I am not an expert in philosophy, or Aristotle, by any stretch of the imagination. But I picked up on something that I find very interesting while reading about the great medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. He is considered one of the great Scholastics - devoted to the practice of proving Christianity through logical argument and reason. This was pretty radical thinking for the time; the Church actually condemmed much of his writings at the time as heretical, even though he was on the Church's side of the argument.
Without getting into the complexity of Aquinas' reasoning, I just want to point out that it was largely based on the writings of Aristotle, the classical Greek philosopher who lived some 1600 years before. The Church, in fact, cited this as part of the reason that it couldn't accept Aquinas' own writings. I have to admit it doesn't seem like a good idea for the Church to want to rest it's legitimacy on the foundation of writings which predate Jesus' own life by three centuries.
But that's where it gets really weird. Although the Church wasn't thrilled with Aquinas during his lifetime, in time it changed its mind. In fact, in 1921 Pope Benedict XV officially decreed Aquinas' writings as the official philosophy of the Catholic Church (while, admittedly, indicating that his works were not exactly free from error). Now that's an about-face!
Net-net, the "official philosophy" of the Catholic Church is largely based upon the philosophy of one of the greatest Pagans of all time. Let's just agree that Aristotle was a little ahead of his time!
Lastly, and completely unrelated to the above, I just wanted to highlight this little quote from Thomas Aquinas:
"Of all human pursuits the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most profitable, the most delightful."
St. Thomas Aquinas
From Summa contra Gentiles, i, I
As quoted in The Age of Faith by Will Durant, page 972.
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