Thank God For Columbus!

Should we or shouldn’t we celebrate Columbus day? Every year the debate rages around this time whether the expansion of European civilization into the western hemisphere was a positive or negative development in human history.

Of course Columbus himself was a complex figure, and there is much to love or hate about him depending on one’s point of view. The leftward side of the debate points out Columbus’s greed, ambition, pride and at times cruelty.

And yet on the other side , one must admire the bravery, tenacity, and Columbus’ willingness to venture at great risk. Columbus also had a pious side to him, for he felt he was part of a greater purpose than his own ambition. He believed he was fulfilling the Words of the Hebrew prophets of the Bible in his voyages.

But obviously Columbus day isn’t merely about Columbus ,its really about western civilisation, and it’s expansion among the native peoples of the western hemisphere. That historical fact can either be seen as a breakthrough or as an appalling injustice.

All of this annual back and forth has come to us courtesy of multiculturalism, the philosophy that has flourished in our education system for at least forty years.

This post-modern doctrine holds that all cultures are equally valid, and that one culture’s ‘narrative’ is as good as the other. Worldviews are just ‘narratives’, viewpoints, all equally valid, because MultiCulturalism is radical relativism.

The idea that all cultures are equal sounds good to the naive idealist, but it couldn’t be true. All cultures are not equal, some are positively toxic and a good many have been wiped out because they were unsustainable,(Sodom and Gomorrah come to mind).

Multiculturalism is a dangerous fantasy, because it is in reality a veiled assault on Western civilization, relentlessly working to invalidate the incredible accomplishments of the West, scientifically,socially, culturally and otherwise.

The latest standard bearer of Western Civilization has primarily been the United States of America, for the last eighty years at least.

Therefore the history of the USA has to be ‘deconstructed’, through a toxic process of revisionist history , exaggerating the flaws and sins of the past, minimising the accomplishments, and holding our ancestors to modern-day standards of thought and behaviour.

The real beef the Multi-culturists have is with Christianity. The west was the flourishing place for at least the last thousand years for the development of Christianity, therefore Western civilisation is the ‘perpetual bad guy’ in the retelling of world history.

To the Devotees of MC, the West’s astonishing progress and the elevation in standards of living she has brought to the rest of the world, must have come at the expense of the third World, or the Moslem world.

Multiculturalism is really an Expression of AntiChrist, and it’s problem is with God himself. It is AntiChrist because it retells the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall.

The Third world was Eden, until the evil Europeans came to colonize . Never mind that the Tribes of the world have slaughtered, subjugated and enslaved and exploited each other ever since Adam and Eve fell.

To those raised on relentless propaganda such as Disney’s Pocahantas, or the recent fantasy, Avatar, the third world , and pre-Columbian North and South America, was a giant, peace-loving Eden, until the Europeans came to despoil it.

In the final analysis Multi-Culturalists are resenting the Sovereignty of God.God moves in the affairs of nations, Power belongs to Him, he gives and takes away,raises and elevates for his own good purpose.

And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation:And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?(Daniel 4:34-35)

The same God who raised up the United States of America, and used Columbus to discover it, allowed Europeans to colonize it, and drive the Indians further west, Is now judging the United States and the rest of the European nations, in short the West for their sins.

It’s about God, and his Lordship over History. Those who cry loud and long about Slavery, (abolished 150 years ago, after the bloodiest War the USA ever had),never seem to mention that Slavery was the rule in Africa, Asia, the Muslim world, and the rest of the world for Millenia. Only the West, Britain and America insisted on its demise and that at great cost.

As good Multiculturists, they are selective about History, rarely mentioning that at the height of the slave trade there were European slaves in Africa, 3000 black slave holders in the South, and that Muslim slave traders have been bartering with tribal chieftains in Africa for centuries , trading in human lives!

Resenting history is big business now, it is being used to divide people, to stop the healing of ancient wounds and to deny the accomplishments of decent and well-meaning people, for with people of conscience and decency, Guilt is a great tool of manipulation.But that same God of history sees and is taking note. Happy Columbus day everybody!

