Constantine polluted the church?

  • Thread starter Thread starter carol_marie
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

carol_marie

Guest
When I told a friend that I was looking into the Catholic Church because I thought it was the original church Christ founded she said I’ve obviously never read up on Constantine and how he brought all kinds of pagan practices into the church and corrupted it. She said that throughout history there have always been a remnant of Chrisitans - sort of underground but that there is no “pure church” since it was messed up so early on. I am no theologian and she’s going to send me all this info so I can make an informed decision. Did Constantine mess things up? She also said something about how it was all fortold in the book of Revelation which I tried to read but it’s all Greek to me (ha- no pun intended!)
 
I think a good read for you may be Justin Martyr’s First Apology. It shows that 2nd century beliefs and practices are very much the same of today’s Catholic Church.

Do you remember some objections that she made about the Church?
 
No, she wasn’t specific. She just said that the true faith of the Church was destroyed and all kinds of pagan practices were put into place. She did mention the wafer used for communion, although how is that pagan?? She said Constantine followed all kinds of pagan advisors and meshed it all together to make everyone happy. Any truth or a pack of lies? And this is the thing… I suppose I could read a Catholic Historical account and it would say not true, but if I read a Fundementalist type book it would probably say yes it’s true. My friend must’ve gotten that stuff from somewhere??
 
It sounds like your friend is reading some anti-Catholic materials. Constantine seems to be a common date used to say that the Catholic Church has pagan roots.

Justin Martyr is an early church father who lived in the 2nd century, so he learned the faith from people who learned it at the feet of the Apostles themselves. I recommended it since it’s pretty short and concise (he was defending the Church against Roman charges of atheism).

He also goes into detail on how Christian worship is to be observed, and how instead of the Sabbath, Christians are to gather on Sunday (Chapter 67). Chapter 65 and 66 talk about the Eucharist. (This can be used to defend against Adventist charges that Sunday was chosen because of Constantine).

Yes, I’m a Theravadan Buddhist, born and raised. The Holy Spirit has been dragging me (sometimes kicking and screaming I think) towards the Church since I was young. I even ended up defending the Church in high school in history classes. Now, things in my personal life have made it really hard to attend RCIA.
 
carol marie:
She did mention the wafer used for communion, although how is that pagan??
Click to expand...
The wafer used for communion is unleavened bread, like the bread the Jews have used at Passover for thousands of years and like the bread Jesus used on that Passover nearly 2000 years ago that we call the Last Supper. (Luke 22:7-8)

Sometimes communion wafers have the letters “IHS” embossed on them which anti-Catholics claim stand for the names of some pagan gods but the truth is that they stand for the first three letter of Jesus’ name in Greek. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, IHS is a “contraction derived from the Greek word IHSOUS, Jesus, used as a symbol or monogram.”
carol marie:
She said that throughout history there have always been a remnant of Chrisitans - sort of underground
Click to expand...
As romantic as this idea might sound, it is a fairy tale that lacks historical support.
carol marie:
She also said something about how it was all fortold in the book of Revelation
Click to expand...
Written about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Book of Revelation was written in highly symbolic language and is easily misinterpreted. Many anti-Catholics in their prejudice misinterpret the woman described in chapters 17 and 18 of Revelation as representing the Catholic Church in order to justify remaining apart from the Church that Christ founded, citing Rev 18:4: “Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, 'Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.’” However, in context, the woman does not represent a church at all but a real city, apostate Jerusalem, “the great city…where their Lord was crucified” (Rev 11:4), whose destruction Jesus predicted: “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it; for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written. Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! For great distress shall be upon the earth and wrath upon this people; they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:20-24)

.
 
Hi Carol,

The only influence Constantine had on the Church was when he called the the council of Nicea in 325.
There was a serious dispute raging about the divinity of Christ. Arius of Alexandria was preaching that Jesus was begat by God and before Jesus was begotten he did not exist. Thus he was preaching against the divinity of Christ. This caused a lot of problems for Constantine so to try and resolve the dispute he called a council of bishops from all over the Christian world.
300 bishops took part in the council under the joint presidency of Constantine and Hosius, bishop of Cordova.
Arius and his small number of followers were defeated and Arius was declared a heritic and banished.
The doctrine of the Trinity was defined at Nicea. Constantine had nothing to do with the deliberations of the council. All he was interested in was calming things down.

