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Example research essay topic: God The Father Catholic Doctrine - 2,293 words

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The aim of the paper is to contrast the old established pagan theory and practice with what may be called the perfect training of a Catholicism. The paper studies some of the Catholic traditions and rituals that were influenced by paganism. Outline Introduction Discussion History of Catholic Church Influence of paganism on Catholic education Influence of paganism on Catholic beliefs Influence of paganism on rituals Influence of paganism on Catholic concepts Conclusion Effects of Paganism on the Beliefs and Rituals of Catholicism Catholicism grew within the ancient pagan world, is neo-Platonist and, subsequent to the Middle Ages, Aristotelian in its presuppositions. Yet it is possible to conceive of a Catholicism which had largely left behind any explicit utilization of these pagan philosophies. The first Christians held services in private homes or house churches. The oldest Christian building known to be used exclusively for religious functions seems to be a house remodeled extensively for such purposes around ad 235 in Dura Europe, an ancient city on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west of Baghdad.

When public freedom arrived with the Emperor Constantine, Christians built their own churches or restructured former pagan temples for their worship. When Constantine entered Rome in 312 as the victorious ruler of the Roman Empire in the West, he immediately began to favor the Christian Church, which had only just emerged from very severe persecution. It is generally agreed that he was taking a considerable risk. In contrast with the East, where whole provinces were already largely Christian -- but which Constantine was not to conquer until 324 -- Christianity in the Latin West, except in North Africa, was the religion of a small minority. During the fourth century the conversion of the Roman aristocracy and of the middle classes of the towns advanced greatly but it was by no means complete by 400. The first effective and general prohibition of all pagan worship by the Roman State only came in 391 - 92; it inspired the last serious attempt by the Roman aristocracy to support a pro-pagan pretender to the Empire.

It required repeated and increasingly severe legislation to drive paganism in the towns underground. It took centuries more before Christianity really began to penetrate the vast mass of the population of Western Europe, the peasants, slaves who provided food for their masters, Roman or barbarian, and for the shrunken and decaying cities. The advantages possessed by Catholic Christianity, together with the support of the Roman State, the backing of the poor, and the corresponding disunity of paganism, are sufficient to explain the Church's virtually complete triumph by 400 in the sphere of government and law, among the literate ruling classes and in the towns, where it took over responsibility for the impoverished middle class and proletariat. In the fifth sixth centuries the Catholic Church was also confronted with the barbarian tribes which gradually occupied all Western Europe. The external mission to pagans outside the old boundaries of the Roman Empire only developed from the seventh century onward. Paganism was not an imaginary foe.

There is archaeological evidence for a pagan revival in the fourth century, even under the orthodox Emperor Theodosius. In the Alpine diocese of Trent in 397 missionaries who tried to prohibit their converts taking part in the traditional rites by which the fields were blessed and their fertility assured, were murdered. In general, resistance was passive but very effective. During the stage of establishment of Catholic Church, difficulties were greatly increased by the barbarian invasions of the fifth century. The invaders were almost all pagans. When they became Christians they did not adopt Catholicism but the Arian heresy.

Aryanism had constituted the main challenge to the Catholic Church in the fourth century. The issue it raised was of vital concern to every Christian. Was Christ identical with the Supreme God? If he was not, how could his Incarnation have saved mankind?

How could he be, as Christians believed, the central pivot in the universe and the turning point of history? But if Christ was the Supreme God how could one avoid polytheism, by worshiping not only God the Father but the Son (and also the Holy Spirit)? Arius argued that Christ and the Holy Spirit were secondary gods, mediating between God the Father and the world. In reply, the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity in Unity was worked out. The distinction between the Three Persons of the Trinity was necessary philosophically but it was less important, to most Christians, than the affirmation that Christ was equal to God the Father that the Supreme God had truly become flesh and that men were saved by his Passion. Catholics detested Aryanism because they saw it as the betrayal of the central truth of Christianity, the truth by which they lived.

In 381 the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity was officially accepted within the Roman Empire. But, before or shortly after this time, the Visigoths were converted to Arian Christianity: they had been approached by missionaries of their own race, armed with a Bible in their own tongue. Visigothic missionaries and influence gradually converted the other barbarian tribes invading the Empire to Aryanism also. Hence the religious opposition, which often took a violent form, between the Catholic leaders of the native population of Western Europe and North Africa and the invading Arian barbarians. The turning point only came about 500 with the conversion of the Franks from paganism to Catholicism.

After the overthrow of the Arian Ostrogoths and Vandals by the Catholic Byzantine (East Roman) Emperor Justinian the Arian Visigoths also became Catholics and Catholic Church was influenced by Arian culture. By 600 the Catholic Church had emerged from the barbarian crisis and had attained an extraordinarily powerful position in Western Europe. The Church was a great landowner, it included among its members the ruling classes, and it had converted and was actively supported by all the barbarian successors of Rome, except for the Arian Lombards and pagan Anglo-Saxons who were definitely converted by 680. The barbarian kings sought to help Church Councils to stamp out any form of deviation or dissent, receiving, in return, the Church's consecration of their troubled rule. For almost two centuries the Church in the West had not been faced with any intellectual opposition, and it had never been disturbed by inner divisions, heretical or schismatic movements comparable to those that plagued the Byzantine East and North Africa. Many pagans were as convinced as most Catholics that the way to grace or wisdom was through punishing -- or at least thoroughly disciplining -- the body, but there did not exist in paganism the organized communities of monks and nuns which arose among Christians in Egypt and spread with great rapidity to Western Europe.

