Constantine polluted the church?

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I don’t understand why the Eastern Church regards him as a saint.They even call him St.Constantine.Now we all know the Easterns are not Arians and agree with Rome on all aspects of Christ’s nature.If he died an Arian,why call him saint? (Eastern Orthodox that is) I don’t know the position of the Eastern Catholics in union with Rome on this. I just found a site that says that Constantine is a saint in the Catholic Church but doesn’t appear on the Roman calender.www.ichrusa.com/saintsalive/constant.htm Just scroll all the way down and read.
 
Now my question: How can someone die an Arian heretic and still be regarded as a Saint? Hmmm
 
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SCTA-1:
Now my question: How can someone die an Arian heretic and still be regarded as a Saint? Hmmm
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You have to understand Eastern history. For them the emperor was Christ’s representative on earth not the Pope. He was chosen by God to lead the people.

While Constantine did fall into heresy he also did many good things for the Church as a whole. He ended the persecutions and made huge financial and land donations to the church in order to promote the faith. So in that respect he does deserve some recognition. I find it interesting however that Western Christians always regarded his mother Helena as the greater saint of the two while in the east its the opposite. I believe Catholics only agreed to include Constantine at the insistance of the uniate churches. I suppose it has much to do with living under an emperor for 1500 years.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Constantine did NOT make Christianity the official religion of the empire, he merely issued an edict of toleration. Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion in 380 A.D.

At any rate, the fact that we’re not Arian despite the royal households fierce attempts is proof enough the Christians blindly accepted whatever he wanted. If it didn’t square with orthodoxy, it was rejected.
 
Well, there have been times when the Church has recognized fictional people as Saints, so it’s not hard for me to believe that Constantine could be considered one. My question is whether or not he has been infallibly declared a Saint by the Pope, as has been the process in recent years. That would strike me as very odd considering his strong heretical leanings, I have to admit.
 
carol marie:
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?)
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##…and how it represents Tammuz, Bacchus, and Baal - yes, we know :D. All too well 🙂

Maybe you should tell your friend that source of all this is, shall we say, not terribly well-informed, and then, if need be, you can point her to Ralph Woodrow’s book “Babylon Connection?”. (No Catholic has yet written at length on this, it seems. Which is astonishing.)

Then, once she has read that, you can tell her that one of many excellent books on Babylon and its religion is “Babylon”, by Joan Oates, who is an archaeologist, who, unlike the people who spread this silliness, knows her subject inside-out.

There is no reason to think that the wafer’s shape is anything to do with the sun - even if there were a relation, why would it be important ? Do people who think like this never use circular yellow plates ? Does that make them sun-worshippers ?
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???)
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SCTA-1:
Now my question: How can someone die an Arian heretic and still be regarded as a Saint? Hmmm
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The Orthodox reckon him a saint and isapostolos, “equal to the Apostles”; and he has a cultus in Britain. Three kings of Scotland were baptised Constantine 🙂 So he is as kosher a Saint as, say, Simon Stock: who has not, it seems, been “officially” canonised either - most Saints have not. The BVM was not 🙂​

 
I’ve read before, but never verified so, that some renounce Constantine because he supposedly payed members of the Church with money/riches for indulgences.

As I said, I have not verified this, and if I have time I’ll look into it a little deeper. I remember when reading this that the writers noted him as unknowingly being the first to start in the scandalous abuse of “indulgences”.
 
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DuMaurier:
At any rate, the fact that we’re not Arian despite the royal households fierce attempts is proof enough the Christians blindly accepted whatever he wanted .
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Woops, that should be that Christians HADN’T blindly accepted whatever he wanted. :o
 
I would say that because he not only allowed Christianity, but enforced it as the religion of the state, that he should be exalted.

If you have any knowledge of what the early Christian martyrs went through, then you would praise Constantine immensly…that goes for Protestants as well!!!

If you don’t know of the atrocities (sp?) that the Christian martyrs were forced to face then I recomend reading Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs, which is a translation of the Rev. Father Antonio Gallonio’s work, De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus…this work was a summarized view, so-to-speak, of the tortures faced by the Christian martyrs.
 