Most everything you said, once again, is not relevant as far as I am concerned. The question of 7 million is legitimate, but I did not say it was 7 million, only that some have suggested that.

When you tout some of the “good” things in Central America, all you are really doing is touting the advantage that state sponsored conquest offers in the short term. The reformers that came to America came as settlers, not conquerors. Ideals and principles vs. conquest and greed. In time that pays off.

I suggest you move to Honduras, the murder capital of the world, and start tweeting from there about the greatness that Roman Catholic Spain brought to central America.

Regarding Calvin
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390971.001.0001/acprof-9780195390971
also freeper quotes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2902922/posts
http://books.google.com/books?id=CY2FMK-LdYgC&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=quotes+John+Calvin+George+Bancroft&source=bl&ots=iy0sXvYDmI&sig=nCVfj1wPJcmsddNFd1St3gQ79Hg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oV89VJz9A4i0yASk8AE&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=quotes%20John%20Calvin%20George%20Bancroft&f=false
http://www.amazon.com/Creed-Presbyterians-Egbert-Watson-Smith/dp/1410108988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413309602&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Creed+of+Presbyterians

“You are crediting the books by John Calvin for what America is today more so than the contribution of any other man. That is pure hogwash and denotes how close minded and fanatic you are.”

LOL, that puts me in great company. President John Adams said similar. And George Bancroft sometimes called the father of American History. OR German Historian Leopold von Ranke

The fact that you would call declarations of eminent historians and a founding president of the US, close minded and fanatic is telling. More importantly it shows you really have NO CLUE as to the development of ideas that founded America(U.S.).

Nobody is perfect. It is hard to believe that John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of United States, and his second president, felt inspired by the teachings of John Calvin, the murderous tyrant of Geneve.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt felt such a close friendship with Joseph Stalin, that he called “Uncle Joe” to the genocide of 12 million Ukrainians.

Calvin, the Tyrant of Geneva

Fr. Leonel Franca, S.J.

http://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/e034rpCalvin_Franca05.htm

Calvin was as proud as Luther. At age 26, without any serious theological formation, he published his Institutes of the Christian Religion in which he pretended to explain all the doctrine necessary for salvation. In it he set out his thinking on the most elevated and intricate questions of dogma and morals to orient his action as impromptu reformer.

According to this young man, the whole Magisterium of the Roman Church – including all her Popes – had erred completely on the interpretation of the Gospel. Only he, during his three years of hasty private studies, understood the genuine meaning of the truths that the entire world had missed. He is the bright beacon that shines alone in the universal darkness…

The pseudo-Reformer of Geneva allowed no word spoken against him or his doctrine
Writing about the satisfaction, or reparation, demanded for sins committed, he stated: “Regarding satisfaction, I am little moved by the numerous passages in the writing of the fathers relating to satisfaction. I see many of them – frankly almost all the books that have come down to us – went astray of the truth in this matter.”(1)

Woe to those who would dare to disagree with the young doctor! He would call his adversaries offensive names: fools, crazy, frenetic, sophists, drunk, mad, sacrilegious, sycophants, wild beasts, atheists and swine, among other epithets.

Jean Jacques Rousseau describes him: “Who was ever more caustic, imperious, strong-willed and more divinely infallible, according to his own opinion, than Calvin? For him the least opposition, the least objection that someone dared to present was always considered a work of Satan, a crime deserving to be punished by fire.”(2)

When fellow pseudo-reformer John Eckius, who disagreed with him on various points, got sick in Geneva, Calvin wrote this about him: “One says that Eckius will recover: The world still does not deserve to be delivered of this wild beast.”(3) Is this the language of charity appropriate for one who pretended to be the restorer of evangelical Christianity?

