The Crisis of Civilization

The Crisis of Civilization, by Hilaire Belloc, originally published 1937, reprinted in 2009 by TAN Books and Publishers.

 

There are many words that can describe Hilaire Belloc, but “namby-pamby,” “equivocating,” “politically-correct” and “sugarcoating” certainly have no place in any depiction of this great Catholic controversialist. Belloc spent most of the first half of the twentieth century defending the Catholic Church against its enemies, as well as striving to save Western Civilization and Europe from the forces that he believed would destroy all that was good and decent on the continent.

 

The Crisis of Civilization contains extended analyses and summaries of major themes that can be found in many of Belloc’s other works.  He has attacked both communism and capitalism in The Servile State and An Essay on the Restoration of Property.  His theories on how Protestantism and Islam hurt the position of the Church and Catholic culture have been expounded in more detail in The Great Heresies, The Crusades: The World’s Debate, How the Reformation Happened, Characters of the Reformation, and Europe and the Faith.  The last book concludes with the famous lines, "Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith."  In The Crisis of Civilization, Belloc posits that the Catholic Faith brings freedom, and without it people are doomed to slavery, be it the slavery of tyrannical governments, or unelected autocrats who wield economic power outside the realm of government.

 

At the core of Belloc’s thesis is the belief that the best way to ensure a free, just, moral, and profitable society is to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church and apply them to the world, from the workings of government and international relations, to economics and business, to personal behavior.  In Belloc’s view, Communism is a danger to society due to its inherent atheism, its reliance on a powerful and unaccountable central government, and its denial of private property.  Capitalism, Belloc contends, is flawed for very different reasons, including its promotion of usury, making certain segments of society incapable of ever achieving economic independence, creating a divisive business culture of competition, and celebrating greed.  Belloc advocates a third economic path, one that he and his friend G.K. Chesterton defined and termed Distributism.  Distributism is based on the papal encyclicals on property, economics and social justice, and advocates the widespread possession of private property, a business community where all members are their brothers’ keepers, and moral actions at all times.

 

Furthermore, Belloc contends that many of the commonly held versions of European history, often referred to as the Whig version of history, present a picture of the Catholic Church that is criminally flawed.  Firstly, Belloc takes umbrage to some of the famous historical theories that contend that Christianity contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire.  Far from this being the case, Belloc argues, the Roman Empire was already disintegrating without outside influence, but Christianity saved much of what was worth saving of the empire’s society and civilization.  In the twentieth century, Western Civilization came under fire from numerous ideological and other outside forces, and Belloc believes that a dangerous situation has arisen that desperately needs attention, otherwise the fallout could be disastrous for the world.

 

Belloc opens with the following words of warning:

            

[O]ur civilization, that is, the civilization of Christendom, today occupying Europe, especially Western Europe, and radiating thence over the New World… has arrived at a crisis where it is in peril of death.  I propose therefore to describe how that civilization arose, upon what main lines it developed, what institutions it produced and depended upon, and when it was at its height.  I next propose to show historically how it became disunited and thereby spiritually enfeebled while materially progressing, until at last with the destruction of the moral tradition by which it had existed and was precariously maintained, even while that tradition was weakening, it lost its very principle of life and may therefore, unless we return to that principle, dissolve.

 

A large portion of this book is devoted to summarizing the entirety of Western Civilization, and in Belloc’s narrative the hero of the story is the Catholic Church.  In Belloc’s narrative, the medieval era was not some benighted “Dark Ages,” but a golden age of civilization, a time when guilds and moral standards kept Europe stable and just, despite a host of physical and international problems.

 

Belloc was a master at crafting impassioned arguments, but the effectiveness of his powers of persuasion is far more open to debate.  The staunch Catholic who resents the ingrained modern prejudice against his faith in contemporary culture and intellectual life, and who also seeks to fight social injustices despite his discomfort with popular opinions, may very well find a kindred spirit in Belloc.  Belloc’s confrontational style may very well chafe some readers, but if ever there was a man who did not care about pleasing all of the people all of the time, it was Belloc.  Belloc was the kind of person who would infinitely prefer to be speak his mind than be liked.  He seems to take a special joy in tearing apart the legacy of prominent figures such as Marx, Darwin, and Calvin.

