“When Protestants today decry Catholics for what they claim is paganism… they actually sound exactly like ancient pagans who denounced the ancient Christians for the same thing.”
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Catholics venerate the bones and belongings of saints—and to many Protestants, that looks unmistakably pagan. But there’s a problem with that accusation: actual ancient pagans condemned Christians for doing it.
In this video, I look at the viral footage surrounding the relics of St. Agatha, the biblical distinction between veneration and worship, why sacrifice is essential to understanding Christian worship, and evidence for relic veneration from Scripture and the earliest centuries of Christianity.
From the bones of Elisha, to cloths touched by St. Paul, to St. Polycarp’s remains, to the Roman catacombs, the Christian treatment of relics is far older—and far more biblical—than many critics realize.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Are Catholics basically pagans?
00:47 – What Catholics are actually doing with relics
02:10 – What does “pagan” even mean?
03:22 – Why superficial similarities prove very little
03:57 – Elisha’s bones and miraculous relics
04:13 – Pagan sacrifice vs. biblical sacrifice
05:25 – What actually constitutes worship?
06:02 – Sacrifice changes the Catholic/Protestant debate
07:09 – The Eucharist and the veneration of saints
09:00 – The pagan emperor who condemned Christian relics
10:44 – Why corpses offended pagan religion
11:22 – Did the Apostles permit relic veneration?
11:58 – St. Paul’s miraculous cloths
12:48 – St. Polycarp and the earliest Christians
13:52 – The catacombs, altars, relics, and St. Jerome