One tactic of anti-Trinity people is to try and discredit the council of Nicea by saying Constantine influenced its outcome, which is just not true.
The Watchtower Society is at the forfront of this distortion of history because they consider themselves the spiritual heirs of Arius.
 
This is a pretty common charge tossed around by people that have been influenced by anti-Catholic books and teachers. Most of these people have never bothered to look at the facts and implicitly believe their sources.

You’ll probably have to proceed very slowly with this person, taking on one issue at a time and not allowing a lot of bouncing around of subjects or the acceptance of blanket statements. As she (hopefully) becomes more open to listening to the Catholic side, you can probably give her material to read for herself.

In the meantime, you need to equip yourself. I suggest you find (or order from this site) Karl Keating’s apologetic masterpiece Catholicism and Fundamentalism. You can also start with some of the articles on the alleged pagan origins of Catholicism also available on this site at the link below:

catholic.com/library/anti_catholicism.asp
 
carol marie:
No, she wasn’t specific.
Click to expand...
They won’t be. Specific things kill their agenda.
She just said that the true faith of the Church was destroyed and all kinds of pagan practices were put into place.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, like those wedding rings 🙂 Cardinal Newman’s had a great quote. (can someone post it?)
She said Constantine followed all kinds of pagan advisors and meshed it all together to make everyone happy.
Click to expand...
I’d love to know the names of the advisors, things they recommended, and how any earlier ECF’s didn’t teach these things.

Frankly, it is a conspiracy theory that would make Dale Gribble proud.
 
40.png
BobCatholic:
Oh yeah, like those wedding rings 🙂 Cardinal Newman’s had a great quote. (can someone post it?)
Click to expand...
Does it go something like, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

Who’s Dale Gribble?
 
40.png
AmandaPS:
Who’s Dale Gribble?
Click to expand...
Dale Gribble is the gun/conspiracy nut-neighbor who looks vaugely like Lee Harvey Oswald on Fox’s King of the Hill–Dale sees conspiracy in everthing, which blinds him to the fact that his son is born out of a years long afair between his wife Nancy and New Age Indian Healer John Redcorn (Dale also thinks his father, a Gay Rodeo star, is using that for his cover of an international espionage agent)–and Dale is easily the funniest character on the show
 
40.png
BobCatholic:
Oh yeah, like those wedding rings 🙂 Cardinal Newman’s had a great quote. (can someone post it?)
Click to expand...
My pleasure. 😃

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power
§ 2. The Assimilating Power of Sacramental Grace
The example set by St. Gregory in an age of persecution was impetuously followed when a time of peace succeeded. In the course of the fourth century two movements or developments spread over the face of Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways by Eusebius, that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own. It is not necessary to go into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made familiar to most of us. The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Gerry,
I reread your post several times and I’ve decided one of two things must be true: It’s not so clear or I’m not so smart. Are you saying that Constantine DID in fact bring all sorts of pagan symbols and practices into the church so pagans would feel more at home? Please explain… CM
 
carol marie:
Gerry,
I reread your post several times and I’ve decided one of two things must be true: It’s not so clear or I’m not so smart. Are you saying that Constantine DID in fact bring all sorts of pagan symbols and practices into the church so pagans would feel more at home? Please explain… CM
Click to expand...
Well, I’m not Cardinal Newman, and he did write it, and I posted it in response to a request, so I’m not really saying anything. 🙂

As I read it, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “all sorts.” Today, in the Mass, when we offer the sign of peace, there are frequent handshakes. That’s an imported symbol, that is meaningful and approriate, though not explicitly Christian in origin.

The wedding ring is a symbol of the bond between husband and wife. I suspect that it, and the others, were imported in much the same way as the handshake to the people next to you at the peace. (In other cultures, a different symbol may be used. I can picture a bow in Japan.)I don’t know that it made folks “feel at home”; more like it had a fitting meaning.

We know of some that were “imported,” but we know nothing of the ones that were left out in the cold. Odds are there were more of them.

The most significant line in the clip was about the sanctification of the symbols. That means that their old meaning was gone, and the new meaning, in the Christian context of the Church, had replaced it (according to Newman commentators I’ve read).

