"In the process of salvation by co-operating with grace through faith in Jesus Christ, as sustained

"In the process of salvation by co-operating with grace through faith in Jesus Christ, as sustained by the sacraments and by works of love, because faith without works is dead."

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Mary & The Saints Are Pagan!

 


1. Why People Say “Mary and the Saints Are Pagan”

Critics across the centuries have claimed that Catholic devotion to Mary and the saints is really just rebranded paganism:

  • Alexander Hislop, in The Two Babylons (1853), argued that the Catholic Church is a continuation of ancient Babylonian religion, and that Catholic devotions (to Mary, saints, feasts, etc.) are “baptized” versions of pagan cults. Wikipedia

  • Modern Evangelical and fundamentalist critics often repeat this, claiming Catholic saints simply replaced pagan gods, pointing to things like patron saints, feast days, and processions as proof. triablogue.blogspot.com+1

  • Some neo-pagan and occult circles openly say, “The old gods never went away; they were canonized as saints,” suggesting that when Christianity spread, it just changed the names on local deities and shrines. Reddit+1

The popular story goes like this:

Pagan temples became churches, gods became saints, goddesses became Mary, and people kept doing the same thing with different labels.

There’s a reason this narrative is so persistent: there are superficial similarities. But similarity isn’t the same as identity, and good history is more careful than “it looks alike, so it must be the same.”

2. What the Catholic Church Actually Teaches About Mary and the Saints

a. Worship vs. Veneration: Latria, Dulia, and Hyperdulia

Catholic theology explicitly distinguishes between:

  • Latria – worship/adoration due to God alone.

  • Dulia – honor/veneration given to the saints.

  • Hyperdulia – a unique, higher veneration given to Mary because of her role as Mother of God, but still infinitely below worship of God.

As Catholic Answers summarizes it:

“Catholics do not worship anyone but God… they adore God but honor his saints.” Catholic Answers

The Catechism teaches:

  • On the intercession of the saints:

    “Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness… They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us.” (CCC 956) catholiccrossreference.online

  • On devotion to Mary:

    “The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship. The Church rightly honors ‘the Blessed Virgin with special devotion.’” (CCC 971) Vatican

Notice:

  • Mary and the saints are honored, loved, and asked for prayers.

  • God alone is worshiped as Creator, Redeemer, and Lord.

If a Catholic is literally treating Mary or a saint as a rival deity, the Church would say that’s abuse of devotion, not what Catholic doctrine teaches.

3. Is Praying to Saints “Pagan”?

The language is part of the confusion. When Catholics say “pray to Saint X,” we don’t mean “treat Saint X as God.” We mean:

“Ask Saint X to pray for you.”

It’s intercession, not adoration — like asking a holy friend to pray on your behalf, except that your friend now sees God face-to-face.

A modern Catholic explanation puts it this way:

“Catholics do not worship saints… when Catholics pray to saints, we are asking for their prayers and intercession on our behalf, just as you might ask a friend to pray for you.” Saint Paul Seminary

Biblical groundwork:

  • The saints in heaven are alive in Christ, not dead and gone (Matthew 22:31–32).

  • Scripture shows heavenly beings presenting our prayers to God (Revelation 5:8; 8:3–4).

  • The Church on earth and in heaven is one family: the “communion of saints” (Hebrews 12:1, 22–24).

So from a Catholic standpoint:

  • Praying to saints = asking their intercession.

  • Worshiping God = offering sacrifice, adoration, and total surrender to Him alone.

If someone insists that any communication with saints is automatically pagan, they’ve already assumed a Protestant framework the Bible itself doesn’t require.

4. “Are Saints Just Renamed Pagan Gods?”

This is a stronger claim: not just “this looks pagan,” but “these are pagan gods in disguise.”

Hislop’s The Two Babylons is the classic source here. He tries to link Catholic practices to ancient Babylonian worship, often by collecting visual or symbolic parallels (keys, thrones, mother-and-child imagery, etc.) and declaring: “See? Same religion.” Wikipedia+1

The problem is that modern historians — including many Protestants — have found his method deeply flawed:

  • Hislop’s work relies on cherry-picked similarities, etymological guesswork, and outdated “Pan-Babylonian” theories now considered pseudohistory. Wikipedia+2thesacredfaith.co.uk+2

  • Neutral and Catholic scholars alike point out that you can’t simply equate two practices or figures across religions because of overlapping traits (a mother figure, a hero with a feast day, a shrine, etc.).

Serious historians who study the cult of the saints — like Peter Brown — explain it as an organic Christian development, growing out of belief in the Resurrection, the honor given to martyrs, and the experience of the Church as one Body across life and death. University of Chicago Press+2Internet Archive+2

Even secular scholarship on “Christianization of saints and feasts” notes that while there can be continuity of place and custom, you cannot simply equate pagan gods with saints or say it’s the “same cult” under new names. Wikipedia

In other words:

  • Yes, Christians sometimes built churches on former pagan sites.

