chestertonrules said:
This is pure fantasy. The Catholic Church was started by Jesus. It formally came into existence at Pentecost.
Constantine accepted Christianity and ended the persecution of Christians. He didn't change the faith in any way. In fact, it is not even clear that Constantine ever converted, although his mother was a Christian.
This doesn't even address my post.
Do you have a point?
The Catholic Church was
not started by Jesus. Jesus established the one "pure religion" (James 1:27) and the Catholic Church is very far from pure, having within it gross wrongs, such as the acceptance of pagan holidays, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, involvement in the world's political arena, and abuses by the religious hierarchy. For example, Christmas is well known for being of pagan origin, with the Roman celebration Saturnalia and the honoring the Persian god of light, Mithra, on December 25, known as the
Natalis Solis Invicti ("birthday of the invincible sun").
The
New Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges that "the date of December 25 does not correspond to Christ’s birth, but to the feast of the
Natalis Solis Invicti, the Roman sun festival at the solstice...the birth of Christ was assigned the date of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian Calendar, January 6 in the Egyptian), because on this day, as the sun began its return to northern skies, the pagan devotees of Mithra celebrated the
dies natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of the invincible sun). On Dec. 25, 274, Aurelian had proclaimed the sun-god principal patron of the empire and dedicated a temple to him in the Campus Martius. Christmas originated at a time when the cult of the sun was particularly strong at Rome.â€
The
U.S. Catholic (December 1981) went on to explain: “The Romans’ favorite festival was Saturnalia, which began on December 17 and ended with the ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’ (
Natalis solis invicti) on December 25. Somewhere in the second quarter of the fourth century,
savvy officials of the church of Rome decided December 25 would make a dandy day to celebrate the birthday of the ‘sun of righteousness.’ Christmas was born.â€
The
Enciclopedia de la Religión Católica frankly states: “The reason that the Roman Church decided to assign this date to the festival seems to be its tendency to replace pagan festivals with Christian ones. . . . We know that in Rome at that time, the pagans consecrated December 25 as the celebration of
natalis invicti, the birth of the ‘invincible sun.’â€
Jesus gave a command to
observe the day of his death, not birth nor resurrection.(Luke 22:19) The Catholic Church has never listened to what Jesus said, but rather made her own "rules", and tainted herself with paganism and other religious traditions that go against the Bible.
Of Easter, it also is well known as a pagan celebration incorporated into the Catholic Church. The historian Socrates Scholasticus, born about 380 C.E., wrote that "it seems to me that the feast of Easter has been introduced into the church from some old usage, just as many other customs have been established.†Easter’s ascendancy as a festival thus was not Bible based.
In fact, scholars claim that the very word Easter is of Anglo-Saxon origin, referring to the springtime. During that season, the ancients thought the sun was reborn after months of winter death. Catholic priest Francis X. Weiser admitted: “Some of the popular traditions of Lent and Easter date back to ancient nature rites.â€
The book
Curiosities of Popular Customs explains: “It was the invariable policy of the early Church to give a
Christian significance to such of the extant pagan ceremonies as could not be rooted out. In the case of Easter the conversion was
peculiarly easy. Joy at the rising of the natural sun, and the awakening of nature from the death of winter, became joy at the rising of the Sun of righteousness, at the resurrection of Christ from the grave.â€
Easter has also been linked to the worship of the Phoenician fertility goddess, Astarte, who had as her symbols the egg and the hare. Statues of Astarte have variously depicted her as having exaggerated sex organs or with a rabbit beside her and an egg in her hand. Can one claim Easter as a Christian celebration when it is shown as tainted with sex worship ?
Of Halloween, the
Encarta Encyclopedia said that "most Halloween festivities are based on folk beliefs concerning supernatural forces and spirits of the dead. Halloween decorations typically feature imagery associated with supernatural beings such as witches, werewolves, vampires, and ghosts".
It further stated: "During the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, from which Halloween was derived, Druids burned huge sacrificial wooden effigies known as wicker men atop sacred hilltop sites. The wicker men were sometimes filled with animals, prisoners of war, criminals, and other sacrifices to Druid deities."(
Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2005) Can an ancient Celtic festival be "Christianized" and still be pleasing to God ?
It is well known that Catholics throughout the earth are involved in the political field. Yet Jesus told his faithful apostles that "they are
no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world."(John 17:16) Adolf Hitler was known as a Catholic, and according to his chief architect, Albert Speer, remained a formal member of the Catholic Church until his death, despite his atrocities. According to biographer John Toland, Hitler was still "a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy."
In fact, only by the support of the Catholic Church was Hilter able to attain to power, keeping sway over the masses. On July 20, 1933, the Vatican’s interest in the rising power of Nazism was displayed when Cardinal Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII) signed a concordat in Rome between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. Von Papen signed the document as Hitler’s representative, and Pacelli there conferred on von Papen the high papal decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius.
Winston Churchill, in his book
The Gathering Storm, published in 1948, tells how von Papen further used “his reputation as a good Catholic†to gain church support for the Nazi takeover of Austria. In 1938, in honor of Hitler’s birthday, Cardinal Innitzer (1875-1955) ordered that all Austrian churches fly the swastika flag, ring their bells, and pray for the Nazi dictator.
In his book
Satan in Top Hat, Tibor Koeves writes of this, stating: “The Concordat was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source.†The concordat required the Vatican to withdraw its support from Germany’s Catholic Center Party, thus sanctioning Hitler’s one-party “total state.â€
Further, its article 14 stated: “The appointments for archbishops, bishops, and the like will be issued only after the governor, installed by the Reich, has duly ascertained that no doubts exist with respect to general political considerations.†By the end of 1933 (proclaimed a “Holy Year†by Pope Pius XI), Vatican support had become a major factor in Hitler’s push for world domination. Sitting pretty in the Vatican, Pope Pius XII let the Holocaust on the Jews and the cruel persecutions of others proceed uncriticized.
Honest-hearted individuals can readily see that the Catholic Church is not based on what Jesus taught, but upon a "house" that is founded upon false religious traditions and pagan teachings that God is angry at. And with the more recent revelations of child abuse in St. Francis, Wisconsin, whereby the late Catholic priest Lawrence Murphy sexually molested over 200 deaf boys from 1950-74, more of her corrupted character has been exposed.
The report further said: "Some allegations became public years ago. But they received renewed attention this week after documents obtained by The New York Times showed Murphy was spared a defrocking in the mid-1990s because
he was protected by the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope."(Posted March 25, 2010, Associated Press) Thus, the Catholic Church is built upon corruption.
