Defending accusations of paganism

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stephen2814

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Iv’e been doing alot of research lately online, and I notice alot of people accuse the Catholic Church of having pagan influence. Ex: Sun Worship. Iv’e noticed alot of sun images when in the Church. I can understand that God is light to the world, and so the sun image makes sense in that regard. But their seems to be very strong arguments against it.

hol.com/~mikesch/monstr.htm

Some say “Mary” the “Queen of Heaven” Catholics venerate originated from pagan Babylonian goddess worship. And how the Christmas tree is from pagan origins.

How do you defend such claims that seem nearly impossible to defend ?

God bless
 
stephen2814 said:
Iv’e been doing alot of research lately online, and I notice alot of people accuse the Catholic Church of having pagan influence. Ex: Sun Worship. Iv’e noticed alot of sun images when in the Church. I can understand that God is light to the world, and so the sun image makes sense in that regard. But their seems to be very strong arguments against it.

hol.com/~mikesch/monstr.htm

Some say “Mary” the “Queen of Heaven” Catholics venerate originated from pagan Babylonian goddess worship. And how the Christmas tree is from pagan origins.

How do you defend such claims that seem nearly impossible to defend ?

God bless
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Defend or refute? There is quite a big difference…
 
stephen2814 said:
Iv’e been doing alot of research lately online, and I notice alot of people accuse the Catholic Church of having pagan influence. Ex: Sun Worship. Iv’e noticed alot of sun images when in the Church. I can understand that God is light to the world, and so the sun image makes sense in that regard. But their seems to be very strong arguments against it.

hol.com/~mikesch/monstr.htm

Some say “Mary” the “Queen of Heaven” Catholics venerate originated from pagan Babylonian goddess worship. And how the Christmas tree is from pagan origins.

How do you defend such claims that seem nearly impossible to defend ?

God bless
Click to expand...
In regards to the Christmas tree…so what if it is? It’s not any sort of dogma. It’s just something that some people do. It’s not like it’s a requirement or anything.
 
stephen2814 said:
Iv’e been doing alot of research lately online, and I notice alot of people accuse the Catholic Church of having pagan influence. Ex: Sun Worship. Iv’e noticed alot of sun images when in the Church. I can understand that God is light to the world, and so the sun image makes sense in that regard. But their seems to be very strong arguments against it.

hol.com/~mikesch/monstr.htm

Some say “Mary” the “Queen of Heaven” Catholics venerate originated from pagan Babylonian goddess worship. And how the Christmas tree is from pagan origins.

How do you defend such claims that seem nearly impossible to defend ?

God bless
Click to expand...
Ask them if the cross symbolizes Christianity. Yes? PAGANS!!! It was the universal symbol of a shameful pagan death. Wonder how they justify that…

…or did Jesus change all that???
 
Actually I find these arguments kind of weak…

about the sun worship, the Church has never worshipped the sun, we use the sun imagery in the monstrance to symbolize how Christ is the light of the world. 🙂

about Mary… I highly recommend watching this whole video 🙂
youtube.com/watch?v=kUdYeYy3NQA
the term “Queen of Heaven” is not based on the Babylonian goddess but on the mother of the King in the Old Testament.

God bless
 
It’s just the Genetic Fallacy. Can we not use the Roman alphabet because it is of Pagan origin?
 
I’m certainly not going to get all torn up over Christmas trees, Ethiopian Marys, Latin, sun worship or whether pigs might fly. Symbolism is representation and orientation and a semiotic interpretation is rather a natural thing or maybe we wouldn’t have any cross-cultural communication at all. If anyone calls me a pagan (and a few have), I ask him or her what that means. Nearly every time I get a definition its so off the mark I ask him or her to find out. the person, unfortunately, usually has some deeper problems going on, but I don’t address that. I just stay friendly and don’t be argumentative. I have been assured there is no modern day “Savonarolla” in some sub-basement full of telephones trying to resurrect The European Inquisition. The Church’s main upper function as I have seen it is diplomatic stability. That would indeed mean investigations and talks with the Ethiopian Church, especially for purposes of peace making. I was surprised to hear that although Iran has outrightly banned and condemned Nestorians, The Church is paying attention. And, of course, in Iran its illegal to be anything except a Muslim (part of Shari’ia).
I think if we want to discover ‘True Catholicism’, its not going to be hidden in some Papal Bull or successionary ‘legitimate’ lineage. If one gets stuck on symbolism it can be a trip to Idolatry.:rolleyes:
 
Religious symbols are human / earthly things pointed to the supernatural. The earth for the pagans is the the same as for us, so it is natural that some symbols are similar.

The essential difference is the pointed entity, what the symbol means.

