Details are....

title How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

© 2005 Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Chapter 1 -- THE INDISPENSABLE CHURCH Catholic scientific contributions: Forerunner of the modern scientific method = Roger Bacon First ever to write down a complete set of steps for performing a scientific experiment (the rudiments of the scientific method) = Robert Grosseteste The father of geology & the father of stratigraphy = Fr. Nicholas Steno The father of Egyptology = Fr. Athanasius Kircher “The single most important contributor to experimental physics in the 17th-century = the Jesuits The father of modern atomic theory = Fr. Roger Boscovich The father of aviation was Fr. Francesco Lana-Terzi

He was the first to describe the geometry and physics of a flying vessel A monk named Eilmer flew more than 600 feet with a glider The monks were also skillful clock-makers Richard of Wallingford (abbot), one of the initiators of Western trigonometry, designed a large astronomical clock First to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling object = Fr. Giambattista Riccioli (who was also an accomplished astronomer) Fr. Grimaldi measured the heights of lunar mountains, as well as the height of clouds -- and he and Fr. Riccioli produced a notably accurate selenograph (diagram depicted lunar features) Seismology became known as “the Jesuit science”

The Jesuit Seismological Service was the first seismological network of continental scale with uniform instrumentation Some 35 lunar craters are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians One of the greatest intellectual figures of all ages was Jesuit scientist Fr. Roger Boscovich The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries (from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment) than any other, and probably all other, institutions Catholic monks preserved the literary inheritance of the ancient world, not to mention literacy itself, in the aftermath of the fall of Rome The monks gave “the whole of Europe . . . a network of model factories, centers for breeding livestock and growing crops, centers of scholarship, spiritual fervor, the art of living . . . readiness for social action -- in a word . . . advanced civilization that emerged from the chaotic waves or surrounding barbarity.” The father of modern Europe was, without a doubt, was St. Benedict The father of international law = Fr. Francisco de Vitoria Canon Law was the first modern legal system in Europe The founders of modern scientific economies = Catholic thinkers The Church’s commitment to the poor -- both its spirit and its sheer scope -- constituted something new in the Western world, and represented a dramatic improvement over the standards of classical antiquity The Catholic Church has shaped the kind of civilization we inhabit and the kind of people we are

Chapter 2 -- A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS “The basic cause of cultural retrogression was [is] not Christianity but barbarism ; not religion but war.” -- Will Durant, historian Charlemagne, had been so persuaded of the beauty, truth, and superiority of the Catholic religion that he did everything possible to establish the new post-imperial Europe on the basis of Catholicism “The Church had to undertake the task of introducing the law of the Gospel and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount among peoples who regarded homicide as the most honorable occupation and vengeance as synonymous with justice.” -- Christopher Dawson Encouragement of education and the arts Carolingian miniscule -- developed by the monks of the Catholic Church -- was crucial to building the literacy of Western civilization. Now Western Europe had a script that could be read and written with relative ease. The introduction of lowercase letters, spaces between words, and other measures intended to increase readability quickened both reading and writing The Church, as the educator of Europe, was the one light that survived repeated barbarian invasions The recuperative power of the monasteries meant that they could work quickly and dramatically to repair the devastation of invasion and political collapse The cultivation of man’s reasoning faculty (a gift from God)

