Below The Beltway

To judge from contemporary versions of the history of Western Civilization, the time period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment was a dark time. Superstituion ruled the day. Intellectual curiousity was non-existent. Science was bound to keep its conclusions in line with religion. And the Roman Catholic Church supressed anything resembling independent thought.

In How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas Woods, Jr. shows that what we thought we knew about almost 1000 years of Europrean history was wrong. Rather than holding Europe back, the Catholic Church was the primary force in holding it together through the chaos that came with the collapse of Roman rule and in planting and cultivating the seeds that would eventually grow in the intellectual powerhouse that we know today.

Most of the things that we take for granted today — charity, morality, economics, international law, natural rights, art, architecture — all have their roots in Catholic teaching and their growth and development were encouraged by the Church. Often, the greatest minds of the Middle Ages in these areas came from the Church itself, serving as priests, monks, bishops, and even popes. Even science, the area where the Church is often accused of suppressing thought in the name of religion, was cultivated by the Church. Woods also makes a persuasive case for why science itself could have only arisen in a society that possessed the theological world view of the Catholic Church, and why it never achieved its full potential in other civilizations.

The book is a quick read, and highly enjoyable, but it is by no means the definitive book on the Catholic Church’s role in the rise of Western Civilization. As a beginning, though, and a reminder for those who have been influenced by a century of contrary history, it is an excellent place to start.