These things have a lot to do with the Catholic Church, but not in the way your friend assumes.
The connection is that we were created by God to know, love and serve him. That also means we were created by God to seek him. However, until God gave humanity his full and final revelation as found in the Catholic faith, mankind searched for him in a half-blinded fashion. It is this half-blind search that accounts for all the ancient (and not so ancient) pagan religions and gods and tales and worship.
You could think of it this way. A child builds a pretend car out of a cardboard box and some paper plates, but that is not a real car. Later the child grows up and acquires a real car, but was that real car modeled on the cardboard car? Of course not - it was the cardboard car that was modeled on the real car, very crudely and based on vague and wispy notions of what cars are, even though the real car came later in the child’s life.
In the same way, the pagan religions were modeled very crudely, driven by a universal urge which stems from our very nature as created by God, on the true faith which God gradually revealed to his chosen people, and which was finally revealed to all humanity through the Catholic Church.
So that’s the real connection. Your friend will probably be disappointed.
