Is Roman Catholicism Recycled Pagan Religion?

Today is Monday, November 25, 2024, and this is William Michael of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. Yesterday, I received an interesting email from a friend of the Academy who mentioned that he was discussing the Catholic faith—I think it was with his father. The accusation came up in the discussion that Roman Catholicism is a false religion because, when the Romans converted to Christianity (presumably under Constantine), all that happened was that the Roman religion was “Christianized,” and that was where Roman Catholicism came from. So, Roman Catholicism is just a cleaned-up, rebranded form of ancient pagan religion.

It’s interesting to hear this argument raised against the Catholic faith because it was one of the first arguments I ever heard from a professor when I was in college. It was the accusation that actually motivated me to leave off my studies as a pre-medical student and devote myself to classics and ancient history. What happened was that I was taking, as part of my general studies requirements as a pre-med student, a Western civilization course with a professor, Jack Cargill, at Rutgers University. Professor Cargill was someone I enjoyed learning from, but he was an atheist. He was an apostate Southern Baptist who became an atheist, and he took every chance he had to make jabs at Christianity. At Rutgers, I was a leading Christian student, and he knew that, so I took those jabs personally and would respond, even in class. At times, I at least tried to provide some sort of defense.

But one day, Dr. Cargill argued that Christianity is just recycled mythology. When he said that, I realized that I really didn’t have anything to say because I was completely ignorant of mythology. I thought to myself, “That’s actually a good argument if it can be true. But none of us modern Christians even know what he’s talking about. None of us study classics or ancient history. None of us know mythology—I mean, really know it. I don’t just mean having a Google education on the subject; I mean actually studying these things and getting to the real root of them.” I acknowledged that I couldn’t respond to that criticism of Christianity because I was ignorant of mythology.

So, my first course as an interested classics student (I was still a pre-med student at the time) was, in fact, a classical mythology course, which I took with Dr. Thomas Figueira at Rutgers, another one of my favorite professors. That’s how my interest in classical studies really began. It began with a challenge from an atheist professor that led me to study classical mythology. After that, I was convinced that was what I needed to study to really achieve my goals in life, which were much more concerned with understanding and articulating the Christian faith than making a living as a physician. So, I devoted myself to classics.

This question of the Romanization of Christianity—or the Christianization of pagan religion—is one that’s always been very interesting to me, and I think it’s very important. Because if it’s true—if it’s true that there was some sort of apostolic Christianity in the first few centuries and that this apostolic Christianity was corrupted by some kind of blending of the Apostolic Christian religion with Roman mythology, Roman religion, or pagan religion—that would indeed be a corruption of the Apostolic Christian faith. So, it’s not something that we should dismiss. It’s something that we should think about very carefully because if it were true, I think the argument would be justified to say that Roman Catholicism is a false religion and that we would need to restore the Christianity of the apostles—the Christianity which Christ Himself established in the world.

It’s a very important objection or argument raised against Christianity. But the real issue is whether or not it’s reasonable, whether or not it’s true, and whether or not it leads to the conclusion that those who make it would suggest, namely, that Catholicism—or Roman Catholicism—is a false religion. I’d like to take some time and share my response to that objection, which, as I said, I’ve been considering now for almost 30 years.

The fundamental argument, as I just mentioned, is that there was something that existed—some sort of primitive apostolic Christianity—and that when the Romans converted to Christianity, let’s say around 300 AD, around the time of Constantine’s conversion, Christianity was transformed. Constantine, if you don’t know, was the emperor of Rome who converted to Christianity, and Christianity was transformed from a persecuted religion to a religion that was mainstream in the Roman Empire. Obviously, there’s a great transition that took place; we can’t deny that. But the question is whether that transition, that transformation, actually changed the religion, or whether it simply fulfilled what was Christ’s intention for His Church.

Obviously, Christ knew that the religion He was establishing while on earth was going to be an international religion. It was going to become a one-world religion. He knew that. He said that. He told the apostles, “Go into the world and make disciples.” He told them to go to the ends of the earth. So, it was clearly understood from the very beginning. While the means probably couldn’t be imagined by the apostles, there was no confusion that the end—the expected or anticipated end—of the Christian religion was to bring the worship of God to the ends of the earth.

