Your positioning yourself on the intellectual high ground here is baseless.
Is it? I have studied Catholicism. I have also studied her symbols and practices. Many of these allegedly pagan things have either perfectly innocent origins or else an origin which precedes their pagan use.
By way of example, St. Peter's cross was used by the Catholic Church (and, I would assume, many others) for centuries as a symbol of perfectly orthodox Christianity. The fact that some satanists came along later and used an upside down crucifix for entirely other purposes doesn't mitigate the fact that the Church used the symbol first.
Disagree with the conclusions all you like, but don't indulge in caricatures while doing so.
Mmm. So in other words, my original critique should've extended beyond just the American Protestants? I'll keep that in mind.
It's actually the RC who is often ignorant of what paganism was, claiming, for example, that Catholics are not pagan because they pray to the person behind the image, not the image itself,
Speaking as someone who has prayed to saints, I can say that it is true because I am the one who did the praying and I know what my intent in doing so was.
As to "paganism", there were and are many forms and flavors of it. Cults of that pagan fish god had ideas, views and practices which differed from the cults of the pagan sun god. The fact that both groups were broadly pagan hardly suggests they agreed much with each other.
Considering how broad a canvas "paganism" in general is, it's a bit ludicrous to cherry-pick one or two similarities with Catholicism from among dozens or even hundreds of ancient pagan cults and use that as the foundation for arguing that Catholicism is a bizarre hybrid of different (and at times mutually exclusive) pagan cults from the ancient world.
By way of example, there are pre-Christian religions which had ceremonies approximating the Christian practice of baptism (something even many Protestants believe in and encourage believers to do). That fact does not, however, serve as evidence that Christianity stole the practice of baptism from those pre-Christian religions. It's an interesting similarity, I suppose, but it isn't "proof" of anything.
apparently ignorant of the fact that the ancient Romans claimed the exact same thing.
If we take those pagans at their word and believe them... so what? What does that prove exactly, apart from their beliefs being similar to ours?
Those same pagans believed in a deity of some kind. I gather you believe in a deity as well. Does the fact that both of you believe in higher powers somehow make your belief derivative of theirs?
Again, I am not going to be drawn into the implications of this.
Probably a good idea on your part.
I am simply stating the fact, so often unknown to Catholics.
Oh I've heard them all before. I imagine the majority of Catholics on CF have heard them as well.