Chapter 3 -- HOW THE MONKS SAVED CIVILIZATION “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you.” That, simply stated, is the history of the monks The Rule of Saint Benedict’s excellence was reflected in its all-but-universal adoption throughout Western Europe in the centuries that followed During a period of great turmoil, the Benedictine tradition endured, and its houses remained oases of order and peace The monks copied innumerable manuscripts, preserving books and documents that were of seminal importance to the civilization they saved The Church cherished, preserved, studied, and taught the works of the ancients, which would otherwise have been lost Without their devotion to this crucial task and the numerous copies they produced, [one wonders] how the Bible would have survived the onslaught of the barbarians Western civilization’s admiration for the written word and for the classics comes to us from the Catholic Church that preserved both through the barbarian invasions Thanks to the monks, literacy would survive Freely embracing work [“prayer and work”] Wherever they went, the monks introduced crops, industries, or production methods with which the people had not been previously familiar The rearing of cattle and horses, the brewing of beer, the raising of bees [and] fruit, cheese-making, salmon fisheries They pioneered the production of wine They discovered champagne The monks used waterpower for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth, and tanning hides The monks were also the first to work toward improving cattle breeds, rather than leaving the process to chance The monks built a furnace to extract iron from ore (similar to a modern blast furnace) The Cistercians were known for their skill in metallurgy The monks’ good example inspired others, particularly the great respect and honor they showed toward manual labor in general and agriculture in particular It would be difficult to find any group anywhere in the world whose contributions were as varied, as significant, and as indispensable as those of the Catholic monks of the West during a time of general turmoil and despair Thanks to the great network of communication that existed among the various monasteries, technical information was able to spread quickly “These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time.” “The Middle Ages introduced machinery into Europe on a scale no civilization had previously known.” And the monks . . . were “the skillful and unpaid technical advisers of the third world of their time -- Europe after the invasion of the barbarians.” Had it not been for a greedy King Henry VIII’s suppression of the English monasteries, the monks appear to have been on the verge of ushering in the industrial era and its related explosion in wealth, population, and life expectancy. [Alas,] that development would instead have to wait 250 more years. Monasteries served as gratuitous inns, providing a safe and peaceful resting place for travelers. pilgrims, and the poor

Chapter 4 -- THE CHURCH AND THE UNIVERSITY

The Church developed the university system because it was “the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge.” --- Lowrie Daly, historian The popes played a significant role in encouraging the dissemination of knowledge, and fostering the idea of an international scholarly community Permitted and fostered the kind of robust and largely unfettered scholarly debate and discussion that we associate with [a] university Commitment to the use of reason Significantly it sought to combine a reliance on authority with a willingness to employ reason in the explanation of theological points Among the most important medieval contributions to modern science was the essentially free inquiry of the university system, where scholars could debate and discuss propositions, and in which the utility of human reason was taken for granted ‘Created a broad intellectual tradition, in the absence of which subsequent progress in (the natural sciences) would have been inconceivable” --- David Lindberg, author

Chapter 5 -- THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE The idea of a rational, orderly universe -- enormously fruitful and indeed indispensable for the progress of science -- has eluded entire civilizations. It is not coincidental that the birth of science as a self-perpetuating field of intellectual endeavor occurred in a Catholic milieu. Certain fundamental Christian ideas have been indispensable in the emergence of scientific thought. (Fr. Stanley Jaki) Allowed Christians to view the universe as a realm of order and predictability In Genesis, the chaos is completely subject to the sovereignty of God Christian thought has never portrayed God as arbitrary -- it was accepted that nature operates according to fixed and intelligible patterns Rational, predictable, and intelligible -- this approach avoids two potential errors: It cautions against speculation about the physical universe that is divorced from experience It implies that the universe that God created is orderly and intelligible It was precisely this sense of the rationality and predictability of the physical world that gave early modern scientists the philosophical confidence to engage in scientific study in the first place. “It was only in such a conceptual matrix that science could experience the kind of viable birth which is followed by sustained growth.” “Science is not Western, but Christian” --- Jaki Christian thought began the de-animation of nature . . ., in order for science to be born Catholic theological ideas provided the basis for scientific progress in the first place It is simple to show that many great scientists, like Louis Pasteur, were Catholic. Much more revealing is the surprising number of Catholic churchmen (priests in particular) whose scientific work has been so extensive and significant The Jesuits laid the foundations of Western science in the continents of Asia, Africa, and South America Scholars have noted the Jesuits’ unusually keen appreciation of the importance of precision in the practice of experimental science Cathedrals in 17th- and 18th-century Paris, Rome, Bologna, and Florence were designed to function as world-class solar observatories

Chapter 6 -- ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE CHURCH The very fact that we possess many of our artistic masterpieces at all is itself a reflection of Catholic ideas A closer study of these cathedrals reveals an impressive geometric coherence. That coherence follows directly from an important strand in Catholic thought: God as having “ordered all things by measure, number, and weight” -- St. Augustine [?] Thus did the Catholic Church’s commitment to the study of Euclidean geometry (as a key to the mind of God and the basis upon which He ordered the universe) bears enormously important fruit, both in the artistic and the scientific realms There is a link between a civilization’s art and its belief in (and consciousness of) the transcendent. “Without a metaphysical recognition of the transcendent, without the recognition of a divine intellect at once the source of nature’s order and the fulfillment of human aspiration, reality is construed in purely materialistic terms