Christianity was not intended to be some Middle Eastern Jewish religion as Judaism was. It was intended to be an international religion, and Rome was the capital city of the world. So, it would make sense that if this religion was going to become global, it would have to reach the capital. It would have to reach the Eternal City. It would have to, in some way, become Romanized, that it might be internationalized. We would expect, thinking about the Great Commission to go into the world and make disciples, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, that it would have to go through Rome.

We can’t allow ourselves to think of Rome as we think of it today—as one of the great historic cities of the world. It was the city. I don’t even know if there is a city today that’s comparable to Rome in the ancient world. We might think of New York City, even though that’s not a political center. We might think of Washington, D.C., but they just don’t compare. Rome was the capital of the empire. We’re not talking about national states or democracies; we’re talking about a global empire. And Rome was the capital city—the mother city—of that empire. So, if the religion was going to be global, it would have to, at some point, go through Rome. Around 300 AD, it did, and it led to the conversion of the Roman Empire—not necessarily in a personal or individual way, but in a federal sense. Christianity was changed from a persecuted religion to one protected and even honored by the Roman government.

Now, when that Christian religion, which we can understand to have been primitive, came into that Roman culture, it entered into a culture where another religion had already existed. That religion was the ancient mythological religion of the Greeks and Romans.

In modern circles, ancient religion is, I would argue, unjustly criticized. It’s criticized as if men were raised as Christians, educated in Christian schools, and then chose to practice pagan religion instead. It’s rarely evaluated by people who consider the religious teachings and practices in their historical context. Jesus teaches us—and remember, He is the judge of the world—that “to whom much is given, much is expected, and to whom less is given, less is expected.” The Jewish people were given the Old Testament law. God revealed His nature and His will to the Jewish people in an exclusive, peculiar way. The Jews talk about this throughout the Scriptures: “What other nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us?” the Jews say in the Old Testament. It is written that God revealed His will to the Jewish people and to no one else. Isaiah, I think it was, said, “The nations are as a drop in the bucket to the Lord.” In other words, God’s love in the ancient world was for Israel. He was gracious to Israel for the sake of their fathers and revealed the truth to Israel.

And the truth largely stayed in Israel because it was a Jewish religion. Entrance into the religion required circumcision. The ceremonies of the religion could only be performed at the temple in Jerusalem. It was an exclusively Jewish religion. In order to worship God according to the Old Testament, a man needed to become a Jew. It was an isolated, local religion, really identified with a particular race, even though it wasn’t limited to that race.

When Christ came into the world, He brought in the new covenant and made it very clear that He came not to destroy the old Jewish religion but to bring it to its fulfillment. He says this explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount. In other words, the Jewish religion was incomplete; it was preparatory. In fact, I believe it was St. Paul who said that the law of Moses was a tutor that would lead us to Christ. A good image of the Old Testament is John the Baptist. He comes not as the Messiah, but as one who bears witness to the Messiah. Then, when the Messiah arrives, he says, “I must decrease, and He must increase.” John the Baptist gives us an illustration of the Old Covenant.

Then Christ comes into the world—the Messiah, the Master, the Savior, the Son of God, the Redeemer. And when Christ comes into the world, He comes to establish…well, I should say, He doesn’t come to reform the Jewish priesthood. He comes to bring it to its end. He Himself is the High Priest, capital H, capital P, and the true altar is not in Jerusalem but in Heaven itself. He comes to offer Himself as the Savior of the world and to enter into Heaven, into the presence of the Father as the Redeemer—as God and man miraculously and mysteriously united in one person to serve as our High Priest and Savior for all eternity. This eternal priesthood is not restricted in its geography to Jerusalem but is a heavenly priesthood that extends to the ends of the earth. This is Christianity: the fulfillment, the completion, of what was started in the Jewish religion.

But these pagan nations, referred to as the Gentiles in Scripture, had no benefit of revelation through their history. They were left largely to philosophy on the one hand and poetry on the other. They were left to philosophy and poetry. When we think of poetry, we should think of men like Homer and Hesiod. They were poets but were also called theologians in the history of philosophy. They were called theologians because, in their efforts to explain the causes of things in the world, to explain the origin of things, the reason for things, and the end of things, they used ideas of gods and goddesses, of spirits. In the history of philosophy, they’re referred to as the theologians—the ones who basically say, “This is the way it is because the gods did this or that.”

