Would All the Idolators Please Stand Up Melinda Selmys Originally published in Issue VII of Vulgata, May 2002.  Drawing by Paul Carrick

Among the anti-Catholic propagandists, one will find that, strangely enough, there is this perception that Catholicism (or Romanism, as it is usually called by its detractors) is actually derived from Paganism. There is relatively little agreement about which practices are derived from which particular variety of Paganism – indeed some are alleged to have been simultaneously stolen from the Norse, the Greeks and the Babylonians (not to mention, of course, the Romans) as well as a couple of little known cults that died out within the first century A.D. This confusion notwithstanding, there are a large number of fundamentalist Protestants, accompanied by a smaller number of modern Neo-Pagans, who believe that many Catholic practices, saints, and even doctrines are really Pagan idolatry in Christian garb. The number of claims made along these lines is so vast (and usually so poorly documented) that it is impossible even to catalogue all of the Pagan practices which the Church supposedly appropriated. Fortunately, there are a number of relatively simple principles which can be applied to large groups of these charges.  I will lay down some of the facts that anti-Catholics, in their haste to find some sort of stick with which to beat the Church, seem to have forgotten.
 

I God created Earth and Heaven

Many of the objections raised, especially by Fundamentalists, seem to rest on an almost Manichean view of the created order. They denounce “Romanists” for placing important festivals (Christmas, All Saints Day,  etc.) on dates of seasonal significance. They complain that the Church corrupts true worship “in spirit and truth” by the introduction of extraneous and grossly physical paraphernalia. They note with horror any reference in Catholic writings to the constellations or to the lunar calendar, assuming that these things are inherently related to the Pagan worship of the moon goddess, or to the superstitious observation of horoscopes.

This is not particularly surprising, for there is much in the writings of early reformers that reflects the ideas of such early heretics as Origen regarding the fall of man. When man fell, so did all of creation and we now see a disharmony between man and nature.  However, according to the Manicheans and other Gnostic sects, all matter became evil and in conflict with the spirit.  Fundamentalists don't believe this, but they certainly have leanings in that direction. Thus, in their descendents we see a physical asceticism, especially in the arts and in the practice of liturgy. The importance of sacramental matter is diminished to the point where even the water of baptism becomes a sort of secondary symbol – not a means of regeneration, but rather a traditional sign of the regeneration that is really affected when one “gives their life to Jesus” in prayer. Thus, they are naturally repulsed by the Catholic doctrine that Baptism in faith with water is not only the normative means of acceptance into God’s covenant family, but that it is also the instrumental cause of our rebirth in Christ. Even more are they horrified at the suggestion that the mere physical matter of bread and wine really becomes the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, or the idea that the eating of Christ’s flesh is a real and physical eating, not just a symbol of a purely spiritual transaction.

Unable to explain this physicalism in the light of their understanding of scripture, they assume that these things must have come from Paganism, and, not surprisingly, amongst the dozens of documented forms of ancient Pagan practice, they are able to find some things that bear at least a superficial resemblance to modern Catholic practice. Unfortunately, they have missed a rather important scriptural fact: creation is good. From the first page of Genesis, when God looks down upon the works of His hands, through to the Gospels, and right into the book of Acts, we are consistently shown that God is still Lord of His creation (despite the fall), that He loves it, that it glorifies Him, and that He uses “gross” physical signs in order to effect miracles. Consider only one book of the Old Testament, the book of Psalms. We are told that “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Ps. 19, 1) “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it…” (Ps. 24, 1) “The day is yours, and yours also is the night; you established the sun and moon. It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter.” (Ps. 74, 16-17) The moon is “the faithful witness in the sky.” (Ps. 89, 37) and that “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. (Ps. 147, 4). These are only a handful of the extensive quotations from this one book declaring God’s mastery over the created order, and their role in proclaiming His glory. Furthermore, we clearly see that Christ Himself depends on physical matter in order to effect many of His miracles. He does not merely summon manna from Heaven, but multiplies the barley loaves and fishes that are given. He heals a blind man, not by raising His hands over him and praying, but by making a paste of dirt and saliva. His first miracle is to turn water into wine – as if it weren’t bad enough that He is making wine in the first place, He doesn’t even have the decency to make purely spiritual wine ex nihilo, but depends upon the rather mundane matter of water as the medium for His work. Indeed, the very idea of Christ, the Son of God, coming down from Heaven and being made man, taking on grossly physical human flesh capable of being cut and bruised and nailed is a fundamental affirmation of the importance of the material in our existence. It was not enough that His spirit should suffer as our spirits do – as we might expect if the material world were merely an obstacle to human salvation – He had to take on a body and that body had to suffer as our bodies do.