The rays around the monstrance mean that as the light and heat radiates from the Sun, so does the grace from the Eucharist.

The Christmas three as evergreen represents the tree of life, what we lost. The pagans have only desire to get it, we received it in some way through Jesus Christ.

The blessed Virgin is fertile voman, she gave birth to our Lord Jesus Christ. For the pagans the femininity and fertility are values for themselves, and thus immanent; for us the femininity and fertility of the Blessed Virgin is true value through her son, who is also the Son of God
 
I have to be honest I think that Church IS influenced by paganism…But only in this way…

As teh Church spread and grew those proclaiming the Gospel could, would and did recognize and use various symbols familiar to the pagans. The Christmas tree is certainly a case of a pagn symbol being co-opted into the Christian Traditions.
Similarly the Sun, which give warmth and light and life, becomes the Son who also gives these things but also gives us the sun.
We can see this kind of thing even in the Bible where Paul in speaking to the Greeks, says this in Acts 17:23
For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

As for Mary, There are those outside of Catholicism who seek to attack the blessed mother at every turn. Frankly I don’t know why.

In truth I suspect that if one looks hard enough they can find some sort of “pagan connection” to anything. As someone else pointed out, the cross was a pagan symbol of death. That does not mean that the Christian use of the cross ALSO means death…

The bottom line is that these people who wish to attack the faith find some connection and then try to build it into something it is not. Even if one can point to similarities it makes no difference since the object is different.

Sorry if the above is disjointed…It’s very early here…:sleep::yawn::coffeeread:

Peace
James
 
stephen2814 said:
Iv’e been doing alot of research lately online, and I notice alot of people accuse the Catholic Church of having pagan influence. Ex: Sun Worship. Iv’e noticed alot of sun images when in the Church. I can understand that God is light to the world, and so the sun image makes sense in that regard. But their seems to be very strong arguments against it.

hol.com/~mikesch/monstr.htm

Some say “Mary” the “Queen of Heaven” Catholics venerate originated from pagan Babylonian goddess worship. And how the Christmas tree is from pagan origins.

How do you defend such claims that seem nearly impossible to defend ?

God bless
Click to expand...
I’m not sure why you say this is nearly impossible to defend. (Or, as one poster said, do you mean “refute?”) Because you posted a link that talks about one specific thing, I’m going to deal with that.

Frist, there’s this from the link:
Exo 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
Click to expand...
If the person who put up this website really believes the last part of the sentence, he/she should be protesting all sorts of images people use.

But does God really not want us to use images? If so, why did He ask Moses to make statues of angels or serpents? Why did He give Ezekiel a vision of a temple containing palm trees and angels?

Look up the definition of “graven images.” These are carved images used as idols.

We don’t use carved images as idols.

The rest of the page you linked to made a big deal about not worshipping or serving other gods. Catholics don’t do this. They made a big deal about the monstrance because of the whole “sunburst” thing, and tried to imply two things: the letters SFS on it stand for “666”. But you can make “666” out of almost anything. People continue to do that with anything they want to accuse of being the antichrist.

Then they make a big deal about how we bow down before “image.” The writers of this website do, in fact, know that we are paying homage to Christ. They even say that this is what Catholics say. But then they go on to say the host is just another sun sign.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what Catholics tell them, nor what the Church teaches. They make up their own thing about what Catholics believe.

I would ask, how can people who write this stuff defend it, when even within the writings they show they know what Catholic teaching really is? It’s not Catholicism that’s indefensible; it’s sites such as these.
 
Thankyou for the posts. They are all excellent reponses. And I especially appreciate the the video about Mary that is encouraging and very eye opening .

I shouldn’t say it’s impossible to “defend” or “refute”, what I really should say is that it’s hard to reason with people who don’t understand the Catholic faith and throw all kinds of accusations and assumptions out there, like on that website.

Im new to the Catholic faith and I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, and you have to realize I was brought up my whole life with people who outwardly oppose the Catholic religion. I still have to deal with these kinds of people throughout my family, and it’s not always easy to “refute” this subject when it comes to what they beleive. If you ever talked to them about it you’d know. I would hate to say it but they are brainwashed. So I need all the best advice I can get. So thanks for the advice guys.

I feel blessed to learn about the Catholic faith, it’s an ongoing journey and the learning never stops. I have alot of alot of questions but that only means im learning more and more.

God bless each and every one of you
 
stephen2814 said:
Thankyou for the posts. They are all excellent reponses. And I especially appreciate the the video about Mary that is encouraging and very eye opening .

I shouldn’t say it’s impossible to “defend” or “refute”, what I really should say is that it’s hard to reason with people who don’t understand the Catholic faith and throw all kinds of accusations and assumptions out there, like on that website.

