Are we unknowingly Pagan?

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TylerWS

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Claims that the Catholic Church is Pagan aren’t really anything new as far as I am concered, and normally statements such as these bounce of me like rubber just like all the other anti-Catholic propaganda. The story goes that in the year 313, Constatine took the Church that Jesus had started, mixed it with Pagan practices, and out popped Catholicism. As I said before, I’d never really paid much attention to claims such as the one above, until I happened to come across Christianity in my dictionary. It states:
In 313 Constatine accorded to Christianity the rights and tolerations perviously enjoyed by paganism, and in 380 Theodosius established it as the one State religion.
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*The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language- Encyclopedic Edition 1989 pg.175 *
This little blurb really frightened me. If I had read this on some web site, I would have brushed it off, but not when coming from a secular source such as a dictionary which gains nothing by taking the side of either Catholics or Protestants. How is it possible that with this bit of history the Catholic Church is still the Church started by Jesus Christ Himself?
 
This shouldn’t frighten you. There’s nothing false in that passage from your dictionary, nor is there anything that says some Roman Emperor invented Catholicism. Constantine did make it legal to be Christian in the Empire, though there were still a couple of persecutions AFTER him by his non-Christian successors. When Christianity was made the state religion in 380, it just meant people were legally, upon pain of treason, obliged to follow the faith as opposed to the previous pan-theism.

Again… there’s nothing there that is frightening once you know your history.
 
That’s very interesting!

Merriam-Webster says:
“the religion derived from Jesus Christ, based on the Bible as sacred scripture, and professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies”

so at least there’s that.

But as for Constantine - I am interested to see where this thread goes. There are many things I have learned in the past about Constantine and that he was a sun worshipper and ‘changed’ the day of worship to Sunday, allowed icons to be used in worship, and ‘replaced’ many pagan holidays with Christian events.

When I was younger and learned about these things, i.e.: Jesus wasn’t born on December 25, All Saints & All Souls Days begin the pagan month of the dead, etc. they only added fuel to the fire of how ‘wrong’ the church is/was.

I believe it’s important for people of all faiths to learn about other faiths in the world. My summer semester class was World Religions and must say that it is a catalyst to my recent interest in returning to the Church. In learning what all others believe, it made me question (more seriously than I have been doing for at least two yearsnow) what it is that I truly do believe.

How does the Church respond when people question these historical issues? I am very open to whatever answer there is.

=)
Fiz
 
You must be misunderstanding what you are reading.

In 313 Constatine accorded to Christianity the rights and tolerations perviously enjoyed by paganism, and in 380 Theodosius established it as the one State religion.

*The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language- Encyclopedic Edition 1989 pg.175 *

Before 313 paganism enjoyed many rights and tolerances that Christianity did not (like the right to practice your faith without being put to death) Constatine gave Christians those rights. How does that make the Catholic Church pagan?

-D
 
The old claim that Christianity co-opted pagan rites and practices is spurious and not to be taken seriously. In fact, alot of the pagan mystery religions didn’t fully emerge until well after Christianity was established and thus they likely co-opted Christian ideas. For a thorough explanation of these ideas and Constintine’s role in Christianity please refer to the book, The Di Vinci Hoax by Sanda Meisel and Carl Olson.
 
In 313 Constatine accorded to Christianity the rights and tolerations perviously enjoyed by paganism, and in 380 Theodosius established it as the one State religion.
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This definition in no way implies that Catholicism is pagan, because it was granted “rights and tolerations reviously enjoyed by paganism.”

It would be like saying present form of government of Germany is Nazi because it supplanted Nazism. This does not follow logically nor in fact and neither does the supposed link between Catholicism and paganism. This is thus a non-issue.
 
Anti-Catholics run into a historical and logical buzz saw when they express the idea that Constantine introduced pagan worship into Christianity. All of the notions floated out there about paganism, Constantine and the Church have been refuted numerous times.

There is a great opportunity to evangelize when these aberrant historical claims are made. When someone presents these claims we should immediately direct them to the Early Church Fathers. They can compare what they wrote with current Catholic teaching to see if they jibe. This will not only close the gate on the Constantine nonsense, but it will also introduce them to the teachings on the Real Presence, the papacy, and other Catholic teachings that were there since apostolic times. If the teachings predated Constantine, then Constantine could not have been their source and they cannot not be corrupt.
 