That doesn’t change the fact that he died a heretic outside of the Church. He rejected the true teachings, and his children continued to persecute and martyr Catholics. He’s not a hero, nor was he a Catholic in good standing, but rather a pragmatic politician.
 
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cybrscream:
I would say that because he not only allowed Christianity, but enforced it as the religion of the state, that he should be exalted.

If you have any knowledge of what the early Christian martyrs went through, then you would praise Constantine immensly…that goes for Protestants as well!!!

If you don’t know of the atrocities (sp?) that the Christian martyrs were forced to face then I recomend reading Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs, which is a translation of the Rev. Father Antonio Gallonio’s work, De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus…this work was a summarized view, so-to-speak, of the tortures faced by the Christian martyrs.
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The problem with Gallonio, is that he was writing about 400 years ago - and a great deal has been done since then to make this department of learning more historically rigorous and scientific; as Pere Hippolyte Delehaye S.J. explained over 90 years ago :))​

by Hippolyte Delehaye
Delehaye is in the bibliography
This last link is old - but very informative 🙂 ##
 
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Ghosty:
That doesn’t change the fact that he died a heretic outside of the Church. He rejected the true teachings, and his children continued to persecute and martyr Catholics. He’s not a hero, nor was he a Catholic in good standing, but rather a pragmatic politician.
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His sons differed - Constans was a Catholic; Constantius sort of Arian - but by no means unreservedly so.​

History is complex, and tends not to fit our all-too-tidy categories. IMO, Constantine harmed the Church - with the best of intentions. He had to be pragmatic - but he does seem to have been sincerely religious. Marta Sordi makes an impressive case for the genuiness of his conversion, in her book “The Christians and the Roman Empire”.

It says something for him, that he brought an end to the civil wars and instability that followed the abdication of Diocletian in 305. ##
 
Gottle of Geer: Everything I’ve read indicates that Constantine most certainly wasn’t Catholic in belief in the end of his days. It’s my understanding that he was even baptised by an Arian bishop. Of course such things are difficult to prove since they occured so close to his death and no official proclaimations by him at the time seem to exist. It can’t be doubted, however, that Constantius II was a heretic and fiercely persecuted the Church. If the position of Emperor held such sway, then the Church would have fallen in line with the emperors after Constantine, but that is not what occured.

Of course, even Constantius’ history is murky, and it seems he wavered back and forth at points as well. The main point is that the Church did not waver with the emperors into heresy.
 
I know that this would probably be better discussed in another thread, but there are no problems with Gallonio’s work. He is very general in terms, and no one can prove that anything written in that particular work is of myth or legen.

Each chapter describes ways that people were tortured, and not only Christian martyrs but criminals as well. The only things that he says about particular Saints are qoutes from someone elses mouth.

As for all the things he says as punishments for each of the martyrs, nothing seems mythical. People were beaten, cut, stabbed, pricked, crushed, hung, crucified, burnt, and much more. Gallonio just provides an account of a large variety of ways that a criminal or martyr might have been punished. And the wood cuts, provided by Antonio Tempeste, are interesting as well.

By the way, the book I’m talking about doesn’t have any information regarding Constantine…
 
Can I suggest surfing through all of the info on www.catholic.com ? I think you’d find it all very helpful, even if it’s overwhelming at first. There is a row of topics on the left-hand side of the main page titled “Library”. These topics are LOADED with excellent info - but be prepaired to hunker down and read. Any honest study of the Faith requires some work. 🙂

I’ll check the copyright info to see if I can post some of their pre-Constantine Early Church Father writings here on the forum.
 
Gerry Hunter:
It seems, on the showing of your statement, that you do not belong to a Christian school of thought. St. Paul was an Apostle, and Apostles didn’t do what you suggest St. Paul might have.
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Careful, St. Paul was not an apostle. He was an evangelist, but not an apostle. In fact, he persecuted Christians until his conversion.

I for one am pleased that St. Paul was very intelligent and took the Good Word to the Gentiles.

It is unfortunate that the Lutheran heresy used St. Paul as the centerpiece of its false doctrine.
 
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