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