I
recently read How
href=”http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/20467/affiliate/TheCurtJeste4635/T/3″
target=”_blank”>How The Catholic Church Built Western
Civilization by Thomas E.
Woods, Jr., Ph.D. I have heard and read some of the information Dr.
Woods provides in this book, but he goes into much more detail on a
variety of topics that include, science, economics, international law,
art & architecture and many others.
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I remember first coming in contact with
some of the information on my way into the Church and much of it was a
total surprise to me. History as taught in public schools and
other educational institutions has done a great disservice by pulling a
1984 in a extensive revision of history.
After reading this book I feel even
more robbed by my education that consisted of so much misinformation.
For me and I am sure for many others the only time the Catholic Church
seems to have entered history is in the case of Galileo and
then she promptly bows back out of it again. The chapter on
science was especially interesting for me as it details the profound
effect that the Church has had on science throughout the centuries and
especially how the Jesuit order in such a really short period of
history has contributed to science in an amazing degree. Dr.
Woods does give one of the better explanations of the Galileo affair
that neither dismisses mistakes made or takes Galileo off the hook for
his errors in judgment. He also gives a good short
discussion on the excellent work of Fr. Stanley Jaki on how
it is Christianity that lead to the scientific method and that all
other cultures failed to break out of their world view to do this.
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It is also quite amazing how time after
time in subject after subject that a father of a discipline can be
traced to a Catholic and how many time those Catholics also happened to
be a cleric. This book was really fun reading with
all the information contained and it is quite well researched
giving a depth of details on a wide range of subjects. It is
just truly amazing what the Church has contributed right from the
beginning.
It does make me wish that their was a
movie that did a
style=”font-style: italic;”>It’s a Wonderful Life
class=”blog”> treatment of the Church. In this
movie you would have a Christoper Hitchens’ type complaining about how
the Catholic Church has ruined everything and in a moment of
frustration shouts out “I wish the Catholic Church had never
been born.” We would then move to a world where Jesus did not
become man and of course his Church never coming to exist.
This world would make Potterville look like Utopia by
comparison. You would need some really good writers to pull
this off. Trying to imagine a world that was never influenced
by the Church would be so alien to what we take for granted on a
day-to-day basis. It is hard to imagine a world without
hospitals, universities, taking care of the poorest among us, the
intrinsic worth of every human person. A world where women
where treated like they were in Pagan cultures. Even Paganism
as it exists today and other religions have been Christianized to some
extent from their contact with Christianity. It is just about
an impossible task to come up with a parallel history where the Church
did not exist that would seem credible. Though the more
credible the attempt the less likely we could believe the outcome.
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I highly recommend
class=”blog”
href=”http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/Store.ItemDetails/SKU/20467/affiliate/TheCurtJeste4635/T/3″
target=”_blank”>How The Catholic Church Built Western
Civilization as both a great
read and a greatly informative book.
8 comments
Yup, I read it and it’s a real eye opener. Very fascinating and highly recommended.
…paging Barb Nicolosi…
I love that movie idea. Or a novel.
Oooh– I know– get S. M. Stirling to write it as an alternate universe sci-fi story!!! That would totally rock!!!
I got this book last year & thouroughly enjoyed reading it. I can’t recomend it highly enough.
Dr. Woods is making a series for EWTN based on the book.
Excellent book.
hey, i just finished it too! returned it to a library with an overdue fine.
I loved the chapter on western morality and the Catholic church. And here is something that should be printed out and distributed like any school textbook:
�Today, all too many younger people have heard the Church�s teaching on human intimacy only in caricature, and given the culture within which they live, cannot begin to understand why the Church proposes it. Faithful to the mission She has fulfilled for two millennia, however, the Church still holds out a moral alternative to young people immersed in a culture that relentlessly teaches them to pursue immediate gratification.
The Church recalls the great men of Christendom- like Charlemagne, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Xavier, to name a few-and holds them up as models for how true men live. Its message? Essentially this: You can aspire to be one of these men- a builder of civilisation, a great genius, a servant of God and men, or a heroic missionary-or you can be a self-absorbed nobody fixated on gratifying your appetites. Our society does everything in its power to ensure that you wind up on the latter path. Be your own person. Rise above the herd, declare your independence from a culture that thinks so little of you, and proclaim that you intend not to live not as a beast but as a man. “
Beautiful…where would be our purpose in life and the beauty of it without God and His Church? That movie idea in the comment above sounds great..you wonder how atheist thinking has managed to find so many followers after so long.
“I felt robbed of my education”…. that is almost word for word what I told my wife and friends after reading this (and a bunch of other related books).
Frankly, we have been taught stupid.
Imagine if the internet had not come along and we couldn’t share learning like this.
Dr Woods and Christopher Ferrara also coauthored another excellent and eye-opening book called, “The Great Facade, Vatican II and the regime of novelty in the Catholic Church”.
I highly recommend this book to all who have felt robbed of the truth.
God bless you.
I could have read it. But I was too busy playing with html tags instead.
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