Catholic History Restored

Campus Report ^ | June 23, 2008 | Malcolm Kline

[bs9021]

Catholic History Restored

by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 23, 2008

One of, if not the main, problem with the way that history has been taught for decades is that students gain little indication of the majesty of it all. Facts that help explain why the world works as it does are casually tossed aside by those we would entrust with passing on the past because they do not fit some theory du jour.

Such theories usually spin around the alleged avarice of Christian white males, such as, supposedly, our founding fathers. Richard Hofstadter famously echoed this motif in his still-widely used The American Political Tradition, that the framers were merely protecting their own wealth.

Of course, he didn’t mention that:

• America had no banks at the time;

• The founders had to go abroad to finance the revolution; and

• A running theme in the letters of the founders, particularly George Washington, was “We can do something more than winning this war. We can deserve to win it.”

This attitude, as expressed in private correspondence, would indicate that, academic assertions to the contrary, the patriots were serious when they appealed to God and country. Similarly, key moments in Catholic history are in danger of fading into obscurity, particularly in educational institutions that bear that religious designation.

Google the phrase “college lectures and courses on the Battle of Lepanto” and you will not come up with any immediate links to Catholic university web sites. Yet it was arguably the decisive battle in the 16th century war between Christendom, as Europe was then known, and the Ottoman Empire.

“It was the bloodiest battle in history with the greatest loss of life in a single day until World War II,” Christopher Check, the executive vice-president of the Rockford Institute says....

[what's up]

Google the phrase “college lectures and courses on the Battle of Lepanto

I could be wrong but I doubt there are many courses (other than in military schools) that would have a course on a particular battle.

I would think course topics would involve wars (WWI, Civil War, 100 Years War, Crusades) rather than single battles.

[Aquinasfan]

So many myths to undo.

The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition

[SuziQ]

That was an interesting read. I checked Netflix to see if they had that program on DVD, but they don’t. They did, however, have a program that was made for PBS, about the Spanish Inquisition, after the Vatican Archives were opened in 1998. I put it in our Queue so I can check it out.