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First, I don't quote from anti-catholic sites to explain Catholic teaching and practice. If you looked back over my posts where Catholicism is concerned I usually quote from either the Scriptures or The Catholic Encyclopedia or the Catholic Catechism, in that order.

Newman's statements are well known among most Catholics and I'm surprised if you do not but if you choose you can find Newman's “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” online and locate “8. Application of the Third Note: its Assimilative Power”, pg. 355, wherein he states,

“Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments {372} and appendages of demon-worship to an evangelical use, and feeling also that these usages had originally come from primitive revelations and from the instinct of nature, though they had been corrupted; and that they must invent what they needed, if they did not use what they found; and that they were moreover possessed of the very archetypes, of which paganism attempted the shadows; the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of the educated class.”

This frank conclusion he makes because he sees it not as failure of the Catholic Church in word or deed but as virtue and strength.

You will notice in the last sentence of the above quote from Newman he doesn't speak of simply using the same terms as paganism uses but of adoption, imitation, sanction, of customs and rites of the populace as well as the “philosophy of the educated class”.

Now what do you suppose those philosophies, rites and customs were?

“The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holy days and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.”

“Sanctified” or made holy. Too bad the Christians of Ephesus didn't know that when they burned their expensive books on magic. (Acts 19:18-20)