So mythology is really the work of the ancient poets, who gave spiritual explanations for everything that exists—for why things are the way they are. Stories that seek to explain the origins of things are called etiologies in history and philosophy. That was the work of the ancient poets. It’s why the poets, if you read Plato and Aristotle, are sometimes referred to as theologians. That’s what that means. Whereas when we come to the real, proper philosophers, we have a much more developed explanation of causes, which leads us to the metaphysics of Aristotle.

So, we’ve got philosophers and we’ve got poets in ancient history working honorably. This is where I disagree with modern Christians. These ancient philosophers and poets were working honorably to try and explain the causes of things, to try and discover the causes of why things are the way they are. Why do things work the way they do? How can we explain the origin of the world, the origin of human life, the end of human life? Why do good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people? Why do some nations seem to be blessed while others seem to be perpetually cursed and miserable? The effort to discover the causes of these things—and much more specific things like the causes of sickness and death—were the interests of the poets and the philosophers.

These are noble interests. These are virtuous interests. When we read Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey or Hesiod’s Works and Days, when we read the writings of the ancient poets like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Aeneid, and so on, we should never judge them by comparing them to Christianity. We should judge them as human efforts to give the best possible explanation for things as they could be understood by men—men who were diligently searching for answers.

Now, Aristotle explained that there were three different classes of men: beast-like pleasure seekers, more elegant honor seekers, and wise men who sought wisdom. When we talk about the poets and the philosophers, we must realize that they belong to the highest class of men, according to Aristotle—those who sought the truth through philosophical or, in more ancient times, poetical investigations. A quick side note: we can even see a parallel in Church history between this, where the patristics were more like the ancient poets and the scholastics more like the philosophers. But that’s another topic.

Anyway, when we look at these poets and philosophers, we’re not looking at corrupt perverts trying to lead people away from Christianity. We shouldn’t compare them to, for example, the Jews who made the golden calf during the Exodus from Egypt. If we look at the story of the golden calf, we see that the Jews were just crazy people. They were immoral, they were evil, they were ungrateful. They were led out of Egypt by the miraculous power of God through the instrumentality of Moses and Aaron. It was very clear what the cause of their deliverance was. Moses made it clear what the end of the Exodus would be—that they would enjoy the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hundreds of years earlier. The true religion was developing. The true religion was in the process of being manifested by God Himself, revealing His law and His system of true worship through Moses.

And yet, these crazy Jews, in the middle of the Exodus—while Moses was actually on the mountain with God—turned around, made a calf out of the gold from the jewelry they had plundered from Egypt, and said, “Behold, this is the God who brought you out of Egypt.” In spite of all that grace, all that revelation, they turned back to idolatry. That idolatry was irrational, immoral, and inexcusable. It was justifiably condemned as evil. But we shouldn’t compare Gentile religions, Gentile mythology, and Gentile philosophy to the making of the golden calf because it wasn’t of the same nature.

The pagan religions were efforts to understand what people experienced, to understand what they could see, what they had learned about what happens in history and the earth. It was an effort for pagans to understand. They were seeking the truth. St. Paul says they “groped after the truth as blind men in the dark,” trying to find their way through a world that, to human senses, doesn’t make sense.

The Jews had no such blindness, but they had these things revealed to them clearly from the beginning. From the very start of the Law of Moses, we have the revelation of the origin of the world—how God created heaven and earth and everything it contains, how the human condition came to be what it is today. We learn in the book of Job, one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, about the character of the devil and how he does evil on earth to test good men. So, we’ve got so many of these mysteries of human experience explained for us in the earliest books of the Bible. And we really don’t know to what extent any of the content of those books was known to pagan peoples. There are some traditions or theories that much of the ideas of Plato, even of Aristotle, were derived from Jewish writings, but that’s really just a matter of tradition—interesting, but not verifiable.

The Gentiles were left to human reason alone, and that’s really what distinguishes Jewish thought from Gentile thought. Gentile thought was philosophical, based on what could be known to man through human means. Jewish thought was based on divine revelation. Jewish thought was theological in the proper sense; Gentile thought was philosophical, and that’s the difference. So, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to lump all pre-Christian religion—this is another key distinction—pre-Christian religion from anti-Christian religion. We shouldn’t associate the religious teachings of the Greeks and Romans and ancient peoples with the worship of the golden calf by the Jews after their deliverance from Egypt. Those are two very different sets of circumstances.