 

People will have different reactions to his Belloc’s opinions, but his sincerity is always evident in every word of his manifesto.  The disgust he feels toward those who blame the Church for the world’s ills is palpable, as is his skepticism for the future of the world.  As his concluding pages and his plans for building a better tomorrow prove, Belloc believes that the future is not entirely bleak and that society’s problems could be ameliorated (though probably not completely cured) by following his prescriptions for creating a more just society, although he has no starry-eyed dreams of a utopian future. Indeed, Belloc seems to imply that the best that can be hoped for is the improvement of the lives of as many people as possible, as well as counteracting some of the destructive aspects of modern culture and thought. In order to prevent the triumph of evil, good men must do something intelligent.

 

Over seventy years have passed since The Crisis of Civilization was first published, and the world has both changed dramatically and stayed much the same.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, the shadow of communism has faded considerably, much of the world still suffers under a communist government, and the cultural impact of communist intellectual thought still pervades Western culture.  The Crisis of Civilization serves as a welcome antidote to such cultural poisons.  For those who believe in a “culture war” in Western society, Belloc’s book will have a special relevance.  For people who are worried about the current economic “crisis,” Belloc’s theories about how an economy based on grab and greed will ultimately lead to trouble may seem eerily prescient.  In Belloc’s view, both economically and culturally, we are all our brothers’ keepers, urging his readers to act with morality and wisdom in all facets of their lives.  After painting a vivid picture of an unjust world in crisis, Belloc wisely concludes by warning that “the crisis is one which does not permit of infinite delay.”

 

 

–Chris Chan

The New Atheists

The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion, by Tina Beattie, Orbis Books, 2008.

 

Atheism has made a lot of headlines lately.  A particularly vocal, politically active, and well-placed collection of nonbelievers consisting of figures such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and many others, have led the movement to abolish religion entirely.  Their basic arguments include their insistence that there is no God and that religion is the central cause of all the world’s ills.  They posit that a world without worship would be eminently peaceful and enlightened, deride the religious education of youths as child abuse, and sneer at professions of faith.  They have had some success in their efforts; many people claim to have been won over to atheism by their arguments, and many European countries have passed legislation or produced court rulings to the detriment of the openly religious.  Yet every action produces an opposing reaction, and when religion is involved, the reaction may be more than equal to the initial action. 

 

In response to the New Atheists, numerous theists, especially Christians, have written counterarguments to the secularist thesis.  Even some nonbelievers, like Theodore Darymple, who respect religion, believe that Christianity has enriched and protected Western civilization, and think (to use Darymple’s own phrase) that “Europe must re-Christianize” in order to survive.  Tina Beattie, a theological scholar, is one of the most recent theists to address the challenge posed by militant atheism.

 

In her introduction, Beattie states that “My main aim in this book is not to defend religion against the new atheists, nor is it to deny the problem of religious extremism and its growing political influence… I seek to broaden the discussion by situating it in a wider social and historical context.  If we are to understand the role that religion plays in people’s lives, then we need to be more attentive to the many different ways in which religious and cultural narratives act as vehicles of meaning for those who inhabit them.”

 

What does this mean?  One major concern regarding Beattie’s book is that it may displease potential readers who are expecting something quite different.  There have been dozens of books by religious people who have attacked the new atheists’ arguments head-on, such as Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God by Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, and Thomas Crean’s God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins.  Numerous Catholic bloggers have analyzed Hitchens’ polemic God is Not Great and found errors of fact on nearly every page.  

