Thursday, August 6, 2009

April 12 - Council of Nicaea

It's Easter Sunday so I did a Google search and found out about the Council of Nicaea. It happened in the year 325AD when Constantine the Emperor of Rome was unhappy with the unrest between the pagans and the Roman Catholic Church and he sought a compromise between them.

Of the council the RCC says this -

"The year was 325 A.D. according to the Roman calendar. A council was convened by order of Constantine, the Roman emperor. He had been a leader in the cult known as Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) and now wanted to unite the Christian sects in the empire under his existing church; the Universal Church of Rome. Many changes to the religion of Christianity were about to take place at that council, including:

Formulation for wording concerning the Trinity based on Anthanias
Changing Verses of Bible
Eliminating certain verses and books from the Bible
Declaring Arian's "unitarian" (belief in the Unity of God) as heresy
Changing the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday
Changing the date of Jesus' birthday to December 25th
Introduction of Easter (pagan worship called "Feast of Ishtar")
Church of Roman "officially" became the "Universal Church of the Holy Roman Empire" (the word 'Catholic' means 'universal')

The Roman Catholic Church took on a new face."

This means that the RCC hijacked an existing pagan feast and turned it into a religious event instead. I guess at the time it helped to unify the pagans and Christians living in Rome and was probably a good thing. It also means that the next time anyone laments about Easter being more about chocolate than church you could say that it was originally about eating nice things so it's legitimate to go back to there.

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