Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/misc/answers/answers.006

Text File | 1990-07-10 | 17KB | 276 lines

                      Is Catholicism Pagan?

     If few fundamentalists know the history of their own
religion--and distressingly few do--even fewer have any
appreciation for the history of the Catholic Church.  They become
easy prey for purveyors of fanciful "histories" that claim to
account for the origin and advance of Catholicism.  These
"histories" take two basic forms.  One makes the legalization of
Christianity during the reign of the Emperor Constantine the
determining fact; the other looks to the influence of the ancient
mystery religions.  Both conclude Catholicism is part Christian,
part pagan, and wholly to be rejected.
     The first version seems more like real history and is
generally the more convincing, at least to readers with some
schooling, while the second plays better to people who look for
sensationalism and depends for its effect on certain superficial
similarities between Catholicism and pagan cults.  Let's take a
brief look at the two forms.
     The first, which might be called the "pagan convert" theory,
begins, most commonly, with a listing of Catholic "inventions."
These are doctrines or practices which, it is alleged, the Church
for the most part adopted from paganism long after apostolic
times.  The first thing to notice is that in any list of
"inventions" doctrines are mixed up with practices,
fundamentalist writers apparently not understanding the
difference.
     A doctrine is a fixed belief, a dogma, such as (to limit it
to peculiarly "Catholic" doctrines) the Immaculate Conception,
the Assumption, purgatory, the sacraments, Transubstantiation.
Practices, on the other hand, are changeable.  They are customs,
ways of doing things.  They include, for instance, rituals or
dress or habits of prayer that may change over the years: the
language of the Mass, the style of priestly vestments, the use or
non-use of incense during Mass, making the Sign of the Cross.  Of
course, these practices are connected with doctrines, but they
are not themselves doctrines.  It is immaterial that many
practices are present neither in the Bible nor in early Christian
history.  Practices are not the subject of revelation, the way
doctrines are; they are adopted as present needs require and are
dropped for the same reason.
     To continue with the first kind of "history":
Fundamentalist writers begin by listing "inventions," mixing
doctrines and practices indiscriminately.  Then they assign dates
of origin to them.  They generally claim the "inventions" post-
date the Edict of Milan, which was issued in 313 and made
Christianity legal in the Roman Empire.  This is the cut-off
date, all the "bad" things in Catholicism supposedly arising
after that point.  In fact, the dating of the "inventions" is
often grossly wrong or, where right, irrelevant to the point in
question, which is: When did Catholicism begin?
     For instance, Transubstantiation is usually assigned to the
Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215.  This, say fundamentalists,
was when that doctrine was "invented."  Wrong.  This was when the
technical term "Transubstantiation" was settled on as the right
term to use to describe the doctrine of the Real Presence, which,
in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, can be shown to
antedate Constantine's reign.  In fact, the doctrine can be
proved from John 6.  So, the year 1215 does concern
Transubstantiation, but it is not the date when the doctrine
underlying the term was first believed.
     After presenting a list of "inventions," anti-Catholic
writers commonly quote from John Henry Newman's Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine.  (It is unlikely that many of
them have ever read the book, since they don't seem to understand
its argument; one of them apparently stumbled on what he took to
be a juicy passage, and the others all copied it.)
     Newman said that "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."
     What Newman said is quite true, naturally, and merely
demonstrates that some kinds of Catholic practices are common to
many liturgical religions.  By the way, it's worth pointing out
that fundamentalist writers usually misquote this passage from
Newman; for instance, they tend to leave out "the ring in
marriage."  After all, giving rings in marriage is something they
do in their own churches, and they don't want to be reminded that
the practice is pagan in origin, as are other elements of their
wedding ceremonies.
     After listing the "inventions" and quoting Newman, the
fundamentalist writers get to history proper.  They say that
until the reign on Constantine, all was well with Christianity.
It remained essentially intact, though there were a few minor
heresies in the three centuries following Pentecost.  The early
Christians, they say, took the Bible alone as their guide.  They
were not Protestants, and they were certainly not Catholics.
They were just Christians.  They faced persecution, first from
the Jews, later from the Roman Empire.  The persecution ended
when, through the Edict of Milan, Constantine legalized
Christianity.
     It was either then or, decades later, when Christianity was
made the official religion of the Empire that, as Loraine
Boettner phrased it, "thousands of people who still were pagans
pressed into the church in order to gain special advantages and
favors that went with such membership.  They came in in far
greater numbers than could be instructed or assimilated.  Having
been used to the more elaborate pagan rituals, they were not
