yeah, the churches from mexico south get some weird shit

and im not saying thats a catholic thing

but its a thing hispanics do

Yeah

certain prot churches in south america have that problem too

due to the geography, rome has had a difficult time maintaining order

weird versions of Pentecostalism

there is a kinda "folk catholicism" or whatever you want to call it

once you start talking about angels more than Christ, you're basically a pagan

yup

@HotGore its the same in africa too

God is the only one you worship

yeah that is true

i read a guy's experiences in the congo as a diplomat, in the 90s i think

the way they treat religion there is very odd. they will go to a catholic priest for healing one week and back to the witch doctor to curse some rival the next

to them God is just another pagan diety to go to for something they want

I imagine the early church was similar in rome and the rest of europe

stomping that out probably just takes patience and commitment

idk, i think for political issues that syncretization didnt seem to happen. you had gnostics but they were a flash in the pan.

also, paganism was on the down turn at the time of early christianity, most upper class people were becoming fedoras essentially

paganism wasnt taken seriously as a religion. it was something you gave lip service to for civic reasons, and the lower classes had their superstitions.

generally the countries enforced the faith and wiped out heretics, but there was never really strong, long term control in africa, asia or south america

yup, even the romans didnt believe it

you just did it because it was the culture

the Spaniards did a really good job stomping out paganism

they went to the new world shortly after removing islam from spain

@HotGore the upper classes especially were very philosophically inclined, the strongest beliefs at the time for very educated people was neoplatonism

nifty

well neoplatonism was 3rd century, probably at the time of christ it was just platonism

neoplatonism was sort of monotheistic

I read a lot of stoicism from the romans, the upper classes don't seem to have a strong faith, except in the idea of logos

gnosticism was a sort of bastardized neoplatonism with jewish and christian stuff mixed in

new age basically

there also seemed to be a lot of atheism in rome as well before christ

augustine was a neoplatonist before he converted to christianity

originally he was manichean

so those ideas had some influence on the church, not necessarily in a bad way

yeah very true

christians identified the Monad as YHVH

augustine showed that truth from non catholics can still be truth, from a theological standpoint

so it wasnt too difficult for neoplatonists to convert