 

Many recent defenses of religion have been boisterous, strongly worded, and as aggressive in promoting the case for God and organized religion as their antagonists are towards pushing atheism.  Some have also been humorous: the new atheists’ self-righteous pomposity and untempered malice towards religious people is ripe for satire, and indeed, one recent C.S. Lewis-inspired riffing of the new atheists, The Loser Letters, by Mary Eberstadt, has gotten some substantial publicity. Another excellent defender of the faith is Mark Shea, Catholic blogger and author (http://markshea.blogspot.com/), who joyously lampoon the foibles and pretensions of the new atheists.  These defenders of the faith tend to give as good as they take, although their writings are often much more charitable than those of the New Atheists. 

 

Beattie, in contrast, seems to view many of the theist defenses as being in rather bad taste.  Beattie appears to cast herself as a voice of mediation, acting above the squabbling and infighting over between the pro- and anti-God forces, which she treats as tacky.  Beattie is a theist and a Catholic, but she is also a supporter of post-modernism, feminism, and post-colonialism, and her views color her arguments.  One of Beattie’s pet peeves about the new atheists is their macho attitude.  She seems to feel that the much of the bravado and anger of the new atheists boils down to nothing more than a show of masculine hubris; the intellectual equivalent of a contest to see who can project one’s urine the farthest.  Her self-superior tone can at times be patronizing towards both believers and atheists alike.

 

Throughout her book, Beattie’s basic argument seems to be that since God exists, the new atheists are wrong, but nevertheless they do make a lot of valid points.  Beattie spends plenty of time admitting to the injustices and errors committed in the name of religion, and though she addresses the iniquities and evils committed by the atheistic regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the latter calamities receive disproportionately less attention than the tragedies with religious roots.  Her attempts to “broaden the discussion” would be more influential if she broadened her focus to explore the roots of horrific calamities with more scrutiny.  Her analyses of art, literature, and culture focus mainly on atheistic works with a side of multicultural studies.  Religious influence on intellectualism and creative endeavors goes almost completely ignored.  This book is only meant to be an overview of certain historical movements and trends, but many passages have gaping holes in their narratives.

 

In particular, the review of the historical relationship between science and religion is a mixed bag.  Beattie brings up a few names of prominent scientists who were deeply religious men, but her exploration of the compatibility between religion and science is at best perfunctory.  Her historical overviews are hit-and-miss.  Some, like her coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial, fail to depict the events of the past in all of their contradictory complexity.  In the worst case of historical superficiality, she comments that the clash between Galileo and the Church needs no recounting (and therefore she says nothing about it and merely implies that Church was utterly wrong), when in fact so much false information and so many misconceptions about the case have entered the public mindset over the years that the incident really does need to be reevaluated. (Please see my February 2010 review on How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization for more details.)

 

Late in the book, Beattie makes it clear that she actually has some sympathy for the new atheists’ point of view.  A surprising amount of space is devoted to lashing out at former U.S. President George W. Bush and the War on Terror, and attacking both Bush’s foreign and domestic policies, and approach to religiosity, going so far as to dreamily wonder how the world might benefit if the West lost its fight against violent terrorism.  The comment that she “has more in common with the new atheists” than with what she stereotypes as American-style “guns and religion” sheds a different light on the first half of the book, where she gives the impression that she is leading up to a restrained but devastating slam of the new atheists. In addition, Beattie attacks several articles of Catholic doctrine, such as reproduction and ecclesiastical authority.  By her conclusion, it appears that Beattie takes a self-styled “postmodern” approach to the Church.

 

The first part of Beattie’s subtitle, The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion, has a double meaning.  For the first half of the book, The Twilight of Reason seems refer to the fact that the new atheists frequently lapse into mere shrill invective and angry rhetoric, ignoring the “reason” they claim to embody.  Midway through the book, Beattie pronounces her own adherence to a postmodern, relativist mindset, where she claims that Western Civilization’s adherence to “logic” and “reason” is actually part of a patriarchal, imperialist, narrow-minded mindset that deserves to fall by the wayside.  The postmodern alternatives she proposes are, however, nowhere near being convincing.