Chapter 7 -- THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Reports of Spanish mistreatment of the New World natives prompted a severe crisis of conscience among significant sectors of the Spanish population in the 16th-century, not least among philosophers and theologians. This fact alone indicates that we are witnessing something historically unusual It was in the course of that philosophical reflection that Spanish theologians achieved something substantial: the beginnings of modern international law. Here again the Catholic Church gives birth to a distinctly Western idea Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, the father of international law, proposed for the first time international law in modern terms The idea that by virtue of his [special] position [in creation], man was entitled to a degree of treatment from his fellow human beings that no other creature could claim Vitoria borrowed 2 important principles from St. Thomas Aquinas: The divine law, which proceeds from grace, does not annul human law, which proceeds from natural reason ; and Those things that are natural to man are neither to be taken from nor given to him on account of sin Vitoria and his allies believed that natural law existed not just among Christians but among all peoples A number of theologians specifically described natural law as the unique inheritance of human beings rather than as a possession of man and brute alike. This point served as “the basis of a theory of the dignity of man and the gulf between him and the animal and created world” That Catholic priests gave Western civilization the philosophical tools with which to approach non-Western peoples in a spirit of equality is quite an extraordinary thing The Catholic concept of the fundamental unity of the human race -- It is thanks to the moral tools provided by the Catholic theologians of Spain These are ideas with which the West has [been] identified for centuries, and they come to us directly from the best of Catholic thought. Thus do we have another pillar of Western civilization constructed by the Catholic Church

Chapter 8 -- THE CHURCH AND ECONOMICS Modern scientifics economics was founded by Catholics Modern money theory founder = Jean Buridan (a Catholic scholar) The founding father of monetary economics = Nicolas Oresme (a pupil of Buridan)

First stated what later was called Gresham’s Law

Understood the destructive effects of inflation The late Scholastics perceived clear relationships of cause-and-effect in economies

Also the subjective theory of value Founder of expectations theory in economics = Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan Sought to vindicate the foreign-exchange market morally Franciscan friar Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298) first proposed a value theory based on utility

Turned out to be the correct value theory in economics Why did the correct subjective value theory develop and flourish in Catholic countries, while the incorrect labor theory of value was influential in Protestant countries? The originator of the ideas of utility and scarcity as determinants of price = Abbe Ferdinando Galiani On one issue after another, these 16th- and 17th-century thinkers not only understood and developed crucial economic principles, but they also defended the principles of economic liberty and a free-market economy. From prices and wages to money and value theory, the late Scholastics anticipated the very best economic thought of later centuries. Specialists in the history of economic thought have become more and more aware of the late Scholastic’ contributions to economics, and this is yet another example of a Catholic innovation (well known to specialized scholars) that has not made its way to the general public. This is why it is so silly to claim, as some controversialists have, that the idea of a free market was developed in the 18th-century by anti-Catholics zealots. These ideas had been current for hundreds of years by the time of the publication of the virulently anti-Catholic French Encyclopedie, which repeated the Scholastic analysis of price determination.

Chapter 9 -- HOW CATHOLIC CHARITY CHANGED THE WORLD The Catholic Church invented charity as we know it in the West

Qualitative difference from what preceded it The practice of offering oblations for the poor The Early Church also institutionalized the care of widows and orphans, and saw after the needs of the sick -- especially during epidemics The Church pioneered the establishment of hospitals -- institutions staffed by physicians who made diagnoses and prescribed remedies, and where nursing provisions were also available The credit of ministering to human suffering on an extended scale belongs to Christianity Monasteries also became sites of medical learning between the 5th- and 10th-centuries (the classic period of “monastic medicine”)

They were the principal centers for the study and transmission of ancient medical texts Raymind du Puy’s code regarding the administration of a hospital -- Puy’s decree became a milestone in the development of the hospital The Hospital of St. John’s was impressive for its professionalism, organization, and strict regimen

Modest surgeries were performed

The sick received twice-daily visits from physicians, baths, and two meals per day

