Paganism, Prophecies, and Propaganda

Fr. Dwight Longenecker May 01, 2011

Did you know that Catholic bishops are actually high priests of Dagon, the ancient
fish deity of the Philistines? You see, the miter the bishop wears is a replica of
the costumes worn by the priests of Dagon. Thats right, the priests of Dagon wore
a head dress that looked like the head of a fish with an open mouth, and down their
back they wore a long cape that looked like the skin of a big fish. When you look
at a Catholic bishop sideways you can see the open-mouthed fish head, and his cope
looks just like that fish skin they wore! This proves that Catholicism is really
just old-fashioned devil-worshipping paganism, right? Wrong.

The bishops miter developed from the camelaucum, a form of crown worn in the
imperial court in Byzantium. There are no pictures of a Catholic bishop wearing
what we would recognize as a miter until the 11th centuryand then it was a
shorter, softer hat which only developed into its present form in the late middle
ages, long after the worshippers of Dagon were dead and gone.

Three Forms of Anti-Catholicism

The true history of the bishops miter can be found with a simple Internet search,
but explain it to the kind of Protestant who believes everything Catholic is simply
warmed-up paganism, and he will think you have been brainwashed, that you are a
naive dupe of a sinister regime, and the source of your information is part of a
cover-up by the vast Catholic disinformation machine deep within the bowels of the
secret walled city of the Vatican.

A second Protestant friend may not be quite so extreme in his Catholice-equals-

pagan beliefs, and he eschews the wild-eyed fundamentalism of the Chick Tracts.
Nevertheless, he shakes his head sadly and informs you that Catholic doctrine is
not Scriptural. It is a mishmash of pagan philosophy and religious customs. He
tells you how veneration of the Virgin Mary and prayers to the saints have their
roots in pagan goddess religions and ancestor worship. He will tell you how the
doctrines of purgatory and the sacraments (which we call mysteries) have come
from Gnosticism, how transubstantiation is imported from Aristotelianism, and how
your beliefs about heaven and hell and the afterlife are infected with the pagan
philosophies of neo-Platonism.

Finally, there is your secular friend with his own brand of Catholic-equalspagan
anti-Catholicism. He does not fear Catholicism because it is pagan; he dismisses it
because it is pagan. Secularists dont realize how influenced they are by old-
fashioned Protestant anti- Catholicism. They have uncritically imbibed Catholic-
equals-pagan, and they ridicule or dismiss Catholicism because all religions are
merely different versions of primitive pagan superstition.

Protestant Propaganda

The idea that the Catholic Church is the pagan anti-Christ has been around since
the Protestant Reformation. If your sect had been persecuted by Catholics, it was
easy enough to see the corrupt Roman hierarchy in the ominous warnings from the
Book of Revelation:

I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names
and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet,
and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in
her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name
written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of
prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth. I saw that the woman was drunk
with the blood of Gods holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to
Jesus. (Rv 17:3-6)
As a Protestant reading those words, you couldnt help but think of the opulence of
the Roman prelates in their palaces. You see the cardinals and canons in their
robes of purple and scarlet celebrating Mass at an altar glittering with jewels
and holding up a golden cup. Then when you read that the seven heads were the
seven hills on which the harlot sat, and you knew that Rome was the city of seven
hills: The Roman Catholic Church was that great whore, and she had sold her soul to
the disgusting, devil-worshipping pagan religions of ancient Rome.

Never mind that the writer of Revelation was actually referring to the decadent
court of the Roman emperors; it is only a short hop from there to see in every
manner of Catholic beliefs and practices a reenactment of the pagan religions. With
only a little bit of imagination, you see that Christmas and Easter are versions of
the pagan spring and winter celebrations, that the worship of the Blessed Virgin
Mary is derived from the ancient cult of Diana, that the Eucharist is taken from
Egyptian fertility rites, that the cross was the ancient Egyptian tau symbol, that
baptism and the idea of the sacraments were lifted from Mithraism, and that not
only was the bishops miter part of the secret worship of Dagon the fish god of the
Philistines, but the icthus fish sign of the early Christians was part of the pagan
conspiracy too!