Calvin, whose political influence grew enormously in Geneva from 1546 to 1564, imposed severe penalties on those who would return to Catholicism, not attend his sermons or speak a word against his doctrines or his person. Even Protestant authors, such as J.B. Galiffé, acknowledge the despotism of Calvin:

“For years people were obliged to report in minute detail every word spoken against him and the doctrine of predestination, with which he identified himself to such a degree that to speak against the dogma became as dangerous as to speak against him. The poor were dragged to prisons, scourged, reviled, obliged to walk in the streets barefoot wearing a penitential habit and carrying a torch to expiate for what Calvin arbitrarily called blasphemies.”(4)

For having disagreed with him on some points of doctrine, Sebastian Castillo, rector of a boys school in Geneva and an old friend of Calvin, was fired from his position and expelled from the city. For accusing the Calvinist doctrine of being absurd, Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec was sent to prison for weeks and then banished from Geneva.

Miguel Servet, condemned to burn for disagreeing with Calvin
For criticizing Calvin at a banquet, Pierre Ameaux, a city official, was forced to make expiation by parading through the city squares in a hair-shirt and begging God for forgiveness. These are the words of the official sentence:

“He is condemned to go around the city in penitential clothing, bareheaded, carrying a torch in his hand. When arriving before the tribunal, he must kneel, confess having evilly and maliciously spoken vile words, and manifest his repentance; then, he must beg for mercy before God and the justice of man. He is condemned to pay all the expenses. This sentence should be publically announced.”(5)

Others were still more unfortunate and had to pay with their lives for the crime of opposing the tyrant of Geneva. For having accused Calvin of being a heretic, Jacques Gruet was tortured and beheaded in 1547. Spanish physician Miguel Servet was sent to the flames for having censured the opinions of the master; he asked for a lawyer but this right was denied to him. Italian Valentino Gentile was condemned to a similar penalty but was forgiven after he humbly repented. Later, however, he was beheaded in Berne by the Swiss Protestants there.

It is horrifying to review the many criminal processes in Geneva during the autocratic reign of “this tyrant priest who submitted Geneva to the most infamous servitude,” Galiffé continues.(6) He reports that the number of judgments by public tribunals normally made in one year in the city “was easily surpassed in a single month or even a week under the rule of Calvin. Often there were many of these spectacles in a single day.”(7) Further on, he affirms that “two years of Calvin’s government produced 414 criminal processes. … There were hundreds of processes of this kind in that epoch, which some dare to call the most beautiful of our history.”(8)

Calvinist atrocities, 16th century woodgraving
Multiple death sentences are also reported by this same Protestant scholar, Galiffé, who delved into the records of that time. Describing a short period of Calvin’s rule he says, “One counts 30 executions of men and 28 of women, subdivided by method of death: 13 persons hanged, 10 beheaded, 55 quartered, 35 burned alive after being tortured.”(9)

Reporting the religious persecutions of Calvin, author Jean Tet affirms that “from 1542 to 1546, which was the softer period of his government, we count 58 capital executions, 76 banishments and 900 imprisonments.”(10)

In the blindness of his pride, the head of Swiss Protestantism issued the most extravagant moralizing prohibitions. He forbade sweets to be served at wedding banquets.(11) He forbade all kinds of amusement – especially gambling, singing and dances – as inventions of the Devil.(12) His despotism reached the point of forbidding people to drink from a mountain spring that was famous for healing the fever under the pretext that it was a form of idolatry. There were en masse denunciations of persons who were interrogated, placed under arrest and punished because they were healed in that manner.(13)

Notwithstanding this “moralization,” Galiffé concludes, never before did immorality take hold and spread as it did in the period of Calvin’s government.(14)
1. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tran. by Henry Beverage (Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), Book Third, chap. IV, n. 38; Opera, vol. 2, p. 489.
2. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Lettres de la Montagne (Amsterdam, 1764), vol. 1, p. 103.
3. Opera, vol. 11, p. 217.
4. J.B. Galiffe, Notices genealogiques sur les familles genévoises, (Genève: 1836), vol. 3, p. 545.
5. J.B. Galiffe, Nouvelles pages d’histoire exacte, 1863, p. 60.
6. J.B. Galiffe, Notices genealogiques sur les familles genévoises, vol. 3, p. 538.
7. J.B. Galiffe, Nouvelles pages d’histoire exact, pp. 105-106.
8. J.B. Galiffe, Notices genealogiques sur les familles genévoises, vol. 3, p. 544.
9. J.B. Galiffe, Nouvelles pages d’histoire exact, p. 100.
10. Jean Tet, Histoire de la persecutions religieuse à Genève (Paris: Lecoffre, 1879), p. 473.
11. Calvin à Genève, art. 141.
12. J.B. Galiffe, Notices genealogiques sur les familles genévoises, vol. 3, p. 381.
13. Ibid, vol. 3, p. 528.
14. J.B. Galiffe, Nouvelles pages d’histoire exact, pp. 95-98.