If we start from ancient Greek and Roman writings and begin reading their religious teachings, understanding that these are their efforts to explain things—efforts to explain what is a very mysterious human experience—we should treat their works with gratitude and respect. They accomplished a great deal of positive good. They accomplished a great deal of positive good. And we should look at them not for what they got wrong, but appreciate them for what they got right—and they got a lot right.

If you’ve ever read Aristotle’s Ethics, which I recommend you study (I recommend you study it with us in the Academy, by the way), you’ll realize that Aristotle wrote that 350 years before Christ. You can get a sense of the height to which Gentile philosophy had reached by human means alone. And that’s really how we should look at classical literature, ancient literature. Think about it like a child. If I take my son out—let’s say I take him fishing—and he’s got no experience fishing. He’s never had any formal lessons in how to fish or do anything with fishing. And we go out to the lake one day, one of the first times he’s been out there. He understands the goal—the goal is to catch fish—but he really doesn’t understand that men have been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they’ve developed very clever methods, even gadgets, to make this very convenient.

And I’m not talking about fishing poles—I’m talking about things like fish finders that mount on boats, all kinds of high-tech equipment developed over time to help men catch fish. I bring my son to the lake, and I just tell him, “We want to catch some fish.” He says, “Well, what should we do, Dad?” I reply, “You can do whatever you want. We just have to accomplish the goal.” He asks, “What’s the goal?” I answer, “The goal is to catch some fish.”

So, he looks around, thinks about what he can do, and starts trying to figure out how he can catch some fish. After a while, he comes out of the woods with a little net he managed to weave together with some sticks, soft branches, and leaves. He runs to the edge of the water and starts trying to scoop up fish with this net he’s made. What would we say? Would we criticize the net and say, “That net is not as good as one I could buy at a sporting goods store today”? Or would I say, “Hey, that’s a pretty good idea! That was smart. You made yourself a little net. That’s pretty clever.”

You see how different it is if we focus on the positive achievement rather than on its inferiority to something that has advantages? And with Christianity, it’s got the advantage of divine revelation. So, give us a break! Then imagine if, after a while, the boy started to realize, “You know, I noticed that further out—further than I can reach with my net—there are bigger fish out there.” He tries to figure out, “How in the world can I get to those fish?” He thinks of an idea: to put a worm on a hook, tie it to a string, and throw it into the deeper water to try and catch some bigger fish with a piece of string and a hook. We’d say, “That’s a good idea. That’s a smart solution.” No, it’s not as good as a modern fishing pole, but that’s the idea, you know? He’s showing that he’s getting it. He understands what needs to be done and is being pretty clever with the methods he’s inventing to try and accomplish the goal.

We can look at that event and say, “You know what? You were very impressive in what you did because the things you thought to do are actually the things that have been proven to be most effective, developed by men who have been professional fishermen for centuries.” Then, I could present him with a modern fishing net from a sporting goods store and a new state-of-the-art fishing pole. I’d say, “What do you think of that? This is what has been developed by professional fishermen over the years. Why don’t you give that a try?” Think about that boy. Because he already understands the goal and has established, in a primitive way, the true means of pursuing that goal, he’ll actually understand these tools and make good use of them.

I could draw that out further, but I’ll stop there and just say that when we look at the ancient religions, we should see them as the work of children who were given a task, who had a mission to fulfill. They didn’t have all the information, all the tools, or all the resources they needed. So, what they accomplished needs to be judged relative to their disadvantages—kind of like having a school contest where kids are given toothpicks and glue and challenged to build a bridge. We don’t compare it to the Brooklyn Bridge. We’re looking to see if they’re able to discern the principles that would make for strong bridge-making, and that’s what leads us to judge one design as good and another as bad. We judge things relatively, and we should judge classical religion and philosophy relatively.

But, as I said, when we think about how much Aristotle had achieved in 350 BC, we really have to marvel at the power of human philosophy. The only thing we can do is marvel at it. When we consider that Aristotle established the sciences that he did 350 years before Christ, and then we look at ignorant, dopey, modern Christian culture—living 2,000 years into the Christian era with all kinds of benefits and graces, resources, publications, and institutions—we have to ask, “Is there a Christian man in the world today who understands true morality better than Aristotle, who lived 350 years before Christ, before the revelation of the Word of God?” Does any Christian have a grasp of morality like Aristotle?