  • Yes, people often redirected old habits (processions, local festivals) toward new Christian content.

  • No, that does not mean the Church secretly kept the old gods and slapped Christian labels on them.

Historically:

  • Most major saints are actual people (martyrs, monks, bishops, missionaries) with documented lives, not mythic sky-gods. alternatehistory.com

  • Their cults arose from martyrdom, miracles, and local Christian devotion — not from priests trying to smuggle Jupiter or Ishtar through the back door.

5. The “Pagan Look”: Statues, Candles, Processions and the Human Heart

It’s true that Catholic devotion can look “pagan” to some:

  • Statues and icons

  • Candles, incense, flowers

  • Processions, pilgrimages, shrines

  • Patron saints over places, causes, professions

Critics say: “That’s exactly how pagans treated their gods — you’ve just swapped Zeus for Saint Joseph.”

But the Church’s own theology draws a sharp interior line:

  • Statues and images are not gods; they are reminders of real persons and real mysteries, like family photos or memorials, echoing the incarnational principle that God works through the visible.

  • Exterior forms are human — nearly every religion uses material signs — but the object and intention of devotion are what matter.

Catholic Answers puts it bluntly in one of its articles responding to the “pagan origin” charge:

A superficial similarity of practice does not prove identity of belief. To argue otherwise is to confuse external form with internal meaning. Catholic Answers+1

6. A Deeper Catholic View: The Communion of Saints

The Catholic Church sees Mary and the saints not as competitors to God, but as members of the Body of Christ, fully alive in Him:

  • The Church in heaven, on earth, and in purgatory is one family (the “communion of saints” in the Creed).

  • The saints’ glory is God’s glory reflected in human lives — like stained glass lit by the same sun.

  • Honoring saints is ultimately honoring what God’s grace has accomplished in them.

Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium describes it this way:

“So it is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted… rather it is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods.” (LG 49–51) Vatican

That’s the opposite of pagan polytheism, where gods compete for worship.
In Catholicism, every saint only directs you more deeply to Christ.

7. My Perspective: Paganism as a Twisted Echo, Not the Source

Here’s how I personally see it, tying into how I’ve written in my other posts:

When I hear people say, “Mary is just a rebranded fertility goddess,” or “Saints are just renamed pagan gods,” I don’t just think, That’s historically sloppy. I also think they’re putting the story backwards.

From a Catholic lens, the human religious impulse is ancient and universal:

  • Before Christianity, religion was everywhere — temples, sacrifices, household gods, public festivals.

  • Pagans were not usually atheists; they were deeply religious, but their worship mixed genuine longing for God with serious confusion and error.

As I’ve put it elsewhere:

Pagans weren’t all malicious idolaters. Many were searching for the divine — but without revelation, their worship got distorted. In that sense, pagan rituals were like fractured mirrors: they reflected genuine religious intuition, but the image was twisted.

So when I see similarities between saints and old gods, I don’t think:

“Catholics stole from paganism.”

I’m more inclined to think:

“Paganism fumbled and misinterpreted truths that Christianity would later fulfill.”

In other words:

  • The idea of holy men and women close to the divine

  • The instinct to ask powerful heavenly figures for protection

  • The urge to mark places and times as sacred

These aren’t inherently pagan — they’re human. Pagans, without the full light of Christ, misdirected that instinct toward false gods of their own making. Christianity, in the fullness of revelation, redirects that instinct to its proper goal:

  • One God in three Persons

  • One Mediator who is true God and true man (Christ)

  • One Church that is His Body

  • Saints who are not gods, but redeemed creatures sharing in His life and interceding through Him

So for me, the similarities don’t prove that Mary and the saints are “pagan.” They confirm that human beings everywhere have always reached for the same realities — communion, mediation, holiness — and only in Christ and His Church do those desires finally find their true home.

8. So, Are Mary and the Saints Pagan?

If by “pagan” you mean:

  • Polytheistic deities rivaling God?

  • Independent powers demanding sacrifice?

  • “Old gods” renamed to trick people?

Then no — that’s not what the Church teaches, and it’s not how serious history reads the cult of the saints.

If by “pagan” you mean:

  • “This looks like other religions in its use of material signs, special days, and holy figures”?

Then the answer is:
It looks similar because humans are humans. But what Catholics mean by Mary, the saints, prayer, and devotion is fundamentally different from polytheistic worship.

From a Catholic perspective:

We don’t downgrade God by honoring saints; we celebrate what His grace can do in human lives.
And we don’t replace Christ with them; we ask them to bring us closer to Him.

9. Key Sources & Further Reading



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