JOHN CALVIN, THE TYRANT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V9t_k5saGQ&feature=player_detailpage

According to our erudite Prophet: “The reformers that came to America came as settlers, not conquerors. Ideals and principles vs. conquest and greed. In time that pays off.”

But, according to History, the Pilgrims were Calvinists that turn out from being oppressors in Geneve, to be oppressed by their brothers, the Anglican Protestants in England. They came to America in quest of freedom while robbing the Indian’s territories not as conquerors, but as settlers. What a splendid Orwellian manipulation of the language. While on the other hand, the Catholic Spaniards came as conquerors and settled in the New World marrying the natives establishing families that gave to the world a new race, the “mestizo”. The British colonized Australia sending criminals from their jails.

As attested the American professor of History, Dr. Philip W. Powell: “the English government and people, and their New World progeny, exhibited for the most part, a supreme unconcern for the protection and welfare of the American Indian.”

According to American historian Francis C. Kelly: “A surprisingly large proportion of the (Spanish) pioneers of America were college men; and intelligence went hand in hand with heroism in the early settlements of the New World.” Along with the first missionaries many historians arrived, like the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and Toribio de Benavente (”Motilínea) who learned the native languages and tried to chronicle their history, traditions and legends, which until then had been handed down by word of mouth among the Indians for generations. With the exception of the Aztecs who left behind pictographic codicils, and the Mayas who had a hieroglyphic system, most of the Indians had no written language. Nothing escaped the inquisitive and sharp eye of these wise men; the flora, the fauna, the mineralogy and the geography of America broadened their intellectual horizons. Many, upon learning in depth about the native cultures, showed great admiration by leaving behind objective records of their experiences. More than 4 million documents and publications of great historical and scientific value from the 16th to the 19th centuries can be presently found at the “Archives of the Indies” in Seville.

Dear prophet, I don’t know the reason for your pathological fixation with Honduras. I am a proud American by choice, not by accident of birth. But, if you want to go to present times, beware that United States is rapidly following on the steps of Latin America embraced to discredited socialist schemes.

The theme we are debating is about the legacy of Catholic Spain in America during the discovery and evangelization of this hemisphere. Defies rationality to think that the first English colonists who were fleeing from religious persecution in Europe, had the means to buy land from the Indians.

You brought to the dialogue some very important and somewhat disturbing affirmations. The most choking was to affirm that John Calvin books exerted the strongest influence in the Founding Fathers ideology. Hopefully, John Adams opinion of Calvin was not necessarily shared by most of the other Founding Fathers.

I do not see any bragging about the United States Calvinist roots. Another manipulation of History is that when they refer to the Pilgrims they affirm that they came from Europe fleeing religious persecution instead of specifying that were fleeing from Protestant religious persecution leaving in the lector the implication that they were fleeing from the Catholic Inquisition.

Short of valid arguments, dear prophet, you try to put in doubt the scholarship of a respected American historian; but in the article are the chronicles of a first class witness who visited most the hemisphere in the XVIII century, the worldwide known Protestant German naturalist and founder of modern Geography, Alexander Von Humboldt.

By the end of the 18th century Humboldt declared: “The work of the mines” -he pointed out- “is absolutely free in the whole kingdom of New Spain; no Indian, no Mestizo, can be forced to work in the mines. It is absolutely untrue that the Court of Madrid sent convicts to America to make them work in the gold and silver mines...This policy was in striking contrast with that of England in her North American colonies. The transportation of English felons to America was also a practice of the British Government... in some instances felons were not the only involuntary emigrants from England whose labor was appropriated.