God made us both physical and spiritual beings, and so the physical, as well as the spiritual, is important in bringing about our salvation. In fact, ironically enough, it is the Protestant prejudice against matter, and not the Catholic inclusion of it in our Sacraments and Liturgy, that is Pagan. The idea that the physical impedes the spiritual is not a Christian idea, rather it is a view taken directly from the famous Pagan philosopher Plato. Indeed, in the very era when “Roman” Christianity supposedly adopted the Spirit of the Age by including all sorts of physical “Pagan” practices into its worship, the Spirit of the Age was actually neo-Platonist. In fact, many Roman Pagans were repulsed by the physicality of Christianity. Far from being a compromise with their thought, it was a scandal to it. The Eucharistic meal repulsed the Pagans, who charged the early Christians with cannibalism. The doctrine of the Incarnation, and the insistence that God had really assumed a human nature rather than merely appearing in human guise was far too grossly physical for the Gnostics and the Manichees of Constantine’s day.

More importantly, though, the Catholic use of Sacramental matter, its liturgical seasons and its holy feast days reflects a far more authentically Biblical spirituality than a prayer service stripped of its physical signs and divorced from the cosmic cycle of sun and season. When we set an important feast, like Christmas, near to the day of the Winter Solstice we realize the Psalmist’s exhortation to “Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars…” (Ps. 148, 3) We take the powerful symbolism of the conquest of darkness by light which God Has carved into the seasons, and we call upon it in order to glorify its maker. When we sprinkle ourselves with holy water in order that we might be cleansed we do so in the full consciousness that Isrealite Priests once sprinkled their congregation with blood – and with absolutely no idea that some Pagan sect somewhere used to use water as a symbol of cleansing. Furthermore, it can hardly be said to be surprising that water would come to be used as such a symbol – you don’t need to lift the idea from a Pagan cult, it’s obvious enough to anyone who has ever bathed or washed his face. It is also used by our Lord as a symbol of cleansing and regeneration, as when He washes the feet of His disciples, or when He describes Himself as living water. Instead of camping out on a few passages about spiritual worship, we look at the entire Bible and we see a rich scriptural tradition of physical signs and symbols. We see that the Isrealites were called to “Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon, and when the moon is full...” (Ps. 81, 3), that the physical sacrifice of a lamb prepared the people for the physical and spiritual atonement of Christ, that the waters of the Jordan healed a leper, that even in the book of Acts people grasped at relics like St. Peter’s handkerchief, and so we take this richness, which God, for the sake of His glory, has worked into His creation, and we use it in order to worship and glorify the Lord.
 

II The Value of Paganism

It is easy to forget, living in a Christian era, that Paganism was not actually a wholly evil thing. Yes, it was idolatrous,  and yes, many of its practices were immoral, but that does not mean that it had no good in it. In many ways, a lot of the old Pagan religions actually prepared people for the coming of Christ. In France, for example, the form of Druidism which was practiced was seen as a preparation for something greater that was to come – and it actually made it easier for the people to accept Christianity, because they saw it as the true religion that they had been waiting and preparing for. Likewise, the myths of the Mediterranean basin almost always incorporated some story of a god who was slain and reborn, or who went into the underworld to bring someone back from death. The story of Pandora’s box prepared the Pagans for the reality of the fall of man in Eden, and their belief in propitiation of the gods through sacrifice prepared them for the idea that they had a debt to God. Even the Aztec religion, one of the bloodiest and most savage forms of Pagan idolatry, contained within it the promise of a true and good God who would come from across the seas and free them from enslavement to the demons that demanded human sacrifice – a myth that was to prove very useful in the conversion of Latin America.

