. Since then, I've learned how to address the question; how to explain it in a way that they understand (or at least accept). What I am curious about is WHY they believe this?
Usually, I will gently probe to see if I can determine if the student is ignorant of all religion or has been raised in a particular faith - sometimes they'll volunteer the information. Broadly, it appears that most of the students' who believe this come from one of the more modern (in historical terms) Protestant denominations. I don't recall ever having a student who was not religious ask the question - nor a student who professed belonging to one of the "original" Protestant denominations ask the question.
Does anyone have any insight into why some of these young people (they are always traditionally aged students - late teens to very early twenties) would believe this?
= new reply since forum marked as read
And disturbing. 
Thank you for the reply!
The claim that the pope is the Antichrist has been part of anti-Catholic rhetoric since the Reformation, when it was needed to justify the Protestant Reformers’ desire to leave the Catholic Church.
Thus the Lutheran Book of Concord states, "
T)he pope is the real Antichrist who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ . . . Accordingly, just as we cannot adore the devil himself as our lord or God, so we cannot suffer his apostle, the pope or Antichrist, to govern us as our head or lord" (Smalcald Articles 2:4:10, 14).
The Presbyterian and Anglican Westminster Confession states, "There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ; nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be the head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and that son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God" (25:6).
<snip>
I used to run into this fairly regularly in the Brit Lit survey course. I taught the Scottish Play for Billy Shakes because I'm permanently burned out on Hamlet, and invariably when I was doing the historical background--Henry VIII and his break with Rome, portions of the play meant to flatter the Protestant James VI/I, Lady M's wickedness as a reference to his Catholic mother, etc.--someone would pop up with "Catholics aren't Christian." The students making this "contribution" were always, no exceptions, young members of independent evangelical and usually fundamentalist congregations. They were convinced that Catholics pray to images, indulge in unspeakable practices in the confessional, and will be Left Behind when all the righteous are hoovered up to heaven at the second coming, which was scheduled for no later than the following Wednesday.
Whereupon the second half of the period would be devoted to explaining, with appropriate Biblical and other references, how Christianity developed after the destruction of the Jerusalem church leadership in CE 70, and how Catholicism Roman and Orthodox was the only Christianity before the Reformation. (Glancing mention of the Cathars and other exceptions.) It was such a frequent thing that I considered actually putting the discussion in my syllabus. Fortunately, and especially in evening classes, there were usually one or two older Catholic students who could help explain not only what Catholics do but why they do it. The kicker in all this was that there was I, a pagan, teaching remedial catechism to Christian kids.
I think what we've got here in the mega- and independent-church movement is a sort of Reformation of the Reformation. The leaders of such congregations have in many cases not only not done the M.Div. at a seminary, but have not had any kind of formal training in Bible, church or other history, or scriptural languages. Most of them come from either fundamentalist or Pentecostal traditions that use only the KJV, whose 17th. Century English they don't fully understand--or worse, the so-called "Living Bible"--and are riding their own particular doctrinal hobby-horses. And as you say, one of those poor nags is anti-Catholicism.
*Self deleted following post because it was an accidental duplicate.
Then check Jack Chick 
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0071/0071_01.asp
Some of the rancid cuts from this bigot include:
Saying that childhood baptism is not Christian;
Saying that Catholics are not true Americans because they are also of the Vatican;
Saying that the penance of the confessional is not true repentance;
Saying that Priests, nuns, monks and the Pope are not Christian.
There's much more but I cannot be ars ... bothered to delve into the sick mind of this obnoxious fool
Or some such within your professional framework and see where the discussion led. 
(aside) My guess is this stems from an old distrust of "Papism". Some Protestant sects saw the Catholic church structure as apostate and heretical, un-Christian. Essentially they saw the Pope displacing the role of Jesus in Christianity. In extreme rhetoric, the Pope was the "anti-Christ".