Towards the end of the 18th century it became common practice for captains of English and Dutch vessels to entice ignorant peasants from England, Ireland and Germany, by flattering promises of wealth, to accompany them to America, where they had no sooner arrived than they were sold as bondsmen to defray the cost of their passage and entertainment.”

After visiting Mexico in 1803, Humboldt maintained: “No city of the New Continent, not even excepting those of the United States, can display such great and solid scientific establishments as the capital of Mexico. The capital and several other cities have scientific establishments, which will bear a comparison with those of Europe... Instruction is communicated gratis at the Academy of Fine Arts and hundreds of young students without consideration of rank, color, and race, were confounded; we see the Indian and the Mestizo sitting beside the white, and the son of a poor artisan in emulation with the children of the great lords of the country...No European government has sacrificed greater sums to advance the knowledge of the vegetal kingdom than the Spanish government...All these researches have not only enriched science with more than four thousand of new species of plants, but have also contributed to diffuse a taste for natural history among the inhabitants of the country.”

Why don’t you then have an open mind to accept undisputed historical facts? In regard to the importance given to science by the Crown of Spain we must take notice of the fact that “a medical school was opened at the University of Mexico 204 years before Harvard, and began the study of anatomy and surgery, with dissection, eighty six years before William Hunter opened the first school of dissection in England.”

According to American historian Francis C. Kelley Kelley at the end of the Spanish rule “Mexico was so full of schools and colleges for boys and girls, for handicrafts, trades, and arts of all kinds, as to justify a sweeping statement: Up to that day there never had been a country on the face of the earth that in so short a time had done so much in an educational way. When the circumstances of time and conditions surrounding the effort and the obstacles to be overcome, are considered, history presents no finer record of educational achievement and success.”

To recognize the great achievements of the Spanish colonization do not demerits at all the even greater achievements of the American colonies once they were free from British bondage.

Once again you spend many paragraphs wasting your time talking about the greatness of Spanish ruled America. The fruits are apparent today!!!!! Say it over and over to yourself dozens of times, because you cant seem to absorb what is obvious to the most casual observer.

“United States is rapidly following on the steps of Latin America embraced to discredited socialist schemes”
EXACTLY! Once America abandoned its protestant Christian theological ideas, things go down hill fast. That is the whole point you keep missing!
from: http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=138585
““The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
– John Quincy Adams”
“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.”
– Supreme Court

IT IS THE IDEAS OF THE REFORMATION THAT CREATED THE MEN AND DOCUMENTS THAT FORMED AMERICA.

You keep arguing the greatness of the Spanish rule of conquest and dominion and that is exactly why you are so wrong. It is not conquest and control and forced schools that made America what is was, it was the Love of God and His word made available to the people through the reformation. THE LIBERTY OF CHRIST became the liberty of America which became the beacon of liberty for the world.

“Defies rationality to think that the first English colonists who were fleeing from religious persecution in Europe, had the means to buy land from the Indians.”

To be that ignorant of history, and yet doggedly argue it does not say much for your character.

“I do not see any bragging about the United States Calvinist roots.”
Well if all you are reading is that Catholic historian you quoted I am not surprised.

You really need to read some of the works about the IDEAS that created America, and their evolution. Some wrongly assert they are mostly from the “Enlightenment”, which is itself not independent entirely from the reformation. Maybe you could move beyond your narrow field of Catholic authors.

Maybe you could start with John Locke. “•Many of Locke’s political ideas were specifically drawn from British [reformation]theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600), whom Locke quotes heavily in approbation throughout his own political writings”
“•Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were heavily relied upon by the American Founding Fathers. In fact, signer of the Declaration Richard Henry Lee declared that the Declaration itself was “copied from Locke’s Treatise on Government.” 5 Yet so heavily did Locke draw from the Bible in developing his political theories that in his first treatise on government, he invoked the Bible in one thousand three hundred and forty nine references; in his second treatise, he cited it one hundred and fifty seven times. “
http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=106

here is a page where someone summed up their thoughts on the high level connections
http://www.reformationsa.org/index.php/reformation/115-the-reformation-roots-of-western-civilisation

I fully agree with you that this nation is so great because it was founded in Judeo-Christian morals and principles, and that abandoning those pillars of our nation is bringing it to its demise.