The list could go on and on. In fact, it is only limited by the imagination of
those who wish to discover pagan connections to Catholicism. Its simple. As with
any conspiracy theory, look hard enough, and you will find what you seek. Begin
with your theory and then find the facts to support it. All of these historical
connections of paganism with Catholicism can be easily refuted with a bit of
research and explanation, but instead of tackling the different particular
theories, I would like to unlock the thinking behind the fable that Catholicism is
rehashed paganism and show how best to counter it.

The Missing Link

First, you have to do your homework: There are connecting points between early
Christianity and the pagan culture in which it was born, but what are they? Are the
connections real or just coincidental? Just because two things happened at the
same time does not demand a link between them, and it certainly does not demand a
causal link. So, for example, the decline of the number of Catholic priests and
nuns in the United States coincided with the popularity of Elvis Presley and the
decline in popularity of Bing Crosby. This does not mean that the two phenomena
were linked (even though Bing Crosby played the part of a Catholic priest), and it
certainly doesnt mean that the popularity of Elvis Presley caused the decline in
the number of priests.

Likewise, to see the similarity between two things and their coincidence in
history does not require that they be linked in any way, and it certainly does not
prove a causal link between the two. Even if a cultural link can be proved, a
causal link must also be proved. If a causal link is proved, then it must also be
proved which way the causal link flows. Does the existence of a winter-solstice
celebration in oth Christianity and Roman paganism demand that one caused the
other? If so, which influenced the other? It used to be a commonplace that the
Christians borrowed the pagan winter Saturnalia and replaced it with Christmas. It
now seems that the celebration of the Nativity of Christ was established first, and
the pagans invented the Saturnalia to compete with the increasingly popular
Christian celebrations.

These are interesting questions, but they are complex and cannot be truly answered
without solid historical research and scholarship.

Were All Pagan

Second, all the major doctrines of the Christian faith can be seen to have pagan
antecedents. A Protestant may say that veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary
hearkens back to pagan goddess worship, but the Virgin Birth (which he will affirm)
also has multiple echoes in the myths of the pagan religions.

He sees as pagan belief in purgatory or prayers for the dead, but he believes in
the Incarnationand pagan religions abound in stories of god-men coming down to be
born on earth. Does he believe in the Resurrection? Does he celebrate it at Easter?
How does he fit that in with all the pagan myths of the dying and rising god who
was worshiped annually at the springtime of the year? Does he believe in the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit? The Ascension? Does he practice baptism? The Lords
Supper? All of these beliefs and practices have parallels in paganism. You cant
blame Catholics for being pagan in some beliefs and practices while happily
endorsing beliefs that might just as readily have their origins in paganism. If
Catholic doctrine and devotions are pagan, then Protestantisms must be too.

This is the crunch of the argument. There are links between paganism and
Christianity. That is natural because the Church was born in a particular culture,
and that culture was bound to have some influence on it. Furthermore, there is
nothing wrong with this interaction. From the very beginning it was considered to
be good missionary method: Find what connects with the Christian story in the
culture you are preaching to and make the connection. Build on that and use it to
share the Christian gospel through images and concepts with which they are
familiar. This is precisely what we see taking place in the New Testament. In Acts
17, St. Paul preaches in Athens and sees an altar to an unknown god. He picks up
on this idea and uses it to preach the gospel.

Infected by Philosophy?

Now, lets address the less-extreme Protestant, who thinks Catholic doctrines are
non-scriptural and infected by pagan philosophy. He needs to see that borrowing
concepts from the philosophers of the time is exactly what the writers of the New
Testament did. John used the existing Greek philosophical concept of the logos (the
Word) to articulate the doctrine of the pre-existing Son of God and the Incarnation
of the Son of Man. In doing so he was borrowing a concept from Greek philosophy.
Throughout his writings, Paul uses the concept of the mystery of godliness, and
in doing so he connects with his pagan audiences awareness of the mystery
religions. Likewise, the Epistle to the Hebrews talks of an earthly temple. The
image of the heavenly temple is steeped in a Platonic metaphysical
understanding. In both these cases, as in the borrowings in early Church theology,
the writers take a concept and change it from the inside out.

