It's easy to talk with Protestants in one way, depending on how friendly they are towards generic varieties of Christianity. While there are still many who buy books like "A Woman Rides the Beast", the latest in Luther's line of attacks on the Church, the sole Church, as the domain of the anti-Christ, there are many who are happy to embrace Catholics, as long as the Catholics aren't particularly Catholic or never make any attempt to convert them. It's perfectly OK to be doing the opposite, of course, because not very far below the surface politeness, in any conversation or any relationship, is a well of animosity, venom, spleen, blasphemy, and detestation of all the sacred truths and sacred things which comprise the Church's ritual, devotion, and culture.
Many Catholics, perhaps most, fool themselevs today by underestimating this. Those most involved in conservative politics fool themselves into thinking that the former Republican vice-presidential candidate is far more amenable to Catholic life & teaching than the current President, when in fact she's a member of a radically anti-Catholic Protestant sect which regards only "biblical" Christians as fit for public office. In working with conservative Protestants & trying to maintain a common front with them politically, conservative Catholics fail to reckon with the reality that, given power, Protestants of any & every variety would feel themselves obliged to circumscribe both Catholic political rights and the rites & practices of the faith. The Holy Father, except among those who are nearing conversion themselves, still is "their king in Rome with the pointy hat" (as Daniel Day-Lewis as the Butcher in 'Gangs of New York' calls him).
Among themselves, they'll still refer to the conversion of a Protestant to the Church as "perversion" -- one does not convert to the Faith and the Church Christ instituted. True faith, for any Protestant who still values the Reformation in any manner or to any extend, requires deliverance from the papacy, deliverance from the cult of the Saints, deliverance from the insistence that Christ renews His sacrifice at every valid mass. And of course they can be more accommodating to those Catholics who have no belief in Purgatory, who want women to serve as priests at the altar, who think clerical celibacy is a monstrous aberration, and who want to 'democratize' the Church. By 'democratization' of the Church, they mean the transfer of authority to their kind of clericalism, university & seminary trained, middle and upper-middle class married people, preferably female in order to counter the misogyny of the Church (despite their old accusation that the Church was "run by women", i.e., celibates & because we have such ardent devotion to the Blessed Virgin).
Recent popes, when they have fought for the Faith, have fought with one hand tied behind their backs, because they have declined to fight Protestantism, because they viewed secularization, moral relativism, and militant forms of atheism as more pressing problems, and believed, like Paul VI, that they could find some common generic Christian grounds with Protestantism without at the same time compromising Catholics or harming the Church.
But failing to combat Protestants, and taking part in 'ecumenical' prayer services and issuing joint decrees with them, does harm the Church and harms the faith of those who want to be faithful Catholics and want to live & die in her. Paul VI watered down the mass and watered down all the devotions of Catholics in order to do so; John Paul II at least helped foster a return of Marian ardor (but refused to attack fake apparitions) and the recitation of the Rosary, but continued the practice of pretending that there could be no division. His and his successor's policy has been "ut unim sint", which in reality is the Protestant agenda -- the Church is to bargain away her spiritual authority over all those who claim the name Christian but who reject the very sacraments that alone can bring us salvation.
That is the nub of the problem. Catholics are silenced by the practice of refusing to evangelize non- and anti-Catholic Christians. There are some apologetic organizations engaged in arguing with Protestants on the basis that the Church alone is the fullness of Christian teaching & faith. But none, aside from the Society of Pius X, insist that Protestantism is the path to damnation, and that the 'elements of holiness' that official documents continue to claim remain in Protestant communities are just that, elements that can't bring forgiveness of sins much less salvation to the soul.
The Holy Father has just decided on the formation of a new pontifical institute for evangelization of countries where the practice of faith has diminished so greatly. Happily, it comes shortly after the mandarin of ecumenism, Cardinal Kasper, has been retired from the ecumenical office -- hopefully, as a prelude to it being shut down forever (tho' it's hard to imagine Benedict XVI taking that step). I hope that it will not fall prey to the illusions that have all but destroyed the Church in France, Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe, and which have contributed to introducing poisons into her daily life in America.
Loving Protestants means that one must hate Protestantism. Loving someone afflicted with cancer means hating the cancer that will kill them. Protestant beliefs, under every and any form, kill the soul, and however pleasant or Christ-loving or devout many will appear to be, or may even be in reality, they are cut off from the Tree of Life, are dry branches fit only for the fire. Our Lord came to kindle a fire on earth; He came to bring a sword of division, setting family members against one another as they were confronted with His claims. To present a Jesus that in fact is only trying to get those who call His name to be 'one' removes the Passion, removes the unity of the sacrifice of the Mass with the sacrifice of Calvary. No one can love Christ's saving action on Good Friday without also loving the sacrifice of the altar, any more than they can love the Son and hate the Father, any more than they can claim to love God while refusing Him the name of the Father or refusing Christ the designation of God the Son.
Christ is on the altar and in the tabernacle and in our souls by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We should not pretend that this is not so, or that He's truly present in sacrament & sanctifying elsewhere. He is our Lord and acts where He will, and is not confined to our actions and plans, but the Church is His instrument of salvation, His true body on earth, and those who claim to be part of the body of Christ without being penitent and receiving absolution, without submitting to God's will, His ministers, His forms & conditions, are lying to themselves, and we can't help them do that by smiling & pretending that all is well. Our pope has given a foundation to begin evangelizing anew, rather than simply calling for new evangelization. We should as well.
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