Far from demerit, I profoundly admire the works of the Founding Fathers, regardless of their religious background. I am not as blind, as you are, as not to recognize the achievements of those who do not share my religious convictions.

Most parents try to give the best education possible to their children, but not every child takes advantage of their education the same way.

Also I believe it is not very enlightened in your part to despise the education of children while they were also receiving the Word of God. Before the middle of the 16th century, bishop Zumárraga brought the first printing press to Mexico, almost at the same time that printing was introduced in Madrid (100 years prior to Boston.) In 1539 they published the “Breve y más Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana en Lengua Mexicana y Castellana”, the first book edited in America, a catechism in two languages, Nahuatl and Castilian. By 1575 they were publishing books in 12 different native dialects. Grammar books and dictionaries of several Indian languages were also published in the Universities of Mexico and Lima, whereas in United States’ colonial times, John Eliot’s Indian Bible stood alone.

As a man of faith you should appreciate that in the Spanish colonies, since the very beginning of their arrival to this Continent, the education and saving of the soul of their children were as paramount for them as the education and saving of the souls of Indians.

Your admired John Calvin even though he established a tyrannical theocracy in Geneva of the style of today’s Iranian Islamic republic, but even bloodier. I believe that the Constitution was made to avoid the creation of a theocratic government in U.S. rather than to follow John Calvin’s example. I also think that the Calvinists certainly had also a deleterious cultural influence that justified the burning of witches, trade of slaves, religious intolerance, the foundation of the KKK and the persecution and killing of Blacks, Catholics and specially, Black republicans. It is a historical fact that the main slave traffickers were British and Dutch Reformers. You should not throw stones at others when you have a glass house.

You stated that there is a relationship between the “Enlightenment” and the Reformers, even though the “Enlightenment” gave birth to the age of reason. The Enlightenment attacked basic Christian beliefs and rejected God. Reason and enlightenment became the new Gods.

Although Enlightenment had positive contributions to the world, Marxism and Nazism also found their roots on the Enlightenment. Hitlerism is firmly rooted in the rationalist and scientific outlook of the 18th-century European Enlightenment. Marx is indebted to Enlightenment rationalism.

Dear prophet, is evident that you have a very limited and distorted knowledge of the invaluable legacy of the Church to the world. While the reformers were fighting and killing among themselves, the Catholic Church was saving Europe and the Western civilization from being obliterated by the forces of Islam.

How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
|May 2, 2005 | Thomas Woods

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0101.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ysmbkCzQU

Ask a college student today what he knows about the Catholic Church and his answer might come down to one word: “corruption.” But that one word should be “civilization.” Western civilization has given us the miracles of modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of the rule of law, a unique sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, a philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts that we take for granted as the wealthiest and most powerful civilization in history.

But what is the ultimate source of these gifts? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. Woods’s story goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:

• Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
• How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith
• How the Catholic Church invented the university
• Why what you know about the Galileo affair is wrong
• How Western law grew out of Church canon law
• How the Church humanized the West by insisting on the sacredness of all human life No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth.

A non-Catholic’s View of a Good Book About a Great Civilization-James E. Egolf

Thomas Woods’ book titled HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILD WESTERN CIVILIZATION is an unanswerable antidote to anti-Catholic bashers and their mindless sychophants. Prof. Woods provides a compelling case that Western Civilization could not have thrived without the valuable achievements of the Catholic Church over the past 2,000 years.

