How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
Lew Rockwell has a great review of Thomas Woods' How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. We enthusiastically agree with every part of the review, including the statement that this book should be in every Catholic home. Link. Excerpts:
Conditioned early to see the history of the Catholic Church as a long, sad story of intolerance and intellectual paralysis, the history of pretty much everything between Ancient Rome and George Washington has long appeared irrelevant to the American mind. Unfortunately, such grand ignorance of our European heritage obscures the great strides made by Western men and women from the sixth century to the sixteenth.
Drawing upon a wide array of modern research, Woods examines the increasingly broad consensus among historians that the image of the human race languishing in superstition and ignorance for a thousand years before Europe was suddenly and inexplicably thrust into the modern era is not only untrue, but contemptuously so. . .
[Woods] moves through centuries of history introducing the reader to great minds we may never have heard of, but in whose intellectual debt we clearly find ourselves. Exhaustively researched and footnoted, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is a virtual compendium of recent research and theory on the indispensable role of the Church in European history. This is a book that should be in the home of every Catholic and anyone interested in defending and understanding the undeniably great contributions of Western Christendom and European civilization.
Quite frankly, this book is important enough that it should be required reading of anyone who speaks worn-out and condescending cliches about the Middle Ages. If anyone makes a snide remark about the centuries from the sixth to the sixteenth, ask them, "Have you read How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization"? If they say they haven't, tell them to get a copy and, as politely as possible, tell them that an ignorant mind doesn't excuse an ignorant mouth.
