Is it for good or for evil then that those who worshiped Mithra then became worshipers of God, through His Son Jesus Christ, through the actions of the Holy Spirit?
Regardless of the apostasy protestants accuse Catholics of committing, Catholics are Christians who worship the one true God. We do not pretend to worship God while worshiping someone or something else. We do not pretend it is Jesus to whom we owe our allegiance when in reality it is really someone or something else. We do not pretend that it is Jesus we follow when all the while following some secret pagan god.
There are no secret meetings or words or codes that only Catholics know. Our Mass is open to anyone who wishes to attend and though a non Catholic may not understand all that happens there, the information is freely and readily available for any who wish to find it and learn it.
That is the crux of my argument with protestants here, who disparage Catholicism as if it is a totally foreign cult and not a Christian religion. I have no problem with disagreements over doctrine, over theology or over practices. We all love God and that is enough for me, though not enough for others.
Just as I am not perfect in my understanding of all Scripture has to say, neither are they but I do not engage in character assassination or attacks because of it. I am said that anyone here does.
You know there was a lot of discussion about Judaizers and the Way. Would the old be kept or left behind for the new?
God uses who and what He will to draw men to Himself.
And the truth is, as these threads show again and again, that we hold the Incarnation and the (jargon alert!) "work of Christ" made a bigger difference, a more cosmic difference, and a more profound difference in the nature of Man than they hold.
So it COULD be that if they are right, we are some kind of out there.
To me it is entirely reasonable for it to take centuries for the full meaning of the Incarnation to be understood. And it is entirely reasonable that the Church, as it grew, would need to develop structures and refinements. And, from the first time "it seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us," was uttered by saved sinners right up to today it is reasonable for the Church to have so much confidence in God's protection that these changes could be understood as 'seeming good to the Holy Spirit.'
IN my personal story it was, superficially, the moral and intellectual chaos in the Episcopal Church that opened me to the idea of Tiber-swimming. But more intimately, it was the consequence of a desire to sink more and more deeply into the love and grace of which the Calvinists spoke that led me to something more (in my view), more complete than Calvinism.
handing yourself over to Jesus can lead to entirely unexpected places, including a pew in a chapel where our Lord's body is presented for adoration.