What we should do when we speak about the ancients is marvel at them. We should marvel at their achievements—philosophically, religiously, and so on. But Christians don’t do that. Modern Christians are just reactionary critics. All they do is find fault with things and react negatively, imagining that this is some kind of godliness.

So, let’s consider the ancient Roman religion. Their religious teaching, as I said, was largely an effort to explain observable, perceptible realities with respect to their origins or to discern the causes of things. They were much more sensitive to nature—to the forces of nature—not just the great forces of nature but even minor ones, more so than we are today. This is because we largely act independently of nature. For example, we work whenever we want to because we have electricity. I can turn the lights on at two o’clock in the morning and put in two hours of work. I really don’t care what time of day it is because my work is not related to the time of day. I can turn on the air conditioning; it doesn’t matter that it’s 95 degrees outside. I can turn on the lights; it doesn’t matter that it’s 11 p.m. We’re much more independent of nature than men in the ancient world were.

We’re not conscious of things like the position of the sun in the sky, the position of the sun in the Zodiac, or the phases of the moon. We’re not attentive to the direction of the wind and other natural phenomena. But in the ancient world, even in more recent agricultural cultures, people were much more conscious of all these forces. I can even say, in America before the industrial age, back in the 1800s, this awareness was far more common. For me, personally, living on a farm after growing up in the suburbs, I’ve become much more conscious of the forces of nature than I ever was as a kid.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I couldn’t even understand how a well worked. When I thought of a well, I imagined a guy lowering a bucket down into a hole. I didn’t think that they could have a 250-foot deep pipe drilled into the ground through layers of stone to pump up pure water out of aquifers hundreds of feet beneath. I didn’t even know that world existed. As a suburban kid, I knew nothing about most of the animals in the country. I never saw a hawk or an eagle as a kid. I never saw deer, raccoons, or possums up close. I didn’t understand anything about nature until I moved out to the country. Then I started learning about the cycles of the seasons, gardens, planting, and harvesting seasons. All of this was new to me, and it made me much more conscious of nature.

For most Americans, especially those living in urbanized areas, nature is far removed from their daily lives. People in cities may not even think about where their food comes from or how their water is sourced. They’re disconnected from the natural world, much like ancient urban societies, but to a greater degree because of modern technology. People in rural areas—what we might call “red areas” of the country—might be more in tune with these cycles, though even they are far from the intimate awareness ancient agricultural societies had. In the ancient world, people’s lives were tied to the rhythms of nature. They understood not only the major forces but also the subtle things: the functions of plants, the roles of insects, the migration of animals, and the seasons for planting and harvesting.

These ancient philosophers and poets sought to explain all these things. They observed patterns in nature, and because of their dependence on these forces, they personified them. This led to the creation of mythology. For example, the winds were given personalities: the east wind, the north wind, the south wind, and the west wind. These winds had characteristics based on their effects. The southern wind, often warm, brought prosperity, comfort, and good weather, while the north wind was associated with storms, cold temperatures, and hardship. These forces were personified and given human-like traits—a process called anthropomorphism, or personification.

This way of thinking helped ancient people make sense of their world. They could predict the weather or the seasons by recognizing patterns. When they experienced the north wind, they would say, “Ah, Boreas is here,” and know what to expect. This ability to predict gave them a sense of order in their lives, reducing the chaos and uncertainty of a natural world they could not fully control. It allowed them to live with some degree of mastery over their environment.

The ability to predict outcomes was key. It determined whether an idea was effective, good, or wise. The goal of ancient mythology and religion was to improve the quality of life by making the future more predictable and, where possible, controllable. It was about giving men hope that they could influence their destiny and achieve happiness. This wasn’t a small task; it was a monumental effort to bring order to the chaos of life.

Let’s address the topic of morality in ancient religions. Critics often focus on areas where pagan societies failed morally by Christian standards, such as in sexual practices. But we must remember that these people were not Christians. Even in 2024, there are Christians failing morally in areas where they should excel. So, before we criticize Gentile cultures for their shortcomings, we have to consider the context.

For example, the idea that a man should marry one woman and be committed to her until death is a Christian idea. It’s rooted in divine revelation. Gentile cultures, lacking this revelation, were not bound by the same theological framework. If we judge them solely by Christian standards, we’re applying rules they were never given. Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, we see cases that require explanation, like Solomon’s hundreds of wives or the scandals of Christian clergy in modern times. Judging Gentile morality without considering these nuances isn’t just unfair—it’s intellectually dishonest.

