Quote:
Originally Posted by JAD_333
That's a good bit different than saying some pagan rituals were adopted into Catholicism. That's saying it is all pagan.
In any case, entropy is confusing apples and oranges. The Catholic church and the christian religion are the ship and the message respectively. One can say, as he did, that the Catholic church is Roman in structure, but Catholicism the religion is very Christian.
His was an unclear, even contradictory statement, inasmuch as "pagan" is defined as all religious systems except Christianity, Judaism & Islam. (IMO, the term excludes some heafty religions, but that's another subject.)
|
Catolicism has a lot of rituals and concepts that aren't even mentioned in the Bible. The Birth Sin, symbolics such as giving money for your sins, the entire Papacy, celibacy of priests, Hell (only briefly mentioned in the Bible), and so on. It relies on symbolics more than on spirituality, symbolics which more often than not are unmentioned in the Bible.
As for paganism, how is having one upper deity, a mother goddess, their son, and myriads of deities representing their profession (as was the case with all pagan religions, you had gods of war, blacksmiths, love, shipping, merchants, ...) which can be
worshipped separately (while the Bible clearly says that you should not worship other gods than JHVH), not pagan? Does the presence of a Christian book make it different? I see the very concepts of ancient polytheism in the Catholic faith.