That’s how I read it.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
Gerry Hunter:
The most significant line in the clip was about the sanctification of the symbols. That means that their old meaning was gone, and the new meaning, in the Christian context of the Church, had replaced it (according to Newman commentators I’ve read).
Click to expand...
This is a good analysis. It is all the more significant if we consider that Newman was still a Protestant clergyman when he wrote this.
 
Carol Marie, your’e friend’s use of the term “remnant” and bringing up the Canards about Constantine, lead me to strongly suspect the s/he is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist sect.

They love to bring up lies about Constantine and supposedly “pagan” influences on the church. The SDAs beleive that they and they alone are God’s “one true remnant church”. They also like to spread lies about the church being the “whore of Babylon” and the Pope the “sign of the beast”.

I would take your friend’s advice with a huge fistful of salt.

If you aren’t careful you could find yourself RE-baptised into “prophetesse’s” EG White’s SDA church worshipping on the Jewish sabbath, observing all the Jewish Old Testament laws including being forbidden to eat shrimp or bacon. No more make up for you, no jewelry either.
 
40.png
boppysbud:
Carol Marie, your’e friend’s use of the term “remnant” and bringing up the Canards about Constantine, lead me to strongly suspect the s/he is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist sect.

They love to bring up lies about Constantine and supposedly “pagan” influences on the church.
Click to expand...
Not just the SDA’s, I’d add.

It is a common ploy among anti-Catholics – not those who differ with the Church, but those who are out to attack and harm it if they can – to give a version of Church history that implicates Constantine. As poppysbud noted, it’s an old canard.

It also exhibits another confusion among those who attack the Church. They confuse a custom with a doctrine. Take the wedding ring again. It’s a custom. There is no Church doctrine that says there must be an exchange of rings. However, by pointing to the customs, and their origins, the attackers hope their audience will buy into the proposition that as for customs, so for doctrine.

That is not only illogical, it is bad history. All of the doctrines that are distinctively Catholic, according to the attackers, which they claim are pagan “imports” can be, and have been, shown to predate Constantine by years measured in three figures.

Blessings,

Gerry
 
carol marie:
No, she wasn’t specific. She just said that the true faith of the Church was destroyed and all kinds of pagan practices were put into place. She did mention the wafer used for communion, although how is that pagan??
Click to expand...
The specifications for the wafer come from Exodus12;1-28
In verse 15 it specifies that they should use unlevened bread.

Exodus12;1-28
The elements are full of meaning for us.

    • The whole community - a public act not private.
    • The lamb was to be a yearling and male - more costly
    • Without blemish - perfect.
    • Its blood - an atonement to God
    • Complete eating /burning, indicated a complete consecration
    • Unleavened bread and bitter herbs - repentance
      *]A feast in Yahweh’s honor for all time
      There are three main themes:
      • Freedom from slavery - sin
      • New life - in Christ
        *]Promised land - eternal Life
        carol marie:
        She said Constantine followed all kinds of pagan advisors and meshed it all together to make everyone happy. Any truth or a pack of lies? And this is the thing… I suppose I could read a Catholic Historical account and it would say not true, but if I read a Fundementalist type book it would probably say yes it’s true. My friend must’ve gotten that stuff from somewhere??
        Click to expand...
        The early Christians did take some customs of the pagans like the wedding band and change the meaning and assymilated that into the lives of the Christians. But these customs are not related to what we believe. The beliefs come from the Apostles and the first century Christians. They are supported by the bible. So, this is not what they make it out to be. They have taken a little bit of fact and twisted it to make it more than what it is.
 
Well now I can cross 7th Day Adventist off my list because I look terrible without makeup! 😉 Actually my friend is more of a nondenom/fundementalist type who was actually Catholic for the first 25 years of her life. She has very strong anti-Catholic opinions to begin with and can’t understand why I’d want to jump ship. This business about Constantine is just the latest in her series of trying to save me from the evils of Rome. What I can’t understand is why she’d have a problem with SOME of the so-called pagan, now Christian practices (like the wafer - she said something about it being round for the sun god?) but not others like December 25 being Christmas which was chosen for some other pagan holiday but made into a wonderful Christan holiday where Christ is celebrated. She’s never said that we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas! I am going to try to find a book to let her read about the church in the 2nd century - hopefully that will put out this fire and she can busy herself with her next line of offense…(I know she’s doing this because she cares about me… we have been best friends for over 15 years! Who knows, maybe God will use ME to bring HER back! Wouldn’t that be something???)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top