Apparently, any argument that takes more than a day indicates desperation, or so I am told. Regardless, expunging fictional and/or pagan deities from the canon is not exactly evidence it contained none. Their presence in CANON is likewise not a "popular corruption of official doctrine," it IS official doctrine. Or does the laity, rather than the Bishop of Rome, set canon now?


Are they distinct, or not? If not, we are only discussing the "degree" of syncretism, not its reality.


Not really; as I said, I deliberately skipped other, more tenuous examples, because I did not want to be forced to defend questionable links.


About 2 or 3, mainly because, as I said, I did not want to rely on anything that was not pretty firm and unbiased. That meant skipping all the "Catholicism is the devil" and "Christianity is perverted gnosticism" conspiracy sites and examples that seemed mostly conjecture.


Obviously it is related to iconoclasms role in the Great Schism by the existence of icons (and relics) associated with saints that were, in some cases, originally pagan deities. The official stance is all well and good, but the need to expunge the official list of some saints tells us 1) the official stance has been far from perfectly observed and 2) deviations from it are far from limited to "popular custom."

I spent most of the last day asleep, to the extent THAT has any relevance, clearly a better use of my time than defending myself rather than my arguments.


No, but some seem to live to berate me just for the sake of doing it; ironically, I am the one worried about being uncivil.

Yes, I realize iconoclasm was a settled matter well before the formal Great Schism of 1054; I have never contended otherwise. HOWEVER, iconoclasm was one of the jurisdictional divisions between East and West culminating in the Great Schism, deepening and widening a breach that existed both before and after iconoclasm. I brought up Photius simply because the Catholic Encyclopedia states iconoclasm "caused the last of the many breaches with Rome that prepared the way for" THAT schism; if you disagree, take it up with the reference quoted rather than the person quoting.


How is it "extraneous"? The East and Western churches disagreed over iconoclasm to the point of the emperor threatening to destroy icons in Rome and imprison the Pope, hardly the trivial matter you declare it. That was exactly the sort of disagreement over papal vs. imperial doctrinal jurisdiction critical to the Great Schism. Yes, that particular instance of jurisdictional conflict was long ended before the Photian dispute, just as Photius was dead well over a century before the formal Great Schism, but calling them all independent of each other is a rather fragmented view of history. That is like saying, "the Stamp Act was repealed a full decade before the American Revolution, and thus had no effect on it."

The jurisdictional dispute was well underway before iconoclasm, but iconoclasm continued and exacerbated it in a doctrine the Eastern church at times violently embraced but consistently rejected by the Western (with the single exception of Charlemagnes misinformed treatise, which the Pope rejected anyway.) Iconoclasm ultimately ended in the East as well, but that did not reverse the significant damage to the already weakened unity between East and West.

None of that is novel or original in my arguments, and the documented record supports all of it. The Catholic Encyclopedia stated the connection with Photius a century ago; what makes it so outlandish now? If the only answer is "the fact Joel quoted it," it is a very poor one.

EDIT: Oh, and you might want to let Tom know "Horus slaying Set" is NOT "a prototype for St. George and the Dragon;" while aware of that one as well, I stopped at Perseus to avoid fighting on too many fronts at once.