I remember walking through Times Square where I encountered a tall, middle-aged, blond white woman who held up a sign with an extremely bold statement. It read, ‘YOU HAVE TO BE CATHOLIC IN ORDER TO GO TO HEAVEN.’ Strangely enough, no one stopped to challenge or even talk to this woman. Think about it, her sign excluded not only the usual suspects (the unsaved, Muslims, Jews, etc) but other Christians as well. If you watch EWTN, it would not be hard to tell that many Catholics believe they have the market cornered on God. But what are the criticisms that Protestants have for Catholics? Alan O’Reilly, a Christian and activist from England, sent his comments on the issue:
The heathen religion of Mother-Child worship finally emerges as modern Roman Catholicism. See Woodrow’s first set of comments.As the Lord warned in Matthew 6:7, my emphases, here and in succeeding verses.“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”Catholics are noted for mindless repetitions as prayer, i.e. reciting the rosary, hail Marys etc. Observe too that worshippers of the queen of heaven have cakes (now wafers) as aids to worship.“And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?” Jeremiah 44:19.Roman Catholicism (though yet to be called that) was alive and malignant in Egypt in the 6th century BC.The Bible’s ultimate comment of the nature of the heathen religion that becomes Roman Catholicism is in Revelation 17:5. Note the appearance of the mother goddess again.“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH”Observe that she is now a city and a world ruler.“And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth“ Revelation 17:18.Note that she is not ancient (pagan) Rome, she is papal Rome, because John would not have wondered at pagan Rome killing Christians.“And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration“ Revelation 17:6.Heathen religion and politics are always linked, which is why together they are extremely dangerous.And note especially the political power this city wields. She “reigneth over the kings of the earth.”
Filed under: Religion | Tagged: Alan O'Reilly, Bible, BNP For Cleveland, Catholicism, Catholics, Christianity, Christians, Eternal Word Network, LorMarie, Protestantism, Religion
“Back in my saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost filled, long skirt wearing days,” (born-again Christian) I believed the Catholic church was the Whore of Babylon.
Now, after extensive reading of the history of Christianity, I have learned that all of Christianity has “pagan” roots. Also, read the history of Catholicism and Protestantism in Europe. Protestantism was an improvement over Catholicism, which wanted to keep the people ignorant and submissive.
That being said, it’s all a bunch of made-up baloney. Absolutely nobody has proof that there is a God. I have “Christian” values not because I fear God, but because I personally see their worth. And if there is a Supreme Diety, He/She/It will understand where I’m coming from.
LorMarie:
I used to think so. However, the answer to this question is not nearly so simple. The root of the problem is this: salvation is of the Jews. God’s revelation was given to Jewish people, who lived in a particular place and time and had a culture and worldview based on it. Now the earliest church was made up entirely of Jews and Gentile converts (proselytes and God-fearers), and then was mostly made up of and governed by Jews and others who had adopted a basically Jewish religious and cultural worldview (again God-fearers).
However, as time went on and the influence and guidance of the now passed on apostles faded, the number and influence of Gentiles in the church greatly increased that of the Jews, who themselves, having been driven from the synagogues by the Pharisees (do a Google search on Simon the Small, Yochanan ben Zakkai, and Gamaliel) also had an identity crisis of what it meant to be Jewish Christians.
Now at this time, the Gentiles wanted a Christian faith that reflected their own culture, mindset and worldview. So, they demanded that the Jewish Christians either completely give up anything and everything pertaining to Judaism and become Gentiles, or be labeled “Judaizers” and be kicked out of the church. Some Jews accepted, some Jews refused, but the result was that Christianity lost its underpinnings, the framework through which scriptures were to be interpreted and lived, and replaced with the Gentile framework that developed around paganism.
This did not magically happen in 320 AD or thereabouts when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, because the truth is that the full blown “Roman Catholic Church” did not exist for even several hundred years after Constantine. Instead, the heavily Gentile Christian church’s rejecting salvation being of the Jews and instead trying to interpret salvation through the framework of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, etc. and also Greek mythology began less than a hundred years after the last book of the Bible was written and the last apostle died. So, a lot of the core doctrines of Roman Catholicism, such as the authority of the church to add to the Bible using tradition, the veneration of people as “saints”, the doctrines concerning Mary, and the doctrine of purgatory were well into their way of being formed and accepted by the 3rd century (Constantine was the 4th), long before Nicea.
The Protestant Reformation only undid SOME of this nonsense, but not nearly all of it. After all, John Calvin’s first scholarly work was claiming that the writings of the Greek pagan Seneca contained many of the moral, ethical, and spiritual values of the Bible!