 

Beattie’s contentions about reason being increasing irrelevant in the contemporary world are not backed by thorough arguments, and in any case they fail to address the central role that reason can play in religion.  In G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery, “The Red Moon of Meru,” the priest, having used his knowledge of religion and powers of reason to recover a stolen ruby, explains how he knew that something was not right, explaining that, “People will tell you that theories don’t matter and that logic and philosophy aren’t practical.  Don’t you believe them.  Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter.”  In another mystery, “The Blue Cross,” Father Brown observes that attacking reason is “bad theology.”

 

The New Atheists is a useful book for people who want to learn more about who exactly the new atheists are and what they are doing without actually buying one of their tomes.  If one wants a more direct attack on atheism, one should read one of the other works cited in this review.  Beattie’s perspective shows that faith comes in many different forms and is expressed in countless different ways.  Perhaps Beattie’s work can help believers understand the atheistic point of view without being chafed by the barbs of more overtly antireligious screeds.  Nevertheless, the inadequacy of her historical analysis and shallow exploration of the societal impact of religion undercut her ability to live up to her own stated goals.  

 

This book’s value lies not in its analysis of religion or atheism, or in its social or philosophical insights, but in the perspective it gives of the state of faith in England today.  Hardly a day goes by when a prominent religious commentator or news blogger proclaims that a certain European country is no longer Christian to any measurable degree, and given the opinions of many of Europe’s intelligensia and the policies of many politicians, these pronouncements may be discomfortingly true.  And yet… it is hard to forget the famous passage in Chesterton’s Father Brown mystery “The Queer Feet,” which so inspired Evelyn Waugh that he built one of the central themes of his novel Brideshead Revisited around it.  In this scene, Father Brown explains how he caught a thief and retrieved a set of stolen silverware:

 

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. “Odd, isn’t it,” he said, “that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man? But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my province. If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks. You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there are all your silver fish. But He has made me a fisher of men.”

“Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning.

Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face. “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

 

England may very well not be “post-Christian,” as Beattie seems to believe it is.  To use Chesterton and Waugh’s metaphor, the country, new atheists and all, may just be a gigantic “fish on the line,” caught forever on an unseen hook and ready at any moment to be brought back with a twitch upon the thread.

 

 

–Chris Chan

Newman 101

Newman 101: An Introduction to the Life and Philosophy of John Cardinal Newman, by Roderick Strange, Christian Classics, 2008.

 

John Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) is one of the most prominent figures in nineteenth-century English Catholicism, but like many great religious notables, his life and work remain sadly underappreciated by the broader public today.  Roderick Strange’s book is meant to give the broader public a new appreciation of a brilliant and fascinating man, as well as the relevance of his thoughts and philosophy on contemporary society.

 

Strange did an excellent job in selecting his title.  This is first and foremost an introduction to Newman’s life and work.  Using the college-course-like title Newman 101 illustrates that this ought to be only the first of many books consulted by the individual who wants to learn more about Newman.  By emphasizing the introductory nature of this book, Strange wisely forestalls the sharpest criticism that could justifiably be leveled against this book, namely that it provides only a basic overview of Newman’s biography and major writings, and needs to a lot more to put Newman’s ideas and controversies in their full social and historical context, as well as analyze and explain Newman’s writings thoroughly.  These are valid points, but addressing them properly might fill volumes of tomes, and Newman 101 is meant to be a quick but informative read.

 

Those who are already familiar with Newman’s life will therefore find a fair amount of things they already know in Newman 101, but Strange’s personal reflections on Newman’s relevance ought to make this book worth reading for even the most confirmed Newman experts.  As for Newman novices, Newman 101 provides a concise, readable, and easy to understand look at a complex and compelling figure.