What we see in ancient mythology is an effort to bring order to life through personification and storytelling. These stories weren’t meant to be literal explanations but tools to help people understand and navigate their world. This is why they often revolved around forces of nature and their perceived personalities. By doing this, the ancients were fulfilling what St. Thomas Aquinas would later call the duty of a wise man: to bring order to the world.

The Greeks and Romans weren’t aimlessly creating myths for entertainment; they were discerning patterns and principles that allowed their societies to flourish. When we look at mythology with this understanding, we see that much of what they established was true. They lacked the light of divine revelation but still achieved remarkable insights through observation, reasoning, and imagination.

This gradual mastery over nature laid the foundation for deeper philosophical and moral inquiries. Once survival was secured, ancient thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle turned their attention to higher questions of virtue, happiness, and human purpose. Aristotle’s Ethics is a prime example of this development—a work that continues to inspire students of philosophy to this day.

The classical Greek civilization, which flourished during this period, was the result of centuries of growth and refinement. It reached its zenith during the time of peace and prosperity that followed the Greek victories over Persia. This cultural flowering allowed for the development of arts, sciences, and philosophy, which would later influence the entire world through Alexander the Great’s conquests.

This Hellenization of the ancient world set the stage for the coming of Christ. By the time of His incarnation, the world had reached a level of cultural and intellectual maturity that made it ready to receive the Gospel. This is what St. Paul referred to as “the fullness of time.” The Gentile world wasn’t perfect, but it was prepared to a remarkable degree, thanks to centuries of human effort in philosophy, art, and governance.

When Christianity entered this world, it didn’t arrive as a hostile force seeking to destroy everything in its path. Instead, it sought to perfect what was already good and true in human culture. The apostles and early Christians didn’t walk into moral and intellectual wastelands; they entered societies with established systems of law, governance, and even morality, albeit imperfect by Christian standards. Their task wasn’t to obliterate these systems but to elevate them.

Critics often claim that Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was purely political, an attempt to harness the Church’s organizational strength for his own benefit. But even if that were partially true, it reflects Constantine’s recognition of the Church’s wisdom and order. He saw in Christianity principles and structures that surpassed anything in pagan society, and he sought to incorporate them into the governance of the empire. This wasn’t a “Romanization” of Christianity—it was a Christianization of Roman culture. And that’s exactly what the Gospel is supposed to do: transform and sanctify human life and culture.

The process of this transformation wasn’t instantaneous. It was gradual, requiring patience and compromise. The early Christians didn’t seek to destroy every aspect of pagan culture; they focused on correcting what was incompatible with the Gospel while preserving and perfecting what was good. For example, if there were agricultural festivals tied to pagan rituals, the Christians didn’t abandon the festivals entirely. They replaced the pagan elements with Christian ones, recognizing that the basic human need to pray for blessings on crops and harvests remained valid.

This approach allowed Christianity to integrate into existing cultures without leaving behind cultural voids. The modern tendency to reject anything with roots in pre-Christian traditions is a Puritanical error. It destroys culture rather than sanctifying it. Catholicism, on the other hand, has always sought to build on what is good, true, and beautiful in human culture, bringing it to its perfection in Christ.

When we consider the accusation that Roman Catholicism is merely a continuation of Roman paganism, we must reject this false dichotomy. Christianity didn’t arise in opposition to Roman culture—it transformed it. The apostles brought the light of divine revelation into a world that had already achieved much through human reason. They didn’t tear down everything that came before them; they built upon it, fulfilling the human search for truth and order with the ultimate truth found in Christ.

This process of transformation is what the Classical Liberal Arts Academy seeks to restore. Our mission is to research and restore the classical wisdom of the ancients, integrating it with the fullness of Christian truth. By studying the classical liberal arts, we can rediscover the foundations of Western civilization and offer a renewed vision of life that is both intellectually satisfying and spiritually enriching.

This effort is my response to the challenges I first encountered as a college student. It is my way of showing that Christianity is not a recycling of ancient mythology but the perfection of all that ancient men achieved through poetry, philosophy, and reason. I hope this discussion has been helpful, and I look forward to continuing these explorations in the future.

God bless you.

Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Classical Liberal Arts Academy