Nor were pagan rites linked to clear moral teaching such as existed in the Catholic Church. Paganism also lacked the Church's unity, with its hierarchy of bishops, meeting, when necessary, in provincial or General Councils to enforce dogmatic agreement or discipline on the recalcitrant. Catholicism ultimately triumphed all along the line; but during the long contest between paganism and Christianity, Catholicism had gradually assimilated the methods and many of the ideas of pagan Greek and Roman rhetoric and philosophy. Thus it was that a substantial heritage of antiquity passed both to Byzantium and to medieval Europe in the West. But the antinomy between pagan culture and Christianity went much deeper, and clearly to understand it we must consider the character of education, and especially of higher education, during the later empire.

In all essentials it was still the system which had been evolved in the fourth century B. C. in Athens and which had spread all over the Mediterranean world during the Hellenistic age. It consisted of three stages which corresponded very roughly with the division with which we are still familiar -- elementary school, middle or high school, and finally college training.

At the outset one is confronted with a question to which there is no certain answer. It is probable that during the first and second centuries of our era the townsmen, or at least the great majority of them, could read and write; but, on the other hand, it seems unlikely that more than a small minority of the rural population was literate even in the age of Antoninus. From the third century on, however, there was a decline in this as in so many other respects, and, as we shall see, those who were charged with the duty of preparing Catholic converts for baptism were well aware that a certain percentage of their hearers would have to acquire the chief articles of the faith by oral repetition. Early in the sixth century one preacher not only distinguishes between those members of his congregation who can and those who cannot, read the Scriptures for themselves but tells us that he knows traders and shopkeepers who have to hire clerks to do their correspondence and keep their books for them. But though there is, then, a good deal of uncertainty about the number of those who at any given period had had an elementary schooling. There is no doubt whatever that higher education was confined to a minority of those who, in an economic sense, were privileged.

There is a revealing passage in Eusebius, in which it is related how a promising youth, who later studied theology and finally died a martyr, had previously had a complete training in the pagan schools. The established system of education was based on the study of Greek and Latin literature, and it is hard to see what alternative, at least for the Catholic laity, could have been substituted. The leaders of the Church were for the most part practical men who accepted what they could not change but warned against its dangers in varying degrees. So the Christian small boy in the fourth century was, like his gentile fellows, copying out the names of the pagan gods and learning to read from the same old authors. Tertullian is typical of those who, after conversion, were most hostile to the liberal arts to which they owed the formation and discipline of their own minds. After inveighing against the dramatic shows, especially the indecent Atellane farces, he adds the comment that, if comedies and tragedies dealt with licentious and bloody passions and crimes, they should not even be read.

It was needful for the business of daily life and even for learning the truths of Christianity; and once he even admits that there might be some good in pagan philosophy and that ignorance can be a greater danger than knowledge. Unqualified condemnation, without even the concessions made by Tertullian, are not wanting. A cynic might, however, find significance in the fact that an Epiphanius or a Lucifer of Calais, whose opinions are most violent, were both, stylistically considered, very indifferent writers, and as thinkers not even in the second rank. What became the normal and, given the changing conditions of the times, the reasonable approach to the problem amounted to an acceptance of the pagan educational system, coupled with the warning that it was to be merely a means to an end and should not be unduly prolonged. This is the position of Basil the Great in his short address to young men on reading the classics. Although pagan literature is inferior to the Scriptures, it is not without value.

Some of its poets and prose-writers are worthy of study, namely, those who teach good principles of conduct or who illustrate what they are saying with examples of good men in the past. Indeed, in these authors many instances are recorded of pagans whose patience or other virtues conformed to the precepts of the Gospels; and some of their philosophers have rightly taught that the human soul is far more precious than the body. Thus the young Catholic can derive profit from this non-Christian source, provided that he is ever on his guard against what is morally base. Earlier Justin Martyr had allowed some merit to the noblest of the pagan thinkers -- Heraclitus, Musonius Rufus, and the Platonic Socrates. Basil's address, which has often been praised, is really a very slight performance. It omits to point out that pagan culture alone at that date could train the mind and inculcate breadth of view and depth of perception.

One hopes that the more discerning of his young hearers derived inspiration rather from the master himself, a pattern of the best Catholic pastor who was also steeped in the wisdom of the pagans. The revival of Greek philosophy after the Dark Ages, and the development of scholasticism, produced distinct advances in educational methods. Under such doctors as Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus what was best in pagan culture and science was united in a consistent whole with the Catholic doctrine; by a system based on logical reasoning and accurate thought a synthesis was affected of the highest products of Greek thought and the teachings of Catholic theology. John Chrysostom also conceded the value of the pagan schools, although his adverse comments outnumber those that are more favorable. Nevertheless, his main point, in which he is merely repeating with a Catholic slant what the greatest of the pagan educators, from Plato and Isocrates to Quintilian, had stated emphatically long before, is that the moral purpose of education is more important than anything else. So he can, like Justin or Basil, quote historical examples from the pagan world that are worthy of emulation -- Diogenes, Aristides, and Archelaus, the teacher of Socrates.

The impact of Neo-Platonism on Catholicism was profound. Among the earlier works of Porphyry, the disciple and successor of Plotinus, was an elaborate polemic against the new religion, which called forth rebuttals from...


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Research essay sample on God The Father Catholic Doctrine

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