 

Strange wisely opens his book with a brief overview of Newman’s life.  Newman believed that he was destined to devote his life to religion from an early age, and at first he began his religious vocation in the Anglican Church in which he was raised.  As time passed and he wrestled increasingly with theological doctrines, historical interpretations, and moral questions; Newman decided to convert to the Roman Catholic Church.  Not surprisingly, this decision came at a major price.  Many of Newman’s Anglican former colleagues were scandalized, and Newman’s conversion was often treated as a temporary passing whimsy, an opinion that never ceased to annoy Newman himself.  Newman dealt with numerous career annoyances and even a lawsuit that he lost only because of another person’s carelessness, but eventually Newman gained a level of prestige and respect he had thought he would never attain when he was appointed a cardinal.

 

Furthermore, Strange notes that Newman needs to be viewed as both a major Catholic intellectual and one of England’s greatest intellectual minds.  All too often, Newman has been classified as one or the other over the decades, and Strange suggests that Newman’s influence in the Oxford Movement is often under-recognized because of his Catholic identity.  It is unfair, Strange argues, to rank Newman as a second-tier figure in English intellectual life because of the perceived “outsider” nature of his religion.  Oppositely, some critics have habitually downplayed Newman’s spiritual side when they applaud his intellect.  The need to secularize Newman in order to praise him is confounding and abhorrent to Strange.

 

The book’s brief chapters each contain compelling capsule summaries of major aspects of Newman’s life and career.  The first two chapters are biographical.  One revolves around Strange’s own religious education and the formative influence that Newman had upon him.  The next summarizes Newman’s life and major works.  Most of the remaining chapters take a look at Newman’s views on contentious or confusing topics.  Papal infallibility, Marian devotion, the role of the laity, and ecumenicalism all receive thoughtful attention in Strange’s chapters.  

 

One way that the book could have been enriched would be if there was a chapter addressing Newman’s critics over the years.  There are frequent instances where Strange lists charges leveled against Newman by Protestant contemporaries who felt betrayed, as well as Newman’s own responses to this hostility, but it would have been interesting to see Strange address the early twentieth-century attacks on Newman, such as Lytton Strachey’s snide caricatures, as well as more recent attempts by various pundits and activists to twist Newman into an instrument for their own non-traditional views on culture and religion, regardless of the lack of evidence to support such usurpations of the man and his work.

 

Although a many of Newman’s books and major articles are mentioned in this study, further details on the contents of each one, coupled with the circumstances and intellectual and social atmosphere of the time, might have also helped further readers’ understanding of Newman’s work and influence.  Furthermore, Strange understandably strives to keep his book from becoming argumentative or polemical, but Newman has been misrepresented and misinterpreted so many times over the years that more detailed explanations of why these views are wrong, flawed, or at least dubious might have added a fuller understanding of the man and his influence.  Strange does address such issues on numerous occasions (and does so with dispassionate clarity), but this is a case where more would probably have been better.

 

Strange inserts a fair amount of his own life and biography into his book, explaining how he was first introduced to Newman’s work, how he came to study Newman in depth, and how Newman has shaped his own spiritual outlook and career choices.  Monsignor Strange serves as Beda College’s rector in Rome, directing vocations, and he has also worked throughout England as a priest and chaplain.  Strange’s personal journey with Newman is definitely enlightening, but some additional stories about the various other people who have been shaped intellectually by Newman might also have been fascinating.

 

Indeed, it is the personal touch that Strange inserts into his writing that truly makes Newman 101 indispensable.  Many literary and biographical studies are utterly flat and uninvolving due to their inability to connect to the material.  When Strange writes, however, we can see how Newman has shaped the trajectory of one man’s mind and career.  We see more than just a disconnected criticism to the source material, we see conclusive evidence that Newman remain relevant and capable of influencing people over a century after his death. 

