Free Republic

How the Catholic Church Built Western CivilizationTHOMAS E. WOODS, JR.From the role of the monks to art and architecture, from the university to Western law, from science to charitable work, from international law to economics, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization delves into just how indebted we are as a civilization to the Catholic Church, whether we realize it or not. By far the book’s longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church’s alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have...

Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) "The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences." Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it. The promotional literature for the conference opened with That Quotation from Alan Greenspan — the one in which he suggested that there was, after all, a "flaw" in the free market he hadn't noticed before. Well, that does it, then! If our Soviet commissar in charge of...

Barack Obama is already making the Clinton and Bush years seem like the good old days. Close to a trillion dollars are being tossed around in a “stimulus” package that no one in his right mind—and I do not here include the mainstream of the economics profession, which has disgraced itself in this crisis—expects to bring about recovery. Economist Robert Wenzel rightly describes the stimulus as “just the insiders raiding the till while there is still money in it.” Trillions of dollars are likewise being thrown at financial institutions that (if we actually believe in the free market) richly deserve...

So the "stimulus" package, a dagger through the heart of the economy, has passed. The geniuses who govern us, who insist that seizing the produce of the voluntary economy and devoting it to arbitrary projects will make us wealthy, have had their victory. Much of the debate turned, unfortunately, on how much "pork" was in the bill. This or that spending program was silly or an obvious waste of money, critics said. All too true, of course, but unless we're looking to be hired by the Titanic's Department of Deck Chair Rearrangement, we're missing the point with arguments like this....

The Catholic Church and the Creation of the UniversityThe Church played a central if not exclusive role in the establishment and encouragement of theuniversity. The substantial output of medieval scholarship that was produced in the twentieth century should have put this inane caricature to rest once and for all, but here we have another case of specialized knowledge that hasn’t managed to trickle down to the general public.  It was, after all, in the High Middle Ages that the university came into existence. The university, which developed and matured at the height of Catholic Europe, was a new phenomenon in...

When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI in late April, observers immediately speculated as to what it meant. Papal names often carry great significance.   The name John Paul, for example, indicated a profound sympathy with the pontificates of John XXIII and Paul VI, the popes of Vatican II. Although Benedict XVI has pointed to his desire to carry on the legacy of Pope Benedict XV (1914-22) as a primary reason behind the name, his choice of Benedict naturally calls to mind St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547), by far the most important figure in the history of...

It is somewhat ironic that Dr. Thomas Woods recently released How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, as its celebration of Christianity may well make it as unpopular among the intelligentsia as is The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. The latter is a directed tour of our nation’s forbidden history, and the title alone guarantees that it will never be found in any liberal arts syllabi. I finished reading it yesterday and am somewhat surprised to admit just how much it has to offer. In fact, I am now thoroughly bewildered as to the extent in which it was...

On national issues jockeying for position, some are vying for the #2 and #1 spots on the top ten. But in my surmise, they are all of equal threat. I write about Liberty for the most part, and it’s the main topic of my guest talks. Guns play a part in our liberty, but so do all of the other freedoms we enjoy in our way of life. It’s all a way-of-life issue to me, hence there is hardly any single issue, guns included. Chief among my complaints is that the Left in America presses on, where the battle is...

Forgotten Facts of American Labor History by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [November 22, 2004] Just about everything that people think they know about labor unions and wage rates is wrong. The standard tale that practically every student hears over the course of his education is that before the emergence of labor unions, American workers were terribly exploited and their wages were consistently falling. The improvement in labor's condition was due entirely or at least in large part to labor unionism and favorable federal legislation. In the absence of these, it is widely assumed, people would still be working 80-hour weeks...

HAVANA — It was part pep rally, part solemn tribute to fallen heroes, part state-of-the-union address. It was all slick political theater, masterfully stage-managed by Fidel Castro, the man who changed Cuban history and clearly revels in his role as an outsized player on the world stage. Still irrepressible as he nears his 79th birthday, the Communist firebrand used the July 26 anniversary of the start of his rebellion in 1953 to dismiss reports that his revolution is once again in trouble. "To hear the news reports and the misinformation, you would think our revolution will last only three more...