The hospital workers were not permitted to eat until the patients had been fed A female staff was on hand to perform other chores, and to ensure that the sick had clean clothes and bed linens The sophisticated organization of St. John’s, coupled with its intense spirit of service to the sick, served as a model for Europe, where institutions inspired by the great hospital of Jerusalem began to pop up everywhere, in modest villages and major cities alike “The monasteries in particular distinguished themselves -- the centers of organized religious life maintained schools ; provided models for agriculture, industry, pisciculture, and forestry ; sheltered travelers ; relieved the poor ; reared the orphans ; cared for the sick ; and were havens of refuge for all who were weighed down by spiritual and/or corporal misery. For centuries they were the centers of all religious, charitable, and cultural activity.” Monasteries distributed alms daily to those in need. “By the monks were the nobles overawed, the poor protected, the sick tended, travelers sheltered, prisoners ransomed, the remotest spheres of suffering explored.” They sought out the poor who lived in the surrounding areas The Catholic Church revolutionized the practice of charitable giving, in both its spirit and its application. And the results speak for themselves: previously unheard-of amounts of charitable giving and systematic, institutionalized care of widows, orphans, poor, and sick.

Chapter 10 -- THE CHURCH AND WESTERN LAW Modern Western legal systems “are a secular residue of religious attitudes and assumptions which historically found expression first in the liturgy and rituals and doctrine of the church and thereafter in the institutions and concepts and values of the law. . . . Western concepts of law are, in their origins and therefore in their nature, intimately bound up with distinctively Western theological and liturgical concepts of atonement and of the sacraments.” (legal scholar Harold Berman) Pope Gregory took a dramatic step when he described the king as simply and solely a layman, with no more of a religious function than any other layman The Gregorian Reform clarified the boundaries that must separate Church and state, if Church is to enjoy the liberty she needs to carry out her mission. As the first systematic body of law in medieval Europe, canon (Church) law became the model for the various secular legal systems that began to emerge The key treatise of canon law was the work of a monk named Gratian -- a historical milestone -- based on reason and conscience -- the first comprehensive and systematic legal treatise in the history of the West, and perhaps in the history of mankind We are indebted to canon law as a model. Equally important was the content of canon law, whose scope was so sweeping that it contributed to the development of Western law in such areas as marriage, property, and inheritance It led to: The introduction of rational trial procedures The insistence upon consent as the foundation of marriage Valid marriage required the free consent of both the man and the woman The foundations of modern contract law Free will No duress No mistake No fraud A marriage can be held invalid if it took place under duress Could also be invalid if one entered into it under a mistake, fraud, etc. The use of wrongful intent as the basis of crime Various kinds of intent The moral implications of various kinds of causal connections Extenuating factors could exempt someone from legal liability The development of equity to protect the poor and helpless against the rich and powerful Overcame infant marriage -- barbarian practice thus gave way to Catholic principle

The salutary principles of Catholic belief were able to make their way into the daily practices of European people These principles remain central to the modern legal orders under which Westerners, and more and more non-Westerners, continue to live These Catholic principles have become standard in all modern Western legal systems. Fundamental was the idea that a violation of the law was an offense against justice and against the moral order itself And that such a violation require a punishment if the moral order were to be repaired And that the punishment should befit the nature and extent of the violation Crime became in large measure depersonalized, as criminal actions came to be viewed as actions directed at particular persons (victims), and more and more as violations of the abstract principle of justice, and whose disturbance of the moral order could be rectified through the application of punishment The idea of natural rights is one of the most distinctive aspects of Western civilization, and scholars are increasingly coming to acknowledge that it, too, comes from the Church Medieval jurists denied that rights were merely granted to individuals by governments (positive law), insisting instead that they were: natural rights of individuals (subjective powers), derived from the universal moral law, by virtue of being human, and no ruler could abridge them The royals had no jurisdiction over rights based on natural law Therefore these rights are unalienable Examples: Procedure (right to appear in court and defend oneself against charges) Property Self-defense Marriage The rights of non-Christians Pope Innocent IV held that “ownership, possession, and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly . . .” What really solidified the natural-rights tradition within the West was the European discovery of the Americas and the [resultant] questions that Spanish Scholastic theologians raised regarding the rights of the indigenous peoples of those lands These principles come to us from medieval Catholic thinkers, who yet again established crucial foundations of Western civilization as we know it