 

If this book provokes the desired responses in its readers, after finishing Newman 101, people will want to find out more about the great man and his legacy.  Any of Newman’s own books will be superb resources for curious readers (his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua and his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine are excellent places to start), and there are many other fine critical and biographical works on Newman (Fr. Stanley L. Jaki’s Newman’s Challenge is an excellent analysis of how best to contextualize Newman’s philosophy and role in the broader debate over the state of contemporary culture, and a biography by Avery Robert Cardinal Dulles was recently published).  With Newman’s upcoming beatification and subsequent media coverage, it is certainly possible that a new wave of interest in Newman will emerge in the coming years.

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005.

 

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. wrote How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization as a rebuttal to the prevalent version of history that denigrates the role of the Church in advancing Western culture.  In this worldview, Catholicism was at best a bastion of backwardness and at worst a malignant force of oppression and stagnation.  This thesis credits advances in science and society to the rise of secularism and skepticism.  It is a popular theory, and variants of it can be found in countless textbooks, documentaries, and forums for public discourse.  The main problem with it, Woods argues, is that it is completely false.

 

Woods laments the fact that the Catholic Church’s reputation is unjustly low in popular culture, noting that the average person’s connotations of the Catholic Church involve vague impressions of “corruption” and “oppression.”  In this version of history, the Catholic Church helped to drive the glorious and noble pagan Roman Empire into a centuries-long morass known as the Dark Ages, where intellectual pursuits were smothered, save for determining new and innovative ways to burn suspected witches.  This cesspool of an epoch finally started to crack with the Protestant Reformation, and the people of Europe finally knew freedom, high culture, intelligence, and technological innovation with the advent of the Enlightenment.  As the Church’s influence waned, civilization got better and better, leading up to the present day, which is unquestionably the apex of human history.

 

How could a conception of history this popular be so radically wrong?  As Woods argues, the vast majority of legitimate historians, even those who are not Catholic, realizes that the term “Dark Ages” is a complete misnomer.  Unfortunately, many writers who are not trained historians (Woods singles some of them out in his introduction) have produced widely read books that savage everything Catholicism-related.  The facts have rarely been allowed to get in the way of a good story, but Woods uses the facts to create an unfamiliar but compelling narrative.

 

It is through his readable prose and clear presentation of information that Woods attempts to appeal to a broad audience, since that is the only way that the popular culture might be transfigured.  Many of the cultural and social institutions that we enjoy today are due almost entirely to the efforts of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church’s legacy, Woods insists, is one of intelligence, beauty, justice, and morality.  Woods admits that the Church has had many missteps and embarrassing incidents over the past two millennia, but that when all is put into context, the Church’s reputation ought to be overwhelmingly positive.

 

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is divided into topical chapters, each providing an overview of some way that the Church helped make the world a better place.  Each of these chapters is informative, and each of these chapters is much too short.  By rights, each chapter covers a sufficiently complex and interesting topic to fill a lengthy book (indeed, in many cases such books have thankfully been written).  Woods’ comparably short essays provide enough information to completely refute misconceptions and prove the Church’s beneficial influence, but hopefully many readers will feel compelled to study these subjects further.  Simultaneously, several portions of Woods’ book, such as the rise and fall of political dynasties, or the development of certain theological views, are written with the presumption that the reader already has a basic grasp of the era’s historical facts.  Sufficient background information is provided so that even the most historically illiterate reader should not have too much trouble following the narrative.

 

Woods addresses each subject with perception and verve.  One canard that he considers especially irksome is the perception that the Catholic Church did little to advance the cause of intellectual achievement.  Woods has no shortage of evidence to the contrary.   One early chapter, on the role of monks and their role in preserving and creating higher culture, illustrates how thousands of men devoted their lives to preserving information and developing technology.  Monasteries saved countless lives by developing more efficient farming and sanitation methods.  Furthermore, the university is an institution nurtured first and foremost by the Catholic Church, which oversaw essentially all of Europe’s education for centuries.

 

One of the most pernicious and utterly unfounded charges that is often leveled against the Catholic Church is that it is anti-science.  In one of the book’s best chapters, Woods brings up example after example to show just how many of the great scientists of history were Catholic priests, and how the Catholic Church funded scientific endeavors over the centuries.  Of particular interest is Woods’ comparison of the differences between Catholic and Muslim scientific research, and how both were heavily influenced by their starkly contrasting theologies about how the laws of nature connect to the power of an omnipotent God.  

