As I was doing research for this blog post, it was not difficult to find “scholarly” articles written by hostile, modern, liberal professors and academics of antiquity, lamenting the loss of paganism while uttering their true thoughts about Christianity in between their well-written, edited, published lines. 

They suffered in their writings over the disorganization of paganism, then questioned why the powerful pagan elites of the Roman empire could not muster the same resilience and enforcement as the zealous Christians. I have two words for them = Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Holy Spirit did not simply whoosh down on the apostles, but then up and left after everyone started speaking in tongues. Unfortunately for these liberal academic scholars who most likely refuse to read the Bible, the Holy Spirit is our gift from Jesus Christ and is the lifeblood of our Church ever since that precious day called Pentecost. Pray for them.

Also, pseudo-neo-pagan liberal feelings may get offended by this, but the pagans of antiquity lost because their pagan gods were dead (as they still are today, and no, nature is not your god.) The Christian God is the only living God. Yes, we have to take feelings and offenses into consideration these days in a country that embraces “freedom of religion,” as one academic huffed, was a product of (some fantasy of) sophisticated liberal paganism. They will also tell you all of our Christian holidays are pagan as well. They may have a vague point, but as we all know, it's primarily pagan babbling.

Did you know that in ancient Rome, the Romans had about 2-3 holidays a week?! All of this based around their pagan belief system. Granted they didn’t have scheduled vacation time, but they still amassed a massive empire while celebrating their menagerie of gods a few times a week. If we were genuinely pagan, we would have much more downtime to spend on idolatry in our houses, milling about senseless festivals, and participating in routine slaughter of animals at the pagan temples. Those days are over. Yet, it was the Roman Christians who supplanted those holidays and gave them back to us on the Christian calendar. Yes, Rome was once a pagan empire. Still, as it routinely became more Christian, with a lack of cohesiveness as a carryover from pagan ways (some pagans even worshipped Jesus as one of their gods!), replacing the previous Roman festivals with Christian holidays made sense. We can thank the Mother Church for the little time we do get off today in an atheist, secular society. 

Now, our national holidays, besides the minimal Christian ones we observe, are based around nationalism, with routine fireworks and BBQ. The average secular holiday in America truly has lost purpose and meaning. Even medieval peasants were given about ⅓ of the year off for various Christian holidays, weddings, entertainment, and strict observance of Sunday sabbath day. 
We work more today than medieval Christian peasants. 
Anyway, back to Rome! Emperor Constantine’s son Constantinus was a zealous Christian who became much more aggressive about closing temples than his Dad, while managing a tumultuous churn in the Empire reeling from political warfare, attacking barbarians, and a massive change in religion. 
Yet, when Julian died, Christianity roared again like a lion, with modern liberal scholars still scratching their heads to this day about why, after a pro-pagan Emperor worked to restore it. Forgive me, Lord, but I laugh at this. 

In comes our guy, Emperor Theodosius. Not only did he ban homosexuality, but he revived the laws of Constantinus by closing all the pagan temples, banned animal sacrifices by the death penalty, and banned pagan worship at home. “Yikes” said the pagans! 

Certainly not inexperienced with the ways of Rome, he also decreed that any imperial officials ignoring these laws would be severely punished. I don’t even want to imagine what that might mean in late antiquity Empire. To make matters even more uncomfortable for the disorganized pagans, a proto-crusade of Roman military and Christian monks toured the Empire, attacking pagan temples and defacing and demolishing pagan gods. The vestal virgins in the temples were disbanded, and Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Roman Senate house, despite the desperate requests from wealthy Pagan Senators. Back then, lobbying was useless.Some modern scholars want to blame St. Ambrose for this, yet St. Ambrose was not exactly walking in the court of Emperor Theodosius every day. As we read in the last blog post, he also denied Theodosius the Holy Eucharist until he sufficiently repented the Massacre of Thessolonica.

The great Emperor Theodosius died in 395 AD, and was succeeded by his two sons, one running the East and the other the West. However, the boys were young, highly impressionable, and had to manage the human deficiencies that came with growing up fast as Roman Emperors, while dealing with a massive Goth intrusion in Rome. Yet, the Empire still managed to run, and under Theodosius’s son, Emperor Arcadius, the last of the pagan temples were ordered closed. Next week, I will finally discuss the Sack of Rome and its effects on the Empire.