Im new to the Catholic faith and I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, and you have to realize I was brought up my whole life with people who outwardly oppose the Catholic religion. I still have to deal with these kinds of people throughout my family, and it’s not always easy to “refute” this subject when it comes to what they beleive. If you ever talked to them about it you’d know. I would hate to say it but they are brainwashed. So I need all the best advice I can get. So thanks for the advice guys.

I feel blessed to learn about the Catholic faith, it’s an ongoing journey and the learning never stops. I have alot of alot of questions but that only means im learning more and more.

God bless each and every one of you
Click to expand...
stephen, these articles address the claims of pagan influence regarding Who Christ is:

philvaz.com/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCrucifiedSaviors.htm

philvaz.com/apologetics/HORUS.htm

philvaz.com/apologetics/JesusEvidenceCarrier.htm

Also, regarding the celebration of Christmas, these should help prepare you to defend the Church:

catholic.com/thisrock/1993/9312fea1.asp

catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9112cust.asp

catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9112fea2.asp

And this one addresses in part the change in JW doctrine regarding Christmas:

catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9706fea1.asp
 
stephen2814 said:
Thankyou for the posts. They are all excellent reponses. And I especially appreciate the the video about Mary that is encouraging and very eye opening .

I shouldn’t say it’s impossible to “defend” or “refute”, what I really should say is that it’s hard to reason with people who don’t understand the Catholic faith and throw all kinds of accusations and assumptions out there, like on that website.

Im new to the Catholic faith and I was raised a Jehovahs Witness, and you have to realize I was brought up my whole life with people who outwardly oppose the Catholic religion. I still have to deal with these kinds of people throughout my family, and it’s not always easy to “refute” this subject when it comes to what they beleive. If you ever talked to them about it you’d know. I would hate to say it but they are brainwashed. So I need all the best advice I can get. So thanks for the advice guys.

I feel blessed to learn about the Catholic faith, it’s an ongoing journey and the learning never stops. I have alot of alot of questions but that only means im learning more and more.

God bless each and every one of you
Click to expand...
I totally read you wrong the first time. When you talked about being almost impossible to defend, I took it the wrong way.

We are all blessed, and I’m glad you’re here and asking questions.
 
To be honest, I tend to regard warm-hearted paganism closer to the truth than most post-calvin sub-christians will ever be!

Paganism is a ‘nature’ religion, and for nature to exist it must be permeated by the presence of God, since it is He who holds all things in being, and without Him there is nought. The main problem with pagans is that they fall short in tgheir seeing of God. In a sense, they fail to see the forest that is God for being too close to whatever tree they happen to be hugging!

God knows full well the psycology of humans. We require ‘full sense’ experiences. Hence, our (catholic) churches are of colour, sights, smells, sounds, and so on. That this may be regarded by some as pagan is simply an indication of their estrangement from the fullness of theirown humanity.

BTW: There’s no evidence that Christmas trees were taken from paganism… the first historical reference to them is Latvian (I think) in the 7th century, and Christian 👍
 
Catholicism and Protestantism have enormous cultural influence from paganism, but very little religious influence. Catholicism preserved and purified many stories and traditions from pagan europe. Beowulf is a wonderful example of the Church taking pagan folk tales and turning it into a great adventure, and including a final important element, God! Culture and knowledge itself need not be specifically Christian to be good or useful.
 
No use in doing it. It would be difficult for anyone to find a religion that does not have elements of a former religion in it. In fact, to use those elements and relocating, renaming and re-explaining them symbolically, in very, very clever. Of course, that is a gentle way of conversion. The older way was to convert people by threatening them that if they did not convert they would be killed, their children would be enslaved, their families might be hacked up in front of them and other delicious means like they did in Armenia, Albania far Eastern Europe. Charlemagne found it was difficult to convert the Bohemians and Saxons who were real Pagans and who worshiped a big oak tree. His army followed people going to a ceremony at the Big Tree site. The Pagans said he couldn’t hurt them because he had no power. He found the tree, had his soldiers chop it down, cut it into fire wood and burnt it to ashes. While he was at it he took the priests, put them in the big lodge house and burnt it, and them, to ashes. His priests came in and went about converting the masses. It worked. But, then, history is written by the winners. I wonder what else happened. Charlemagne was almost sanctified for converting so many, but The Church never praised him for his pyromaniacal fit of madness. We must realize that Paganism and Sun worship have been around for at least six thousand years. They are still practiced by millions. Those who practice Earth based religions outnumber all Judeo-Christian and Muslim sects put together, and mass Aetheism is practiced by at least 1.5 billion. We can safely say that at any one given time nearly every religion has interacted and had at least some of its elements married with another.
 
Thankyou for the posts everyone they serve to me as very useful answers.

God bless
 
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