Prof. Woods survey of the Catholic Church in late Ancient History and during the Dark Ages makes clear that the Catholic Church authorities and especially the monks were invaluable in preserving learning. He makes clear that the early Catholic monks and nuns were the only literate people in Europe, and they preserved learning by hand copying books and teaching. Prof. Woods’ treatment of this historical episode gives the thoughtful reader an insight as to how crucial those who were in religious orders were to European recovery.

Prof. Woods’ chapter on Medieval universities is solid. He gives the conditions under which teachers and students operated and makes clear that the “Age of Scholasticism” was an intellectually vibrant age. The books gives examples of the curriculum and the emphasis on logic and reason both in learning and solving intellectual issues.

The Age of Reason actually began in the Medieval Catholic universities rather than in the 17th and 18th centuries. Prof. Woods’ evaluation of Medieval Scholasticism compares favorably with John Baldwin’s THE SCHOLATIC CULTURE OF THE MIDDE AGES, 1000-1300.

Chapter five of this book undermines the notion that the Catholic authorities tried to undermine scientific study.

For example, Prof. Woods cites numerous examples of Catholic university officials supporting scientific study and lending considerable resources to the study of astronomy. He also gives an honest assessment of the trial of Galileo who was also highly praised by Catholic authorities including the Pope.

This reviewer learned for the first time that the Jesuits started the study of seismology. This chapter is important because it undermines the false notion that the Catholic Church was against science. One should note that many scientific advances that are taken for granted and which are important originated with the Catholic Church.

Not only did the Catholic Church make invaluable contributions in science and philosophy, but Prof. Woods presents an abundance of evidence of the valuable contributions that the Catholic Church made in developing both Canon Law and the concepts of natural and legal rights. These chapters are especially important in that they clearly prove that the Catholic jurists had meticulous concern for the rights of individuals including those who were not Catholic. This thesis is proven beyond doubt in chapters nine, ten, and eleven.

Prof. Woods presents a historical case of what happens in “A World Without God” which is the title of the book’s conclusion. The twentieth century is thus far history’s bloodiest century. The absence of moral codes except that of what the state dictates without religious convictions, convictions taught by the Catholic Church, presents historical tragedy.

Prof. Woods could have written a five foot book shelf on the crucial role of the Catholic Church in creating Western Civilization. Those who want to know more should consult the bibliography at the end of the book HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILT WESTERN CIVILIZATION which is a good bibliography.

This reviewer would have included Regine Pernoud’s book titled THOSE TERRIBLE MIDDLE AGES EBUNKING THE MYTHS and G.K.Chesterton’s ORTHODOXY. A recent book published by Father Duffy titled QUEEN OF THE SCIENCE:THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY AND LIBERAL LEARNING should be read in tandem with Prof. Woods’ book.
Prof. Woods has simply written a great book.

HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILT WESTERN CIVILIZATION should be in every Catholic school on the planet. Thoughtful Protestants who do not define their religion by Catholic bashing would benefit from this book. This book should not be recommended to Catholic bashers as it could cause cultural shock and apoplexy.

If anyone reads this review and assumes this reviewer is a Catholic, they would be wrong. This reviewer has studied enough history to know just how crucial the Catholic Church has been and is wise enough to appreciate the Catholic Church’s achievements.

Why the Middle Ages were a golden age
By Thomas Craughwell

This is one of those eye-opening books that put to rest widely accepted but nonetheless misguided notions about the past. In 225 information-packed pages Tom Woods reveals how, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church single-handedly revived and rebuilt Western civilization.

The Benedictine monks, for example, transformed wasteland and swamps into fertile fields, harnessed water power, and bred healthier strains of livestock.

The Jesuits became pre-eminent in astronomy and developed a scientific approach to archaeology. The Church fostered village schools and the great universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge; operated hospitals and orphanages; sheltered and fed the poor; and formulated the idea of basic human rights. Thanks to this book, people who use the term “medieval” as an insult are going to be awfully embarrassed.

Everything you know about the Catholic Church is wrong
By Kevin Beckman

About the Catholic Church that is. Ask the average layperson about the Middle Ages and he’ll probably say it was a time of ignorance and superstition, where the Church ruthlessly stamped out dissent.

