In the West, Christians are generally divided into two groups, Catholics and Protestants. That is far too simple since the term Catholic includes the Eastern Christian churches. Nevertheless, most Americans and Western Europeans divide the religious world that way. If I remember correctly, up until at least through the 1950s the dog tags of U.S. military personal included a code for religious preference; the person to whom they belonged had three choices, "J," "C," and "P," for Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant.
That presented a bit of a dilemma for Latter-day Saints in the military (among other minorities) because, like others in the various Restoration movements that began in the 19th century, we don't think of ourselves as either Catholic or Protestant. To be a Catholic in the broad sense is to be one of the churches that can claim a direct historical link to Christians of the first century.
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