Pagans

[Montie_Claunch]

Hello everyone,

Anyone know of any good books or websites that would be good apologetical material towards Pagens? I have found that there is a nice sized pagen minority in my campus and I would like to be able to compentantly talk to them about our faith and I figured that it would be slightly more harder (longer and more drawn out) scince they do not beleive in the same God (or if they do he’s not the only one) as us. Any suggestions would be nice and ever so helpful. Thanks you and God bless.

 

[BlestOne]

Montie,
I mean what I am about to say sincerely…walk , no run away, now. I admire your wanting to evangelize to pagans but unless you are ready to deal with deep seated hatred of the Catholic Church and rationalizations that will make you want to cry, leave it be for now. I was married to a man that while I thought he was Catholic, he considered himself a pagan high priest. I lived the hatred, the rationalizations and the totally whimsical spirituality of these people. I had to welcome them into my home and listen to their **** day in and day out for 10 yrs. Some of them will tell you that they believe in Jesus Christ, only the Jesus they know is maybe a prophet, or maybe even a “lesser” god. In any case, they think they have it all covered, with 400 some odd Gods, I guess they really feel secure. Truly Montie, I am not being uncharitable, it broke my heart to listen to pagans telling me about how they hated christians most especially Catholics, how they felt so persecuted, how they prayed to this God or that God… all the time my mind was screaming “There is only one God, try praying to him!” But if you insist on trying, please remember this: Christians are here to serve God, pagans gods are there to serve them. They really believe that they are entitled to anything that they can ask their Gods for. Their basis is totally selfish…

 

[Dr.Colossus]

My guess would be that the pagan community you have discovered would be considered part of the “New Age” movement. The difficulty with this “religion” is that it’s not one religion at all. Ask any number of Pagans what they believe and you’ll get different answers every time. For some solidly Catholic information on the New Age movement, I would recommend Catholics and the New Age and New Light on the New Age, both by Fr. Mitch Pacwa.

 

[BaldwinIV]

Unfortunately, there is probably not much you can do to reach pagans…especially on a college campus. Paganism and “New Age” is just something those kids will eventually outgrow.

God Bless,

Baldwin IV

 

[Timidity]

BlestOne:

walk , no run away, now. I admire your wanting to evangelize to pagans but unless you are ready to deal with deep seated hatred of the Catholic Church and rationalizations that will make you want to cry, leave it be for now.

Wow. Just imagine if St. Paul felt that way…

 

[rwoehmke]

In my opinion there is more than a little wisdom in the previous posts. Modern paganism is a real kettle of hash that probably is best desribed as a part of the New Age Movement and Pacwa is good reading. For a look at historical paganism as found in Early Church times there is a book called Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries by Ramsey MacMullen, Professor of History at Yale. It won’t help much with your modern pagans.

 

[BlestOne]

Timidity:

Wow. Just imagine if St. Paul felt that way…

Timidity, I know it sounded less than charitable, but I have no wish to see Montie have to go through the hatred and prejudice uneccessarily. If you read Monties post it appears that he is a college student and from other posts I believe he is either new to Catholicism or still seeking alot of answers, he probably wouldn’t like a confrontation with these folks, they would take advantage of him terribly. I have had to deal with them and I consider myself fortunate in my Catholic upbringing, I had many good teachers, yet these folks wore me down… I was giving him merciful advice, no offense was meant here.