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Pax:
There is a great opportunity to evangelize when these aberrant historical claims are made. When someone presents these claims we should immediately direct them to the Early Church Fathers. They can compare what they wrote with current Catholic teaching to see if they jibe. This will not only close the gate on the Constantine nonsense, but it will also introduce them to the teachings on the Real Presence, the papacy, and other Catholic teachings that were there since apostolic times. If the teachings predated Constantine, then Constantine could not have been their source and they cannot not be corrupt.
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Unfortunately you are assuming facts not in evidence - that those that regurgitate this nonsense will actually take the time and initative to *read. *My experience when them, by and large, is exactly the opposite. Try to tell an anti-Catholic the truth and your are summarily dismissed as “brainwashed” they won’t read anything that challanges their views.
 
A happy by product of the release of the ridiculous anti-Catholic novel The Da Vinci Code is that, as this book raises false charges such to these, there has been a plethora of articles and books soundly rebuting this tired garbage. That Constantine formed the Church to his own pagan image is one of the main assertions of the book made through it’s characters, who are (very) thinly veiled mouthpieces for the author and his agenda.

For more information visit:

ignatius.com/books/davincihoax/
 
Jesus said go and teach all nations. So in God’s own mysterious way, He conquered the Roman Empire with Christianity! This is not a defeat for Christianity! This is a victory! Rejoice! A victory won by the blood of many martyrs. These martyrs are disrespected by those who refuse assent to Catholicism.

Sure, we may have a few externals inherited from the Roman Empire that have been given Christian meaning. All the more glory to God! “I am all things to all people” - St. Paul.

Converting to Catholicism does not mean you have to abandon the things particular to your culture. This is a gift of the Church from God.

What is important is that you worship God in spirit and truth as Jesus said. The externals are insignificant.

Many of the very things that the Catholic Church is criticized for, are in fact good aspects of the Church. The Church has God’s wisdom.

Greg
 
Fitzendell, Constantine did not “change the day of worship to Sunday.”

There is documentation that Catholic Christians worshipped on Sundays back in the 2nd century A.D., less than 100 years after the resurrection of Jesus. Mention of this was made, I believe, by Ireneus. Christians worshipped on Sunday because it was “the day of the Resurrection of the Lord.”

This is over 200 years before Constantine. Need I say more?
 
Here’ some biblical evidence that Christians worshipped on Sunday which was logical because many were still going to the synagogues on Saturday. Anyway, here are a couple of verses that hint that the change was perhaps right away.

1 Corinthians 16:2
On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come.

Col 2:16
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath.
 
greg hinted at what i’m about to say - and it’s something i see time and again in christianity. the idea that our faith will be ‘explained away’ somehow.

when we find that other ancient civilizations had flood stories, that doesn’t show that ours is based on their myth, it shows that it’s true. we each have flood stories because it really happened…

when, in your case tylerws, it seems that the church was ‘created’ by a pagan emperor, it’s actually just the opposite. as greg has mentioned, it was a movement by God to change the culture. and that brings me (finally) to my point.

God very often ‘redeems’ cultures. elements in the culture that were previously used for ancestor worship, or animism, or so forth, are redeemed (as is all of creation) and the elements that are innocent and useful are kept, while their negative and harmful aspects are stripped away. hence we celebrate christmas on dec 25, hence we celebrate all saints day on nov 1, hence we (or rather, He) redeem(s) easter, a pagan fertility holiday, with the greatest story of ‘spring’ ever told - the ending of our cosmic ‘winter’ and entrance into an eternal ‘summer’ of life and growth. we can even see the pagan rituals as foretelling the true meaning, kind of like a negative photograph points to the true image.

another example of this is in prophecy. how many false messiahs were there before Christ? nature senses that something immense is going to happen, and foretells it in different ways. these days, i think we see it in our ‘last days’ fascination. in Jesus’s day, people were tired of hearing about the ‘latest messiah’. they’d been jaded to the reality. today, we risk the same happening to our expectation of His return. it’s something the enemy tries to use for our harm, but like all such things, God works them for our good and His glory.

i’d hasten to point out that He doesn’t only do this with cultures, He does it with people. there are good aspects in everyone’s lives, and when He redeems us, He redeems those things, too. He uses the gifts we’ve received for their intended purposes, and we see why we had them all along…
 
As has been stated, this assertion is easily refuted. Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion, he merely issued an edict of toleration. He did however donate land and money for the construction of churches.

Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire. In 390 A.D. St. Ambrose of Milan humilated him by making him do public penance for massacring 7000 people at thessolonika.

So much for the emperors telling Catholic bishops what to do!

😃
 
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