Dear Paul:

"Do not cast pearls before swine" really does need to be remembered here. Also Proverbs 26:4-5  "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. 5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes."

The best defense against ignorant idiots is to walk away from them. Do not argue with them because to do so they will give them the idea that their ideas have any merit.

First, it should be noted that the rites and rituals of the Catholic Church are derived of Judaism, not paganism. Unless these Protestants are anti-Semitic, they should not have a problem with that.

With that said, there is little in the symbolism of Christianity, Protestant or Catholic, that cannot be traced to previous pagan symbols or practices in some fashion. The Cross that Protestant's have in their "churches" is a pagan symbol, for example.

But, among people with more than an IQ of 25, we know the basic principle of science and assessment: "Co-relation DOES NOT EQUAL causation!"

These are the same type of people who think that "Santa" in "Santa Claus" means "Satan" when you rearrange the letters. "Santa" is an Italian word meaning "saint". It is a co-relation that "Santa" can be rearranged to spell "Satan", but that means NOTHING. There is no causal relationship in this any more that there is a causal relationship in rearranging the letters in the word "God" to spell "dog". God is not a dog, and Santa is not Satan.

It is strange, I never hear these wackos accusing the city of Santa Clara, California of being demonic :)  These sorts of lunatic observations need to be ignored and instead pray for these poor deluded souls.

In like manner the fact that pagans before the time of Christ had similar symbols or ideas does not mean that Christianity derived from them.

God is the creator of all things. Like an artist all of what is created has the fingerprint of that artist. Since God created the universe we can see his fingerprint on all things.

Part of that fingerprint, according to the Bible, is that the knowledge of God is written on everyone's heart. All human beings regardless of religion or culture have a basic knowledge of God written in their hearts. It is genetic, as it were.

Those who did not have the benefit of God revealing themselves to us as did the Jews and Christians still had a knowledge of God but did not know the details. We can only know God when God reveals Himself to us.

Without the Revelation given to the Jews and later to the Christians all the ancient pagans could do is to try to understand God as best as they could. Without the light of Revelation, they developed very flawed and erroneous understandings, but they did the best they could given the little that they knew.

As the old saying goes, "even a broken clock gives the right time twice a day." Although the pagans got it wrong overall, they did stumble on a few concepts that were correct. The need for sacrifice, for example, is a correct notion. The pagans got it wrong in terms of the kind of sacrifice and what was to be sacrificed, but the concept of sacrifice was correct. If fact without that concept we would all be doomed since it was the sacrifice of Jesus and his Resurrection that gives us the opportunity for eternal life.

The bottomline in these sorts of arguments, however, is: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes."

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary