How the (Catholic) Church Built Western Civilization

Zenit News Agency ^ | September 26, 2005

[NYer]

Interview With Historian Thomas Woods Jr.

CORAM, New York, SEPT. 26, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Contrary to popular opinion, the Catholic Church historically has been the champion of scientific, economic, legal and social progress.

So says Thomas Woods Jr., history professor at Suffolk County Community College and author of "How the Church Built Western Civilization" (Regnery).

Woods shared with ZENIT how the Church has contributed to science, the development of free-market economies, Western legal systems and international law, and why Catholic intellectual and cultural figures desperately need to redeem Western civilization.

Q: How did it come to be that the Church is considered the enemy of progress, freedom, human rights, science, and just about everything else modernity champions, when in fact your book claims that the Catholic Church is at the origin of these phenomena?

Woods: There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but I'll confine myself to one. It is much easier to propagate historical myth than most people realize.

Take, for instance, the idea -- which we were all taught in school -- that in the Middle Ages everyone thought the world was flat. This, as Jeffrey Burton Russell has shown, is a 19th-century myth that was deliberately concocted to cast the Church in a bad light. It couldn't be further from the truth.

The matter of Galileo, which most people know only in caricature, has fueled some of this fire. But it is both illegitimate and totally misleading to extrapolate from the Galileo case to the broader conclusion that the Church has historically been hostile to science.

It may come as a surprise to some readers, but the good news is that modern scholarship -- say, over the past 50 to 100 years or so -- has gone a long way toward refuting these myths and setting the record straight.

Scarcely any medievalist worth his salt would today repeat the caricatures of the Middle Ages that were once common currency, and mainstream historians of science would now be embarrassed to repeat the old contention that the relationship between religion and science in the West has been a history of unremitting warfare -- as Andrew Dickson White famously contended a century ago.

Q: Can you briefly describe the Church's particular contributions to the origins and development of modern science?

Woods: Let's begin with a few little-known facts. The first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Father Giambattista Riccioli. Father Nicholas Steno is considered the father of geology. The father of Egyptology was Father Athanasius Kircher, and the man often cited as the father of atomic theory was Father Roger Boscovich.

The Jesuits brought Western science all over the world. In the 20th century they so dominated the study of earthquakes that seismology became known as "the Jesuit science."

Some Catholic cathedrals were built to function as the world's most precise solar observatories, and the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna was used to verify Johannes Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits.

The science chapter of "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" is by far the longest. In addition to discussing examples like the ones I've just mentioned, it also notes that certain aspects of Catholic teaching -- including the idea of God as orderly and even mathematical, thus making possible the idea of autonomous natural laws -- lent themselves to the development of modern science.

Q: One question you have examined in particular in your books is the Church's role in the development of free-market economies. Many historians, including Catholics, claim that it was only with the Enlightenment and Adam Smith that Western nations were able to expunge "medieval" notions of economics and bring about the Industrial Revolution. Why do you think this is a misreading of history?

Woods: Recent scholarship has discovered that medieval economic thought, particularly in the High and Late Middle Ages, was far more modern and sophisticated than was once thought.

Many scholars, but above all Raymond de Roover, have shown that these thinkers possessed a deeper understanding and appreciation of market mechanisms, and were more sympathetic to a free economy, than traditional portrayals would suggest.

In general they did not believe, as has been commonly alleged, in an objectively ascertainable "just price" of a good, or that the state should enforce such prices across the board. To the contrary, the Scholastics were deeply indebted to Roman law, resurrected in the High Middle Ages, which described the value of a good as what it could commonly be sold for.

The common estimation of the market in effect determined the just price. Debate and discussion on this matter continues, but no serious scholar has been so foolish as to reject de Roover's findings root and branch.

I develop this point at even greater length in my book "The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy," which has received the endorsements of the economics chairmen at Christendom College and the University of Dallas.

An interesting tidbit, by the way, that I discuss in "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" is that at the very time Henry VIII was engaged in the suppression of England's monasteries, those monks were on the verge of developing dedicated blast furnaces for the production of cast iron. Henry may have delayed the Industrial Revolution for two and a half centuries.

Q: One of the more interesting claims of your book is that Western legal systems developed from canon law. How was this possible considering the seemingly incongruous subject matter?

Woods: What I argue is that canon law served as a model for developing Western states seeking to codify and systematize their own legal systems. Harold Berman, the great scholar of Western law, contends that the first modern legal system in the Western world was the Church's canon law.

And that canon law, particularly as codified in Gratian's "Concordance of Discordant Canons," served as a model of what Western states sought to accomplish.

Scholars of Church law showed the barbarized West how to take a patchwork of custom, statutory law and countless other sources, and produce from them a coherent legal order whose structure was internally consistent and in which previously existing contradictions were synthesized or otherwise resolved.

Moreover, the subject matter of canon law was not as far removed from that of civil law as we might think.

For example, the Church had jurisdiction over marriage. The canon law of marriage held that a valid marriage required the free consent of both the man and the woman, and that a marriage could be held invalid if it took place under duress or if one of the parties entered into the marriage on the basis of a mistake regarding either the identity or some important quality of the other person.

"Here," says Berman, "were the foundations not only of the modern law of marriage but also of certain basic elements of modern contract law, namely, the concept of free will and related concepts of mistake, duress and fraud."

Q: Additionally, you note that the concepts of international law and human rights were developed by 16th-century Spanish scholastics such as Francisco de Vitoria. How might this fact be relevant to today's discussions of international law, as well as the Holy See's role in shaping international institutions?

Woods: People such as Francisco de Vitoria were convinced that international law, which codified the natural moral law in international relations, could serve to facilitate peaceful coexistence among people of disparate cultures and religions.

The idea of international law, as the Late Scholastics saw it, was an extension of the idea that no one, not even the state, was exempt from moral constraints. This idea ran completely contrary to the Machiavellian view that the state was morally autonomous and bound by no absolute moral standards.

While the idea of international law is morally indispensable and philosophically unimpeachable, there are practical difficulties associated with its enforcement by an international agency.

If the institution has no coercive powers it will be impotent; if it does have coercive powers then it, too, must be protected against and becomes a threat to the international common good.

There is also the risk that the organization will seek to go beyond mediation and peacekeeping and seek to intervene in the domestic matters of member states or to undermine traditional institutions in those states.

This, of course, is what has happened today, what with the radical politics on constant display at the United Nations. The Holy See's role in international relations, it seems to me, is both to advance peace by means of its own initiatives, and to remain the great obstacle to the leftist social agenda put forth at typical U.N. conferences.

Q: It seems that over the last 40 or 50 years, Catholic contributions to art, literature and science have waned. Additionally, Catholic influence in the academy and other important cultural institutions has also declined. Why do you think this is the case?

Woods: This is a tough one to answer in brief, though I take it up to some extent in my book "The Church Confronts Modernity." That book looks at the great vigor of the Catholic Church in America during the first half of the 20th century.

Here was a self-confident Church that engaged in healthy interaction with the surrounding culture without being absorbed by it.

Hilaire Belloc observed at the time that "the more powerful, the more acute, and the more sensitive minds of our time are clearly inclining toward the Catholic side."

Historian Peter Huff notes that the Catholic Church in America "witnessed such a steady stream of notable literary conversions that the statistics tended to support Calvert Alexander's hypothesis of something suggesting a cultural trend."

According to historian Charles Morris, "Despite the defeat of Al Smith, American Catholics achieved an extraordinary ideological self-confidence by the 1930s, much to the envy of Protestant ministers."

That self-confidence and sense of mission has, for a variety of reasons, diminished substantially since the 1960s.

It is dramatically urgent that Catholic intellectual and cultural figures regain that old confidence and sense of identity, for people need to hear the Church's message more than ever. Pope Benedict XVI has made abundantly clear his displeasure with the moral condition of Western civilization and its need for redemption.

Simone Weil once wrote, "I am not a Catholic, but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded."

Western civilization seems to be learning that one the hard way.

[aShepard]

My not being a religious scholar, before 1500 AD how many different denominations of Christian religions were there?? Catholic, and ??, and??, and??

I think it would be more proper to credit Christianity, and Judiasm as the driving forces that were responsible for the western world to break out of the dark ages.

[mike182d]

I have particular disgust for such men because of their vitriol against all things Jewish.

What are you reading of theirs? You will not find a "disgust" for all things Jewish in the history of the Catholic Church as there are many traditions and rituals held fast and carried over by Catholics - the same cannot be said of Protestants, but that is besides the point.

I also think you miss the first several hundred years of oppression and persecution of Christians by the Jews. Convenient isn't it? Christianity actually began as a Jewish sect and remained so for several decades until they received hostility from the Jews.

Matter of fact, if you read any of the Old Testament, the sentiment of the prophets almost mirrors that of the Christian Church: 1. God gaves the law to His chosen people, 2. they rejected it, therefore they stand condemned for rejecting the Lord and His covenant.

You might as well label Isaiah, Moses, David, Elijah, or even Jesus as "anti-semetic" too. Their opinion of faithless Jews is no different than Christianity's. The difference is, instead of Jews being faithless to the original covenant, they are being faithless to the new covenant. Its the same story either way and its very hypocritical to finger the Christians for this one. Those sentiments are all throughout the Bible.

[mike182d]

I think it would be more proper to credit Christianity, and Judiasm as the driving forces that were responsible for the western world to break out of the dark ages.

What is different about the Catholic Church and the whole of Christianity prior to the 1500s? Its the same thing. Ergo, to adjust your statement to reflect your own points:

"I think it would be more proper to credit the Catholic Church and Judaism..."

[aShepard]

Nah! I'll stick with Christianity, not the specific construction of the Catholic church.

[mike182d]

Nah! I'll stick with Christianity, not the specific construction of the Catholic church.

If you can demonstrate how the two are different, I'm all ears.

The Catholic Church was Christianity for the first 1500 years and that's historic fact.

[safisoft]

What are you reading of theirs? You will not find a "disgust" for all things Jewish...

Pick up Martyr's Dialog with Trypho. Pick up anything by Origen. Pick up anything by Augustine. The are rife with statements about how evil Jews are. The church's position regarding Jews for most of its history that the only good Jew was one that had become 'christian' - or maybe one that was a target for conversion. The Presbyterian church today is much the same (Calvin was also vitriolic against Jews).

The reason why Israel's closest friends in 'Christendom' are conservative evangelicals is because they are the largest group of 'Christians' that has repudiated Supercessinism (i.e. replacement theology). Roman Catholics have not repudiated it, but make it their entire focus for what they call the 'Old Testament'.

[aShepard]

....The Catholic Church was Christianity for the first 1500 years and that's historic fact.....

I guess that this is my whole point. The book is entitled:

How the Church Built Western Civilization

But the poster changed the title by adding - Catholic -

I don't think that there had to be a Pope, or Saints, or other precepts of today's Catholism to advance western civilization. Just the opposite, as many independent thinkers decided to break away from these religious trappings starting in the 1500's.

Certainly these thinkers have added as much wisdom to modern man, although they're not Catholic. Also, certainly Judiasm was instrumental in the early years, and their influence has growth over the centuries.

Maybe we're talking semantics, like what the meaning of is - is, but I reject the notion that it was the trappings of Catholicism that fostered knowledge, and that if other Christian idealogy had been in place during that period that the growth of knowledge would have suffered.

[mike182d]

Pick up Martyr's Dialog with Trypho. Pick up anything by Origen. Pick up anything by Augustine. The are rife with statements about how evil Jews are. The church's position regarding Jews for most of its history that the only good Jew was one that had become 'christian' - or maybe one that was a target for conversion. The Presbyterian church today is much the same (Calvin was also vitriolic against Jews).

Would you like a list of how many times the prophets and leaders of the Jewish people call them an "evil" generation or an "evil" people for rejecting God's covenant?

With Christ came the establishment of a new covenant with the whole world - most especially the Jews. They rejected this covenant with God, so I fail to see why you expect "neo-Jews" or believers in Yahweh's new covenant to see them any different than the prophets and Jewish leaders did under the Old Covenant. They were not rejecting Jews simply because they were Jewish (in fact Augustine praises the Jews who were faithful to the Law in City of God) but rather because the Jews of their time, just like the Jews throughout the Old Testament, rejected God's covenant with them.

If you're going to make such an accusation against Christians, you must necessarily include Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah in your list. They were all making the same point against Jews who disobeyed God's Law.

[mike182d]

But the poster changed the title by adding - Catholic -

The official title of Thomas Woods' book is "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization." The error lies in the reporter's omission.

See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/05/23/DI2005052300939_pf.html

You'll find that specifically "Catholic" beliefs and missions are responsible for some of the greatest progress in Western Civilization, such as the need to better educate Priests in seminaries created what is now the university system, and so forth.

[safisoft]

Would you like a list of how many times the prophets and leaders of the Jewish people call them an "evil" generation or an "evil" people for rejecting God's covenant?

How convenient that in your mind, HaShem simply says 'never mind' and lets you break it.

As for Augustine praising the Jews for faithfulness to the Law, you are wrong. He praises them for being faithful to what He saw the 'Law' to be, a sort of retro-active 'Law of Christ'. The fact is, the Jews throughout the past 2,000 have been more faithful to the Law than Christians have... so did G-d change His mind?

[mike182d]

My simple point is that when St. Augustine and the early Christians spoke against the Jewish people, its in the same vain as Moses, David, or the Prophets would. It is not "anti-semetic" in the Nazi sense of the word. Granted, some got carried away in their zeal, but so did some of the Jewish prophets in speaking against the faithless Jews.

The fact is, the Jews throughout the past 2,000 have been more faithful to the Law than Christians have... so did G-d change His mind?

You're dealing with an entirely different theological issue here.

Consider the following:
When you enroll in a University, there are certain laws governing your development and academic achievements. When you graduate, you have succesfully fullfilled all the duties and obligations required of the University and now have your degree. However, upon receiving your degree, even though you are not obligated to follow all the laws of the University, you can't leave behind the formation attained by those laws or waste what you've received in the diploma.

The relationship between God's New and Old Covenants are not a matter of God "changing his mind" but rather part of his larger plan in sanctifying and redeeming the whole of the human race from their fallen state that can be viewed in similar light as the University analogy. As Christ says: "I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it." Basically, Christians are not bound to sacrifice lambs and place the blood on their doors at Passover because Christ is the "diploma" of the Law, so to speak. With His fulfillment, we are no longer required to do all that the "old" law required while at the same time applying the formation achieved by implementing the Law into our new life in Him.

This topic is immense, and probably shouldn't be discussed here, but that's an overly simplistic summation of the Old and New Covenant's relation to each other in the presence of an eternal, unchanging God.

[safisoft]

Basically, Christians are not bound to sacrifice lambs and place the blood on their doors at Passover because Christ is the "diploma" of the Law, so to speak. With His fulfillment, we are no longer required to do all that the "old" law required while at the same time applying the formation achieved by implementing the Law into our new life in Him.

Since you brought up diplomas, then you should know that on this topic I have a doctorate.

Seriously, the relationship between the 'Old Covenant' and the 'New Covenant' is largely missed in mainstream Christianity because it is confused on both. The 'New Covenant' from Jer 31 is claimed by Christianity, and yet it has 7 promises of which are NOT presently fulfilled except in some mystical way (I don't like mystical where Scripture does not make it so). Not that it is not already partially operable, but it is not yet complete - and diddling with the Greek verb tenses in Hebrews and Colossians is proof that Christian 'scholars' don't want the masses to be 'confused' by a YET FUTURE 'New Covenant'.

There is one promise of particular interest in Jer 31 in light of your reference of the 'Law'. It says that He will write the Torah upon Israel and Judah's hearts. What Torah (Law) were the readers of Jeremiah to understand? A DIFFERENT LAW? Does G-d change? When the writer of Hebrews quotes this passage, he/she (Pricilla maybe?) has no issue with the 'Law'. Nor does Ya'akov (James) in Acts 21. In fact, he tells Paul that there were 'myriads and myriads' of believers in Jerusalem, all ZEALOUS FOR THE LAW. Did someone forget to tell the First Century believers that it was passe?

Lastly, your understanding of the sacrifices is through a dirty lense. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the disciples of the Master that sacrifices were not desirable. Paul himself makes them in Acts 21-22 - and for four other men as well (if you knew the Torah, you would know that, because you would know that Num 6 requires sin sacrifices for ending a vow of this sort). Also, if you will look in Zech 14 you will see a yet future event - a return to sacrifices at the "Feast of Tabernacles" [Sukkot]. If you knew the Torah you would know that the Messianic Kingdom has a Temple - and sacrifices. The last 8 chapters of Ezekiel detail a yet future time where all Israel celebrates Passover (with Passover sacrifices) in the Messianic Era.

The fact is that since most 'Christians' are dismissive of the front 3/4 of their Bible, they aren't in touch with the very things they claim to know so well. The fact is, the 'New Covenant' is not 'new' at all - it is from before the foundations of the world. It does not replace the 'Old' - it operates along side it - because it is about the World to Come.

Not my words only. Take some of these key words and look them up in Hebrew and Greek. You will see what I mean. While you are at it, check out the Greek of Hebrews and Colossians. Count the number of times the verb tenses are switched when put into English.

[mike182d]

Since you brought up diplomas, then you should know that on this topic I have a doctorate.

lol. You should have said that before! I would have tried to produce a more thorough and prepared response than what I did. It must have seemed quite juvenile...

As you suggest I will further research the Hebrew Bible and the Law detailed within to provide a more sufficient answer for your purposes. However, I will provide an immediate off-the-cuff response as the Psalms in this morning's Liturgy of the Hours deal with the very issue we're discussing.

The fact is that since most 'Christians' are dismissive of the front 3/4 of their Bible, they aren't in touch with the very things they claim to know so well. The fact is, the 'New Covenant' is not 'new' at all - it is from before the foundations of the world. It does not replace the 'Old' - it operates along side it - because it is about the World to Come.

I think that most Catholic theologians since the beginning would absolutely agree with this remark. The term "new" is admitedly a bit of a misnomer for the very reason you suggest and I was trying, in an overly simplistic way, to illustrate that very point with the example of the University.

You are correct that the Law - not just "natural" law but the Law - was written in the hearts of the Jews. But an crucial question to ask is: What was the desired end of the Law, what purpose did it seek?

The psalm chanted in this morning's liturgy of the hours is Psalm 51 in which David cries aloud to the Lord:

"For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse, my sacrifice, a contrite spirit, a humbled contrite heart you will not spurn."

Now this can be very confusing given that throughout the history of the Jews God is demanding sacrifice and burnt offering. However, as the Law is written in the hearts of the Jews, the Jews can feel in their own hearts traces of a greater understanding of the purpose for the Law and the great Prophets constantly remind them of this, most notably Isaiah. The sacrifices offered by the Jews, while necessary to God, were merely precursurs to a final sacrfice that would fulfill everything that the Law commanded or sought and not ends in themselves. The Messiah will not come just to fulfill the destiny of the Jewish people but the very Law itself.

I'm glad that you brought up the necessity of a Temple because, believe it or not, Catholics believe this as well. Christ says that He will destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. The Jews say he's insane and He explains that the Temple will become His own body. The Temple was the Holy of Holies, it was that single place on earth in which God was most truly present. With the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, Christ now becomes the "Holy of Holies," or the Temple if you will and this only makes sense with John 6:50- when Christ says we must eat His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life. In the past, the Jews had to cleanse themselves in preparation to enter the Holy of Holies. With Jesus Christ, God made flesh, the Holy of Holies enters into men to cleanse them and prepare them for the Kingdom of Heaven. That is why Christ is called the "Lamb of God." He is that Paschal Lamb sacrificed for the sins of others and after this sacrifice it was necessary to consume the Lamb.

For the Catholic Church, our bodies become the new "temples" because God chose to dwell within us in a very real and physical way as celebrated in the Eucharist. So, if anything, Catholics have been the only one's satisfying the requirements of the Old Law since the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. The Jews haven't participated in this ritual for over 1900 years.

But....none of this makes sense apart from Judaism or the "Old" Covenant. Does it not say something about God's love for His chosen people that He chose to actually become a Jew in the flesh? Jesus Christ lived a Jew and died a Jew and the Catholic Church has always believed that the Salvation of mankind can only come from the Jews.

[safisoft]

Jesus Christ lived a Jew and died a Jew and the Catholic Church has always believed that the Salvation of mankind can only come from the Jews.

I am greatful for your thoughtful responses. I truly appreciate your patience in that regard as well.

I raised my questions rhetorically, and yet you honestly sought to answer them - and I agree with much of your responses.

Understand that I am not pushing anything, but I recently wrote a Bible study course on the book of Hebrews from a literary and historical perspective. Part One of that study is on my web site and you are welcome to it (I never charge). You my likely reject some of it, but it also tries to honestly answer some of the questions that we bring to this discussion.

www.bereansonline.org

Shalom brother,

[Tao Yin]

If the keys given to Peter were so important, then why were they only mentioned in 1 out of the 3 tellings of the story?

The point is that the keys were not the point of the story.

The keys do give me pause, but not enough to believe in secret teachings or evolutionary theology.

[Tao Yin]

The year 220? Thanks, I stand corrected, but that still doesn't invalidate my proposition that the keys were an invention to prove a point that they already held to be true.

The problem is that I don't believe in secret teachings or evolutionary doctrine.

You mentioned the Trinity as evolutionary doctrine, but that is terminology. Nothing has been added to the Scriptures regarding the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We just use a different name.

Regarding the keys given to Peter (only mentioned in 1 of the 3 tellings of the story) their meaning has been a theological evolution. Something has been added to Scripture, not just restated.

The same evolutionary doctrine can be seen in the beliefs about Mary. I don't know if she was a perpetual virgin, but I know belief either way is not a condition of salvation.

Beleif that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary is found in every creed. Claiming that belief of Mary's perpetual virginity is a condition of salvation is only found in the writings of some Pope.

My beliefs are founded on the apostolic church. The beliefs I follow have not evolved over time, but are founded on the rock; belief in Jesus. Salvation is by grace, through faith, for works.

[conservonator]

The fact that they were mentioned once is enough. The keys were an integral part of the story, or do you think Christ uses symbolic language for superfluous reasons? There is no "secret teaching", we're not gnostic, and evolution is not a dogma so no one is required to believe it at all.

[Tao Yin]

You are correct, I was rude. Sorry.

[Tao Yin]

The fact remains that the story is told 3 times. Each time it is told, the recurring theme is belief in Jesus.

Story 1: Jesus is the Christ!
Story 2: Jesus is the Christ!
Story 3: Jesus is the Christ! PS - Peter is in charge and beleiving this is a condition of salvation!

Don't you see the absurdity of your claim.

[FourtySeven]

The Real Inquisition

Excellent resource! Thank you, this will be added to my collection at home.