Catholics aren't seen as Christians by the larger protestant and evangelical culture. "Catholic" and "Christian" are seen as two mutually exclusive religions believe it or not.
I always had the children of Jehova's Witnesses and Southern Baptists telling me that I was not a Christian when I was in school down here. I think that was one of the reasons why I left the church after confirmation and began experimenting with protestantism and evangelicalism, neither of which had the same comforting feeling as the Catholic church and I would always find myself going to Easter and Christmas masses instead of the services at the other churches.
The only upside to that was that I met a lot of younger people who seemed to take their faith seriously. People like that didn't exist in my parish... all of us kids in my confirmation class ended up turning into drug users & criminals, quite a few had children outside of marriage.
