The most important thing to know about the Church is that She (we say She because She is the "bride of Christ") is supernatural. Thus She is beyond human control to a certain extent. We know She is packed full of assholes. We also know She (as the Church Triumphant) will someday batter down the gates of hell. So somehow this bunch of assholes somehow saves the day.
We begin Church history in a Pagan world, which was still ascendant after replacing the Pantheism that gripped the world since caveman days. The Pagans were extremely sophisticated, and their priestesses were the shadow rulers of Egypt, the Greek Empire and finally Rome. Each Pagan god was a cultural marker, much as in Hinduism today. Each Pagan cult had its own feast days. When confronted with the obvious superiority of the Christian message, most Pagans became Christian without hesitation.
Christianity contained all that was true in Paganism, and yet offered even more of this truth we all hunger for. Christianity explains everything; it is the "Theory of Everything" for which simpleminded materialists expend countless tax dollars searching. The Pagans quickly recognized the truth contained in the Christian message, and the world was changed forever as the Gentiles began to voluntarily convert en masse. However, Pagans were loathe to abandon their Roman holidays. Yet how in good conscience could they taint their new understanding of the universe and its Creator with nostalgic fairy stories from their childhood?
The Church answered their distress by transforming these (sometimes evil) celebrations into innocent Christian celebrations. The Solstice (once associated with Mithra) will henceforth be a celebration of the Incarnation. Easter (and other heathen ceremonies of virility) will henceforth be a celebration of Our Lord's triumph over death. And so on. Protestants later despised this peaceful accord with traditional Pagan feasts, but Christ does not demand that we abandon all local customs. His yoke is light.
In fact, pre-Christian revelation is something that binds all successful cultures since the dawn of creation. God speaks to us in many ways, and His supernatural message of self-sacrifice can be detected in all pre-Christian religion (amidst other all-too-natural elements). The ultimate sacrifice (the Incarnation of the Logos) happened at the very moment the world was finally prepared to receive Him.
The First Covenant was designed to insulate the knowledge of God from the Syncretism of the Pagans until the world had advanced enough to appreciate and understand this knowledge. The minimum requirements to overwhelm global Paganism were:
The decline of the West began when we rebelled against the Church Who created Christendom. The decline of Reason began when we rejected the unifying, objective truth of the Faith and instead divided ourselves into a kaleidoscope of subjectivist, personal affectations. When we gave to the state the power to make arbitrary laws that overrule God's Laws, we doomed ourselves to a world where might makes right.
The West is following their rulers back to Paganism. Christianity is based upon selfless sacrifice of oneself for one's neighbor. Paganism is based upon the selfish sacrifice of a victim by a predator. We are being trained to accept the revival of Pagan human sacrifice.