 

A significant portion of the chapter is devoted to the most commonly cited incident used as proof of the Church’s hostility to science: the trial of Galileo.  In the commonly cited version, a brilliant scientist was crushed by a superstitious clergy that insisted on a literal interpretation of the Bible.  The reality is quite different.  The Church was open to the idea of a heliocentric universe, but papal authorities insisted that heliocentrism be treated strictly as a theory until much more research had been done.  Galileo insisted that his ideas were accurate and was insulting to those who questioned him.  Galileo’s theories were actually flawed, since he believed that planetary orbits were perfectly circular, when in fact they are elliptical.  The Church may not have acted in the most judicious manner regarding the Galileo affair, but it was far from the reactionary villain that it is often caricatured as being.

 

Perhaps one of Woods’ sharpest arguments lies in his observations about how lost Western culture can become without the salutary influence of the Church.  One of the most self-evident arguments in favor of the positive influence of Catholicism on the culture is the role of religion in art.  When artists created painting and statues on religious themes, they created lasting works of beauty and inspiration.  Michelangelo’s Pieta alone contains more beauty and pathos than the collected holdings of many modern art museums combined.  When artists jettisoned the quest for glorifying God and honoring the lives of the saints in favor of an increasingly nihilist outlook, Woods argues, the art world began a precipitous descent from the sublime to the ridiculous.  

 

Woods cites the examples of the “artist” who signed his name to a urinal and passed it off as an exemplar of early twentieth-century avant-garde art, a well as the more recent example of the unmade bed filled with evidence of sexual activity becoming a cause célèbre. To this, Woods could have added some more famous examples, such as two recent winners of England’s most prestigious art prize. One is The Lights Go On and Off, consisting of a bare room where the lights are set to perform the action in the piece’s title– nothing else.  The other consists of a bunch of black garbage bags filled with air.  Reading about the critical acclaim slathered over exhibits like this is enough to make one pray that the contemporary art world finds religion soon.

 

Woods covers many other topics, all with balance and measured tones.  While many Western Civilization textbooks attribute contemporary Western and international law to non-Catholic intellectuals such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, Woods attributes many legal policies and processes to the theological influence of Catholicism and its thoughts on human dignity.  Furthermore, there is one achievement of the Catholic Church that has earned it respect from even its harshest detractors: charity.  The Catholic Church’s determination to help people regardless of whether or not they are members of their faith, and the sheer size and scope of their efforts, has been one of the Church’s most convincing recruiting tools.

 

The most problematic portion of the book may well be the conclusion, titled “A World Without God.”  This is unquestionably the most depressing chapter, since it focuses on the effects of rampant secularism in Europe, coupled with the historical amnesia that has led to the Church’s great achievements being forgotten by all but a handful of experts.  Woods seems to accept the common trope of “the post-Christian West,” which contends that Western culture has completely abandoned its religious roots, perhaps beyond the point of no return.  While Christianity’s role in public life has been considerably relegated, the perception that Western culture has had its soul surgically removed may be an exaggeration– and possibly a harmful misconception.  This assumes that the widespread indifference to Christianity, particularly Catholicism, is irreversible, and that is not the case.  

 

Perhaps the contemporary culture should not be called “the post-Christian West,” but rather “the age of ignorance.”  This refers to ignorance about a shared history and the facts behind one’s culture, problems frequently bemoaned by Woods.  People who worry about the godlessness of contemporary culture, instead of wringing their hands and proclaiming that Western culture has permanently apostatized, should instead focus on educating people about the truth of the Catholic Church’s history and correcting misconceptions.  God is not dead; people just need to be reminded about his existence.  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is a useful tool in helping to heal a woefully misinformed culture.

 

 

–Chris Chan