I didn't write the article..I'm still learning about the Catholic church...But tell me...Is the author correct when he says 'Lent' was initially a Pagan practice???
"..I'm still learning about the Catholic church..."
Why don't you just use porn or some such reading material. It has the same usefulness learning about Catholicism as this article.
Yeah, I'm blunt to a fault. That's my cross.
I have no idea, nor do I care, since the value of having a somber penitential season of fasting and prayer leading up to the commemoration of the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord seems quite obvious. Pagan things are bad only insofar as they contradict the teachings of the faith, and if they don't, they can be "baptized", like Christmas trees, to serve the inculturation and growth of the Faith. I think Lent is a terrific reminder of our fallenness and need for Christ's redemption. The fasting and somberness appeals and teaches our weak human senses. When I was a Protestant, there was not nearly an emphasis on our sinfulness. The mainstream Protestant churches have pretty much eliminated the concept of individual sin.
Why do you ask us if the author is correct when you obviously take his words as "Gospel" already.
Very nearly everything you have learned is wrong.
Is the author correct when he says 'Lent' was initially a Pagan practice???
NO. Are you aware that most traditional Protestant denominations observe Lent? Or does your hatred only extend to Catholics?
That sounds like a good research project for you to undertake. I'd be interested in your findings, if they came from a better source than this article.
I've always thought that in regions of the earth w where things stop growing in, say, September it would be not so much good as almost inevitable that eating would tend to get restricted until the sheep lambed and some early crops came in.
And of course the English word "Lent" comes from an older word meaning "Spring" and related to length (The days get longer in the Spring! -- More time in the LIGHT!)
I also imagine there were many places where those most civilized food-stuffs, bread and wine, which although civilized yet seem so almost elemental, are used in religious meals.
And there are a number of stories where a God-hero dies and comes back to life, or so I'm told.
So there are two questions: (1)Are there "pagan" pre-cursors to Lent and (2) So what?
Too bad these good questions come up in a thread about an article which makes the laughably ignorant assertion that Catholics think they can buy their way out of hell.