It’s the same argument we’ve heard so many times before, except now with increasing frequency and intensity: The world’s troubles are caused by religion. If only people would at last abandon these silly superstitions and get with the times.Late this summer Zenit, the international Catholic news agency, reported on an increasing tendency in the Western press—particularly in the wake of the July bombings in London—to criticize not simply “Islamic fundamentalism” but also religion in general as sources of discord and violence. Thus in the pages of Scotland’s Sunday Herald Muriel Gray declared that “the cause of all this misery, mayhem,...

Tridentine Mass, Eucharistic Ministers by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. The spirit of innovation of the past forty years has dulled the sensibilities of many churchmen to the seriousness and gravity of their almost routine ruptures with tradition. If it is pointed out to them that some innovation would obviously have been detested by the entire assembly of saints, they either do not care (an attitude that at one time would have been unthinkable for a Catholic) or they actually claim that we have made "progress" since their time. Such is the level of our spiritual idiocy that an age as...

Traditional Catholics frequently speak of the secularization of society, and indeed there can be no question that traditional religious imagery, to say nothing of a traditional religious perspective, has all but disappeared from public life. But more has been going on than simply this. In a very real sense, one religion is replacing another. As Professor Paul Gottfried argues in his recent book Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt (which I reviewed enthusiastically for Pat Buchanan’s magazine earlier this year), the liberalism with which we are today confronted has adapted for its own use the theological terms and categories of...

The number of U.S. workers seeking new jobless benefits fell last week to its lowest in over five years, the government reported on Thursday and a private group said the services sector grew last month, boding well for the economic outlook. The strong data came one day before the closely watched Labor Department report on employment. Economists expect a solid 200,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls in December, with the jobless rate holding steady at 5 percent. In other data, major U.S. retailers on Thursday reported that deep discounts lured holiday shoppers last month and pushed sales slightly ahead of modest...

The dwindling cadre of academics who try to hold the line on standards have a particularly rough time of it when choosing textbooks. “Every semester I have to pick a new book and I have to pick the least bad book and it’s really depressing,” Suffolk County Community College professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. says. “You need a good stiff drink.” “Other conservative academics from across the country have the same problem.” Dr. Woods teaches history at Suffolk, which is affiliated with the State University of New York. His partial solution to the textbook dilemma was to write his own...

Are you the type who just can't seem to settle for the latest pulp novel at the beach or by the poolside? Cruxnews.com gives an overview of some recommended heavy reading for those not content to be summer lightweights.

My book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History has received far more attention than I ever expected. Once the book hit number eight on the New York Times bestseller list, the Times’ editorial page condemned it without actually showing where its arguments were mistaken; several weeks later, to my surprise, the Times published a favorable profile of me. The controversy surrounding the book has reached at least two other continents: Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo, with the highest circulation of any newspaper in Latin America, published a full interview with me, as did a major Catholic newspaper in Ireland....

In 1949, Evelyn Waugh wrote an article for Life magazine entitled “The American Epoch in the Catholic Church.” Catholicism was an “essential part” of the American spirit, he wrote, and America was where the church would flourish. As the scandals of 2002 unfolded, I found myself wondering how Waugh would have reacted. He could hardly have known that 1949 would prove to be a high point for the church in America. There has been nothing but decline since. Waugh died in 1966, so he lived long enough to see the penumbras and emanations from the Second Vatican Council, from 1962...

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. By Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Regnery Publishing, 2004. Xv + 270 pgs. Thomas Woods' superb new book has already achieved fame as the first Austrian-inspired book to be on the New York Times bestseller list in many years. It also delivers much more than it promises. Woods offers his book as a guide to "those who find the standard narrative or the typical textbook unpersuasive or ideologically biased" (p. xiv). This suggests that Woods has principally students in mind as his audience; but many others will benefit from reading the book. Woods displays...

Today is the official release date for my new book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. From the role of the monks (they did much more than just copy manuscripts) to art and architecture, from the university to Western law, from science to charitable work, from international law to economics, the book delves into just how indebted we are as a civilization to the Catholic Church, whether we realize it or not. By far the book's longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church’s alleged hostility toward science. What most...