Thus it was in the Church’s canon law that the West saw the first example of a modern legal system, and it was in light of that model that the modern Western legal tradition took shape

Likewise the Western law of crimes was deeply influenced not only by legal principles enshrined in canon law, but also by Catholic theological ideas (particularly the doctrine of atonement as developed by St. Anselm)

Finally the very idea of natural rights, for a long time assumed to have emerged fully formed from liberal thinkers of the 17th- and 18th-centuries, in fact derives from Catholic canonists, popes, university professors, and philosophers. The more scholars investigate Western law, the greater the imprint of the Catholic Church on our civilization turns out to be, and the more persuasive her claim as its architect

Chapter 11 -- THE CHURCH AND WESTERN MORALITY Many of the most important principles of Western moral tradition derive from the distinctly Catholic idea of the sacredness of human life. The insistence on the uniqueness and value of each person, by virtue of the [fact that each is created in the image and likeness of God, the fact that God took on human flesh in Jesus, and the] immortal soul, was nowhere to be found in the ancient world

Examples: Catholics spoke out against, and eventually abolished, infanticide [may abortion end] The Church’s commitment to human sacredness → Western condemnation of suicide The Church helped abolish gladiatorial contests The Church criticized dueling Another important way in which the Catholic Church has shaped Western concepts of morality involves the tradition of a full-fledged theory of the just war ; its requirements: The authority of the sovereign/government by whose command the war is to be waged A just cause, namely that those who are to be attacked should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault A rightful intention of the belligerent(s), so that they intend the advancement of good, and/or the avoidance of evil These evolved to: Authority, + peace impossible Not to be waged so as to ruin people, but only to obtain one’s rights and the defense of one’s country Victory should be utilized with moderation and Christian humility [These have evolved further . . .] According to the Catholic Church, no one -- not even the state -- is exempt from the demands of morality [opposite of communism] The Church teaches that intimate relations are to be confined to husband and wife indeed,”the dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians” Christian influence credited with the equalization of the sin of adultery Women attained substantially more autonomy thanks to Catholicism Gifted with reason, the human being is not condemned to act on mere instinct -- he is capable of moral reflection The Church teaches that a life truly befitting humanity requires the assistance of divine grace The Church teaches that a good life is not simply one in which our external actions are beyond reproach, but the soul must also keep from leaning toward sin We are to divorce ourselves from the kind of anger and hatred that corrode the soul

For to do so turns our fellow human being into a thing/a mere object The value of moral seriousness and self-discipline Just as the more habituated we become to sin, the easier that further sin becomes, it is also true that virtuous living becomes ever easier the more we engage in it and the more it becomes a matter of habit These are some of the distinctive ideas that the Catholic Church has introduced into Western civilization Faithful to the mission [of Jesus] that she has fulfilled for two millenia, the Church still holds out a moral alternative to people immersed in a culture that relentlessly tells them to pursue immediate gratification You can aspire to be one of these -- a builder of civilization, a great mind, a servant of both God and men, a heroic missionary -- or you can be a self-absorbed nobody who’s fixated on gratifying your own appetites Our society does everything in its power to ensure that you pursue the latter path. Be your own person! Rise above the herd! Declare your independence from a culture that thinks so little of you! Proclaim that you intend to live not as a beast, but as a man! CONCLUSION -- A WORLD WITHOUT GOD 4 characteristics in particular differentiate the Church’s view of God from those of Near East: God is one [3 Persons in 1 God] God is absolutely sovereign [omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient] God is transcendent [utterly beyond and other than all of His creation] God is good [omnibenevolent] He seeks out our love, not by overwhelming us with His majesty and awe of the beatific vision, but by condescending to interact with us on our level, adopting a human nature and taking human flesh. This is an utterly extraordinary event in the history of religion, yet so embedded has it become within Western culture that Westerners even today scarcely give the matter a second thought There was hardly a human enterprise of the Early Middle Ages to which the monasteries did not contribute The very foundations of Western civilization emerged from the heart of the Church: Economic thought International law Science The university system Charity Religious ideas Art Morality A sense of meaninglessness and disorder has been growing since the 19th-century. But this self-imposed historical amnesia in the West today cannot undo the past, nor the Church’s central role in building Western civilization .

Again recommended that reader acquires this book.