StanJ said:
Although you used some facts here, your conclusions are a tad off. See the following;
http://www.gotquestions.org/Catholic-meaning-definition.html
Am I a "tad off " ? Not at all. The dictionary defines "catholic" as "all-embracing: interested in or sympathetic to a wide range of things".(
Microsoft Encarta Dictionary) And that is just what the Catholic church became, an "all-embracing" religion that allowed both so-called Christianity to combine with pagan teachings and practices.
For example, of Christmas, the
2005 Microsoft Reference Library says that though it is supposed to be "based on the story of Jesus birth as described in the Gospel of Matthew.....and the Gospel according to Luke.....Roman Catholics first celebrated Christmas......as early as 336 AD. The word Christmas entered the English language sometime around 1050 as the Old English phrase
Christes maesse, meaning "festival of Christ".
It then adds: "Most scholars believe that Christmas originated in the 4th century as a
Christian substitute for pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. Before the introduction of Christmas, each year beginning on December 17 Romans honored Saturn, the ancient god of agriculture, in a festival called Saturnalia.......(that) included the winter solstice, which usually occurred around December 25. During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves"
It continued saying: "Although the Gospels describe Jesus' birth in detail, they
never mention the date.....The Roman Catholic Church chose December 25 as the day for the Feast of the Nativity to give
Christian meaning to existing pagan rituals. For example, the Church replaced festivities honoring the birth of Mithra, (ancient Persian) god of light, with festivities to commemorate the birth of Jesus.......The Catholic Church hoped to draw pagans into its religion by allowing them to
continue their revelry while simultaneously honoring the birth of Jesus."
"Over the next 1000 years, the observance of Christmas followed the expansion of Christianity into the rest of Europe and into Egypt. Along the way, Christian beliefs
combined with existing pagan feasts and winter rituals to create the many long-standing traditions of Christmas celebrations. For example, ancient (pagan) Europeans believed that the mistletoe plant held magic powers to bestow life and fertility.....Northern Europeans associated the plant with the Norse goddess of love, Freya, and developed the custom of kissing underneath mistletoe branches. Christians
incorporated this custom into their Christmas celebrations, and kissing under a mistletoe branch eventually became part of secular Christian tradition."
What about the cross that is supposed to be the English rendering of the Greek
stauros ?
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible says of
stau·ros: "a stake or pole (as set upright)" as it's first meaning. W. E. Vine (1873-1949), English Biblical scholar, theologian and writer, says on this subject: “STAUROS (σταυρός) denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors (or wrongdoers) were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be
distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross.”
Vine then goes on to say: “By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either
departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system
pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to
retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was
adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.” (
Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1981, Vol. 1, p. 256)
And this is just the beginning of unmasking what the Roman Catholic church consists of. So, the word "catholic" is definitely "all-embracing", embracing pagan beliefs and traditions left and right.