Surprise! Woods shows just the opposite is true: it was the Church that gave us the university system. It was the Church, the monks specifically, that preserved the wisdom of the ancient world and drove technological innovation for centuries.

But the Church crippled scientific progress right? Wrong. Woods proves again that just the opposite is true: science as we know it would not have arisen without Christian presuppositions, i.e. God’s creations operate according to laws that can be discovered by man. This is in stark contrast to other ancient cultures which believed nature was unpredictable and the gods were capricious.

Charity, morality, economics, international law, the idea that all men are created equal, and many other things we take for granted all have foundations in Catholic thought.

The title is accurate: the Church built Western civilization. I’m sorry the book is so short at 225 pages. Each chapter could easily become a book in its own right.

Woods has a gift - also evident in his other books - for swift narratives, delightful anecdotes, and discovering astonishing facts that were there all along but somehow became great secrets. Woods says that our debt to the Church is one of history’s greatest secrets. I hope more people are able to learn this secret. Woods’s book is a great start, and the bibliography provides other excellent sources.

Our learned Prophet should know that Lepanto (Oct 7,1571) was the battle that saved the Christian West from the conquest of Europe by the Ottoman Empire. For the glory of the Catholic Church, the Muslims’ defeat at their second siege of Vienna on Sept 11,1683 mark the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Catholics only, no Protestants, fought in those battles that saved the Western Civilization

To say “that God calls the Roman Catholic church the whore of Revelation” denotes that for you, fanaticism and ignorance go hand in hand.

The Catholic Church, founded by our Lord, Jesus Christ, was preaching the good news of the Gospels fifteen hundred years before the seeds of Protestant Reformation spread hate and division among the Christians.

Was not only, for the glory Catholic Spain, the fate of publishing a catechism in two languages, the natives’ Nahuatl and the Castilian, to bring the good news of the Gospels to the Indians. It was also the Catholic Church the one who gave to the world the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, the first printed Polyglot translation of the entire Bible. In contrast, the earlier printed Greek and Latin Bibles produced by Erasmus contained only the New Testament.

Calvin was less than 5 years old when the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was published in Spain, the first complete translation of the Bible in the world, ordered, supervised and paid by Cardinal Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid. The Complutensian Polyglot Bible remains a very important historical edition of the Biblical text. It was produced using the very best available Hebrew, Greek and Latin manuscripts of Cardinal Ximenes' day, and no expense was spared in its preparation.

The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was published in six hundred large six-volume sets, of which only 123 are known to have survived. It is not believed to have been distributed widely before 1522.

The first New Testament in Greek and Latin was completed on January 10, 1514. On July 1517 was completed the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Copies of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible found their way into the principal libraries of Europe, and had considerable influence on subsequent editions of the Bible. They were one of the sources used for the textual basis of the King James Bible, for example.

The Catholic is the foremost keeper of the integrity of the Word of God as expressed in the Bible and zealously have tried to alert the Catholic Faithful to reject false interpretations of the Bible.

The Prophet said referring to my exposing of Calvin’s horrifying historical record: “It think your fixation on a couple of acts by Calvin in one city funny.”

Protestant historian, Galliffé, left written record of the autocratic reign of “this tyrant priest who submitted Geneva to the most infamous servitude,” Galiffé continues.(6) He reports that the number of judgments by public tribunals normally made in one year in the city “was easily surpassed in a single month or even a week under the rule of Calvin. Often there were many of these spectacles in a single day.”(7) Further on, he affirms that “two years of Calvin’s government produced 414 criminal processes. … There were hundreds of processes of this kind in that epoch.

Multiple death sentences are also reported by this same Protestant scholar, Galiffé, who delved into the records of that time. Describing a short period of Calvin’s rule he says, “One counts 30 executions of men and 28 of women, subdivided by method of death: 13 persons hanged, 10 beheaded, 55 quartered, 35 burned alive after being tortured.”(9)

Calvin’s horrendous record should be repugnant for any God fearing Christian, but for the Prophet they are just “a couple of acts by Calvin in one city funny.”

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