So for John, the vague philosophical concept of the logos is clarified and
fulfilled in the incarnate Christ. For Paul, the mystery is a mystery no longer,
for that hidden wisdom is now revealed clearly in Christ Jesus. For the writer of
the letter to the Hebrews, the earthly temple and the heavenly temple are united
in the body of Christ on earth. The early Christians did use the philosophical
concepts of their culture, but as theydid so, they transformed those ideas and
fulfilled them with a new and radiant expression of the truth, and this transaction
indicates the real answer to the riddle of the relationship between paganism and
Catholicism.

The Riddle and the Revelation

The secular critic also argues that Catholicism is simply a rehash of paganism, but
for him it is a reason to reject Christianity altogether. Ha! he cries, Ive
seen through it all. Christianity was nothing new. The myth of the virgin-born God-
man saving mankind by his death and rising was around for centuries! Dont you see
he continues, all religions developed when human beings were primitive. They
looked at the sun, moon, and stars and were awed by them. They gave them
personalities and made up stories about them. These became the gods and goddesses
of ancient myths. They told stories of how the gods sent one of their own to earth
to save the human race. Then some Hebrews wanted people to believe their teacher
was also a god, so they spliced all these myths into the story of his life, and
then they had a top-notch product: Once the emperor bought into this newfangled
hodgepodge of myths and mysteries, Christianity never looked back.

Having worked out a seemingly credible alternative history, the secularist sits
back and smugly dismisses its claims. The problem is that his version of anti-
Catholicism is just as leaky and insubstantial as the various forms of Protestant
anti-Catholicism. In his version, the early Christians enthusiastically graft
paganism into their new religion; in reality, the early Christians were Jews and as
such were thoroughly opposed to paganism. Nor does his version account for the
persecution of Christians. The early Christians died to defend Christianity from
compromise with paganism. The idea that they heartily adopted pagan myths to boost
their popularity is ridiculous. Finally, if early Christianity was a cleverly
concocted amalgamation of paganism and the stories of a wandering rabbi, why would
anyone be tortured and die for such a fraud?

The links between paganism and Catholicism require another answer. They require an
explanation of just how and why there are connections and links between
Christianity and other religions, and the answer is riddle and revelation: Paganism
in all its forms was the riddle, and Christ was the revelation.

Hints and Glimpses

C.S. Lewis said that it didnt bother him that Christianity has links with earlier
religions: What would have bothered him was if it didnt have links with earlier
religions. The fact is, you can find echoes and connecting points between
Christianity and all the other religions both ancient and modern, and it is this
fact which validates rather than invalidates Christianity. If a religion is not
only true but more true than all the other religions, then it should connect with
all those other religions at the points where they are true.

The Catholic understanding is that there are echoes, connections, and similarities
among Catholicism and all the other religions because Catholicism fulfills them
and transforms them from within. The other religions are partial truths. They are
hints and guesses at the truth. They are the riddles and Christ is the revelation
which completes them and answers their questions. The Hebrew religion was the one
which most perfectly pointed to the coming Christ, but each of the pagan religions
and philosophies in their own waysome better than otherspoint to and prophesy the
coming of Christ.

The Church Fathers saw that every aspect of the ancient world (not just the
religions) were imperfect but definite pointers to Christ. In the myths and
philosophies, in both the horrors and the glories of the ancient world, they heard
echoes of the Word of God and saw glimpses of glory. So the Fathers loved to use
quotes from the ancient philosophers which hinted at the fullness of revelation
that would come in Christ. The most famous is from Virgils fourth Eclogue, written
the century before the coming of Christ. It expresses the longing of the pagan
heart for a coming Redeemer.

The virgin is returning . . .

A new human race is descending from the heights of heaven . . .

The birth of a child, with whom the iron age of humanity will end and the golden
age begin . . .

Catholicism is not the practice of paganism, but the fulfillment of the hints and
glimpses of revelation that are given in every ancient religion, philosophy, and
prophecy. Truth, wherever it appears, is Catholic truth, and once we see the
beautiful and true relationship between other religions and philosophiesand the
Catholic faith, the sooner we will see their beautiful fulfillment in one faith,
one baptism, one flock, one Shepherd, and one Lord.