These myths, the stories of the gods and the practices of Pagan devotion, misguided though they were, represented man’s attempt to find and reconcile himself to God. They demonstrated a desire for God, and seeking after truth which, though corrupted by man’s fallen nature and distorted by the lies of demons, was none the less often genuine. And whenever people really look for God, they open up a pathway for grace to work in their hearts. Consider the words of Cephalus, as recorded in Plato’s Republic, as an example of grace working within Paganism: “When a man faces the thought of death…The stories about another world, and about punishment in a future life for wrongs done in this…begin to torment his mind….he is filled with doubts and fears and begins to reckon up and see if there is anyone he has wronged.” He goes on to speak of the necessity of “avoid[ing] unintentional cheating or lying and…[leaving] some sacrifice to God unmade or some debt to man unpaid before one dies.” Cephalus is clearly a Pagan (the text makes specific reference to him sacrificing to the gods), yet his Pagan beliefs have provided him with a knowledge of life after death, with an understanding of divine retribution, and with a knowledge that he stands in debt to God and that he ought to act justly towards other men. Whatever else may be said of it, Paganism has been good and true in so far as it has imparted these truths, even in a corrupted form, unto him, and as it contains the good and the true it must, insofar as it does so, be of God. Thus, when the early Christian missionaries went out preaching, they did not merely curse and foreswear everything Pagan, but rather violently rejected all that was evil and idolatrous within it, while using all that was good within it in order to lead people to Christ.

A fundamentalist might object that this is nothing more than an attempt to compromise with an entirely depraved moral and religious system of thought, but if he does so he must admit that both St. Paul and even God Himself have made the compromise. In the New Testament we find two stories which provide us with a striking example of how the good intentions behind some Pagan worship, and the truths contained within it were used in order to bring people to the fullness of truth in Christ. The first is the story of the magi – recall that these wise men from afar came following a star. Now we must ask ourselves, why were they following a star? The answer is clear, both from the context and from our knowledge of the ancient world: these wise men were astrologers. Their Pagan beliefs told them that a great king would be born, and that they would be led to the place of his birth by a star. They acted according to their beliefs and, because God could see that their hearts were sincere in seeking truth, He used those beliefs in order to lead them to Bethlehem. He did not show up and reprimand them for superstitious or inaccurate beliefs, He did not denounce them for their Pagan practices, but rather, He showed them that the fulfillment of their myths and their star-gazing was the Lord of Heaven and Earth,  the Christ child. Similarly, in the book of Acts we see that when Paul goes to speak to the Romans he has no qualms about referring to the beliefs that they already have in place. He points to an altar to the unknown god, and then preaches about that God in order that they might have knowledge of Him. He takes the truth that is in their beliefs, and uses it in order that they might be convinced of the truth that he preaches.

This is, in fact, the reason for many Catholic practices that appear to be derived from Paganism. As the early missionaries went out, they followed the example of St. Paul in trying to show the gentiles that Christ was not only the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, but also of the hopes for the coming of God and for salvation that were expressed in their own religions. Thus the autumnal solstice, traditionally a day in which “the veils between the worlds were thinned” and thus the souls of the dead were able to prowl the Earth exacting vengeance or resolving old wounds, became the eve of All Saint’s Day, a day in which the salvation and resurrection of the dead was remembered. The new festival demonstrated the contrast between fatalistic fear of death with the Christian virtue of hope all the more powerfully because of its positioning within the year. Thus we find that Christian thinkers draw upon the works of Pagan philosophers like Plato (who inspired some of Augustine’s work) and Aristotle (whose works were revived and “baptized” by St. Thomas Aquinas.) These Christian writers took the truths with the Pagan philosophies had stumbled upon in their striving for truth, and showed how they were perfected, purged and completed in Christianity. The truths were not taken from Paganism, nor the ideas, nor the practices, yet, because the truths of Christianity were sometimes reflected in Paganism, the missionaries made use of this in order to bring people to salvation. This was not a compromise with Paganism, and it did not undermine the Christian doctrine, it merely fulfilled St. Paul’s admonition to “become all things to all men that some might believe.” (1 Cor. 9:22)
 