satisfied with the simple Christian worship but began to
introduce their heathen beliefs and practices.  Gradually,
through the neglect of the Bible and the ignorance of the people,
more and more heathen ideas were introduced until the church
became more heathen than Christian."
     But there were still "real" Christians, few in number, often
in hiding, who kept the faith through the centuries, until, at
the Reformation, they gained a certain ascendancy.  The spiritual
heirs of these people are today's fundamentalists.
     This outline of ecclesiastical history, as given by Boettner
and others, depends for its support on several things.  The most
important is dating.  The theory is that all was well with the
Church until Constantine gave it political preference.
     But if all was well with Christianity prior to 313--if it
had not yet transmogrified into Catholicism--we should expect to
find all the peculiarly Catholic doctrines and practices arising
only after that date.  Before that, the historical record should
show us a Christianity undistinguishable from present-day
fundamentalism.  And this is what fundamentalist commentators
imply is the case, as they list dozens of Catholic "inventions,"
each allegedly arising after 313.
     Now it would have to be conceded that fundamentalists would
have at least a superficial case if all the "inventions" they
list did first develop after Christianity was legalized.  If, in
the first three centuries of Christian history, we could find no
distinctively Catholic beliefs or practices, that would be an
argument in favor of fundamentalism.  And when we look at
ecclesiastical history, what do we really find?
     We find many of these peculiarly Catholic practices, and
virtually all of the peculiarly Catholic doctrines, are mentioned
in works written during the first, second, and third centuries.
Some of the references are, admittedly, sparse, but others are
surprisingly full, referring to these doctrines and practices as
already being old.  We find mention of a sacrificing priesthood,
a hierarchy of bishops, prayers for the dead, the veneration of
saints, and much more--enough, at any rate, to demolish the
fundamentalists' attempt at history.
     Now all this business about Constantine and the supposed
influx of paganism into the Church might be called the standard
fundamentalist history: bare-bones, not backed up with facts,
ignorant of when the doctrines and practices really came into
existence.  Still, it is not an unreasonable theory, just a wrong
one.  If the datings were right, there would be merit to it.
     There is a more exotic history which often is seen as a
supplement to the standard one.  It might be called the "Whore of
Babylon" theory.  Its best-known proponent is Ralph Woodrow,
author of Babylon Mystery Religion.  Woodrow relies on the work
of Alexander Hislop, whose book, The Two Babylons, was published
in 1853 and is still in print.
     Instead of attributing the existence of Catholicism to
Christianity's legalization by Constantine, Woodrow and other
modern followers of Hislop concentrate on superficial
similarities between Catholicism and the ancient mystery
religions, particularly the Babylonian cults.  They make the
logically false argument that similarity implies descent, and
they pile up hundreds of examples, not one of which, in
isolation, proves anything, but which, taken all together,
persuade the ignorant by sheer volume.
     To understand how wrong these fundamentalist writers are,
one needs to understand a little about the religions that
predated Christianity.  There were, of course, the religions of
Rome and Greece, which were unable to satisfy men's hunger for
God.  The Roman religion was moralistic, concerned largely with
inculcating civic virtue, but it lacked anything that could
capture the imagination.  The Greek religion was non-moral
(indeed, the Greek gods were often quite immoral), but it left
more room for the imagination.  The Greek religion was rejected
by the best minds of Greece, who turned from it to philosophy,
which, while taking many wrong turns, did at last make some
progress, declaring the supremacy of the spiritual while adopting
a false view of matter.
     Then came the mystery religions, which promised to rescue
men from the puerility of the traditional Greco-Roman cults.
These religions, coming into the Empire from the East beginning
about three centuries before Christ, included the cults of Isis
from Egypt, Adonis from Babylonia, Attis from Phrygia, and Mithra
from Persia.  They all seem to have arisen through
personifications of nature, particularly birth and death as seen
in the cycles of the seasons.
     The gods of these cults died and then rose from the dead.
Commonly, the resurrected gods had been sent from heaven, or the
abode of the gods, to "save" humanity.  These cults were clothed
in luxurious rituals and impressed people brought up on the
desiccated religions of Rome and Greece or on philosophy, which
seemed to have run into a dead-end.
     What made the mystery cults particularly attractive was that
they offered the two things people in the Empire most wanted, the
assurance of personal immortality and union with God, what could
be called salvation.  This salvation was achieved by being
initiated into the mysteries, or secret teachings, of a cult.
After the initiation, which usually came through a kind of
baptism, the new converts participated in a ceremony which re-
enacted the death and rebirth of the god.
     These cults bore marked, though superficial, resemblance to
Catholicism, which is what fundamentalist writers have played on.