Olive,
LOL, it looks like we have similar herstories… the only difference is that I have personally chosen not to renounce my born-again status. I got rid of those ridiculously long skirts though.
Job,
You wrote a very interesting and informative reply. Since you are the second person who emphasized Catholocisms Jewish roots, that’s something I shall explore…
LorMarie:
Well, I should say that Christianity has Jewish roots, and that moreover Christianity is fulfilled Judaism. The earliest Christians were considered another sect or party of Judaism. There really was no normative expression of Judaism in the time of Christ or the early church, and this is something that had actually been the case ever since the 10 tribes of Israel – the northern kingdom – split and set up their rival system of worship after the death of Solomon. So, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and various other groups had their versions of Judaism, and for a time the Christians – originally called Nazarenes or “followers of the way”, as the term “Christian” originated at Antioch decades after the church was formed. So make no mistake, early Gentile converts to Christianity knew that they were adopting what was basically a Jewish faith. It was only when the number of Gentiles far outstripped the number of Jews, and more particularly when a number of wealthy, better educated Gentiles began to join the church when Christianity began to be depicted as a Gentile faith, and being a Jewish Christian began to be considered as a bad thing.
The reason for this is that even though Judaism was legal in the Roman Empire, the Roman upper classes despised Jews, viewing them as backwards and inferior in practically every way. So, there was no way that a follower of a Jewish religion could gain the respect of the Roman upper classes and rulers. So, in order for the educated, monied, elite etc. Gentile Christian converts to maintain and advance their class and social status and ambitions was to drive off the Jews (both in terms of their physical presence and their worldview) and present Christianity in a Hellenistic (pagan Greek) package that the Roman elitists could understand and accept as valid.
So, those were the roots of Catholicism. As a result, I say that Catholicism does not have Jewish roots. Quite the contrary, Catholicism is the result of rejecting Judaism – a very unwise thing as Jesus Christ was a Jew, as was the apostles, and as were the writers of 63 of the 66 books of the canon, with Acts, Luke, and Job being the exceptions – and replacing it with philosophy and paganism. It is fair to say that where legitimate Christianity has everything to do with Judaism, Catholicism, whether Roman or Eastern Orthodox, has almost nothing to do with it.
The best illustration of this: Judaism is centered around the Ten Commandments. Catholicism is based on breaking commandments 1 and 2 with its worship of Mary, saints, angels, and icons. The more one studies about Catholicism, the more one sees western (Greek and Roman) paganism mythology, middle and near eastern paganism and mythology (i.e. mithraism, Manichaeism, plus various mystery and fertility cults and religions), and Greek philosophy, especially Neo – Platonism. Also, where there is no mysticism in the Bible (even if Judaism did go on to incorporate a lot of Babylonian and other eastern mysticism) without the contributions of both eastern religious and western philosophical mysticism, Catholicism would not and could not exist. Try to justify transubstantiation (their communion doctrine) or their other sacramental doctrines – and Catholics believe that communion, baptism, and other sacraments impart grace – without mysticism … you can’t. It is also impossible to justify their doctrines concerning Mary, sainthood, and some of them with the pope and priesthood without mysticism. Further, Catholics acknowledges that their purgatory doctrine was merely the church’s adopting the “underworld” belief present in Greek and many other pagan mythologies wholesale because the Gentile converts entering the church badly wanted to retain this portion of their prior religions, so beginning in about the 3rd century they were allowed to, and merely had to exchange purgatory, the Catholic version of the underworld, for the underworld beliefs in their prior religions. The Catholics would go on to make similar accommodations for other converts who wanted to keep their polytheism, telling them that it was acceptable to rename the gods from their prior religion as saints and angels so that they could keep praying and performing rituals to them.
So, Catholicism is truthfully an amalgamation of a bunch of belief systems, of which Christianity is only one. If Judaism has any influence on Catholicism, it has been so heavily reinterpreted and overlaid with philosophy, mysticism, and paganism as to be unrecognizable. So, Christianity has Jewish origins and should indeed considered to be a Jewish faith if not actual Judaism itself, and Catholicism at best has Gentile Christian origins and is the result of a explicit rejection of Judaism, including apostolic (Jewish) Christianity.
The doctrine of the Trinity long preceded the development of Roman Catholicism, and its origins have been seen in documents dating to the early 2nd century, 125 AD or thereabouts, or within the same generation that the last apostle died. Had Trinity not had such a long and strong doctrinal history in the church before Constantine, Catholicism would have almost certainly developed into either a full blown polytheistic faith, or at the very least a henotheistic faith (Mormonism is basically henotheism) where there is one primary god ruling or presiding over a number of lesser gods.