III Christianity Conquers

In the Old Testament, the Jews were forbidden to touch any unclean thing, for it would make them unclean. Thus, when Jesus touches a leper, the Pharisees are horrified – for lepers are unclean, and He makes Himself unclean by touching one. This is right in the writings of the Pentateuch, so how then, has Jesus done this? Has He violated His own commandment? No. He has established a new order, to stand for all time. No longer will the followers of God become unclean when they touch that which is unclean, rather, by the power of Christ, the unclean shall become clean. Thus the leper is healed, and Jesus is not made leprous. Thus Christians do not fear to eat pig’s flesh, or to eat with sinners. We need not be afraid, because Christ has conquered, and in His name we shall bring healing to lepers, and God to gentiles.

This was a major turning point, and it provided the Christians with a radically different outlook than that of their Jewish predecessors. A Jew would have been terrified to go into a Pagan temple, a Christian marched in, cleansed the altar of its idolatry and planted the flag of Christ in the place of the idol of Apollo. Many a fundamentalist has been appalled when, in a tour of Rome he sees how many Christian churches are converted Pagan temples. But this should not be a cause for alarm, but rather one for celebration. If the Christians had feared the Pagan deities, then they would have smashed their temples, but they did not fear, and so they did no such thing. Instead, they took over the temples, remade them as churches and never doubted that the power of God would be strong enough to overcome the history of idolatry that lingered there. This was not a means of compromising with the Pagans, and they did not see it as such.  The Pagans find the Christianization of their temples a consolation – nor do their successors to this day. When a neo-Pagan walks into the Pantheon in Rome he is not pleased with how well this monument of ancient Paganism has been preserved. Rather, he is entirely repelled by how completely it has been eradicated by Christian worship.

The idea that the Christianization of Pagan holy places represents some sort of compromise, an attempt to make an easy transition between the two systems of belief, is often bolstered by the claim that the Saints after whom some of these converted temples are named have names similar to those of the Roman deities whom they replaced.  The idea of changing the temple of Apollo into a church dedicated to St. Apollonius is an obvious one, and clearly it appealed to the early Christians. This does not imply that they invented a Saint with a name similar to that of Apollo in order to facilitate the transition from Christianity to Paganism. In the Roman empire, a great many names were derived from the names of gods. Others were derived from everyday words that were derived from the names of the gods. Therefore, it was only natural that many of the Roman martyrs and saints would have names that sounded like the names of the gods, and it was only proper that Roman saints be honoured in Rome. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable that Christian churches, having appropriated the lands and buildings of the Pagans, should put them to good use under the patronage of local saints. Any suggestion that this allowed the Pagans to become Catholics without actually changing their beliefs is ridiculous: there is no way that you could have walked into your local temple following its conversion into a church without noticing the changes, and nor could you merely accept these changes as superficial. Early liturgies are replete with references to the oneness of God, the salvific work of His Son, the power of the Holy Spirit, readings from Scripture, and so forth. Indeed, they were modeled upon the worship of synagogue and temple – a patterning that has been clearly observed by numerous historians – and not on Pagan ceremonies.  The idols were removed, the priests and priestesses cast out, the blood sacrifices discontinued, and all replaced with a new kind of worship that was utterly alien to the Pagans of ancient Rome.