But they also bore marked resemblance to fundamentalism, at least
in things which Catholicism and fundamentalism hold in common,
and this is something always overlooked in anti-Catholic
writings.  If the truth of Catholicism is undercut by
similarities to mystery religions, so is the truth of
fundamentalism.  If Catholicism happens to have more points of
similarity with paganism, it is not because it is more likely to
have grown from these cults, but because it is a broader
religion.
     Looked at another way, Catholicism is full-blown
Christianity, while fundamentalism is truncated Christianity, so
there exist more aspects in Catholicism to which there could be
parallels in paganism.  Still, if the existence of similarities
means Catholicism is false, the same conclusion must be drawn
about fundamentalism; in this regard they sink or swim together.
     That, anyway, is an overview of the pagan religions in the
Roman Empire of the first century.  It is from them, particularly
from the mystery cults, that Woodrow insists Catholicism sprang.
Most of his "proofs" are laughable; all of them are unworthy of
serious consideration.  A description of one will suffice to show
the tenor of his work.
     Part of his thesis is that Catholicism stems from Babylonian
sun worship.  To substantiate this, he reproduces a photograph of
the interior of St. Peter's Basilica.  Superimposed on the
photograph are three arrows.  Two point to what Woodrow claims
are images of the sun at the top of the baldachin, or canopy,
over the high altar.  The third arrow points to the apse of the
church, where is seen, he says, "a huge and elaborate golden
sunburst image which, from the entrance of the church, appears
'above' the altar. ...  Interestingly enough, the great temple at
Babylon also featured a golden sun-image."
     This is his "proof":  He sees a what he thinks is a
"sunburst" in St. Peter's and promptly deduces that Catholicism
borrowed from the Babylonian cult.  But had he bothered to make
inquiries, or even to secure a clear photograph of the Basilica,
he would have seen that what he calls a "sunburst" is nothing but
a representation of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove exuding
rays of light.  This is an artistic form used even by
fundamentalists.
     There is no need to refute each claim or explain each
comparison made by Woodrow.  His method is crude, and his book is
unworthy of a point-by-point reply.  A Catholic, if so inclined,
could find in the mystery religions enough similarities to
fundamentalism to "prove" that fundamentalism is really an
offshoot of the cults, but the "proof" wouldn't be worth much.
     He could demonstrate that some mystery religions venerated a
holy book as containing all religious truth (their version of
sola scriptura), just like fundamentalism.  He could illustrate
how the mystery religions claimed to give an "assurance of
salvation," just like fundamentalism.  But such similarities
would establish nothing.  They would not imply descent.
     When they look at the mystery religions, writers like
Woodrow call any holy man a priest or pope, any book of prayers a
missal, any rite a Mass, and they think that by using Catholic
terms as labels for pagan practices they have shown Catholicism's
origin.  That simply isn't logical, but, no matter how weak these
arguments may be in the abstract, they influence people.  Should
they?
     No, because we should expect the true religion to be a
fulfillment of, but not a complete contradiction of, mankind's
earlier stabs at religious truth.  After all, each ancient
religion had something true in it, even if what was true was
buried under much that was false and even pernicious.  On the
positive side, ancient religions were remote preparations for
Christ's coming, which occurred in the "fullness of time," when
mankind had taken itself about as far as it could go on its own.
     We should expect that the religion that is the fullness of
truth, coming in the "fullness of time," would incorporate the
good points of earlier religions while rejecting their errors.
Conversely, a religion that rejected not only the errors, but
also the good points, of earlier religions would seem to be
incomplete, as though it went too far in trying to remain pure,
as though it threw out more than just the bath water.

                                        --Karl Keating
                                          Catholic Answers
                                          P.O. Box 17181
                                          San Diego, CA 92117