Customer Reviews

How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

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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 handcopying 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 intllectually 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 assessement of the trial of Galileo who was also highly praised by Catholic authorties 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 philosopy, but Prof. Woods presents an abundence 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:DEBUNKING 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.

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.

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.

I'm not a scholar, and I'm not Catholic. But I found Dr. Woods' book an engaging, interesting read that sheds new light on the Middle Ages and Renaissance years. It's the kind of work that provides (at least for a non-History major) an epiphany a page. You can read it in a week, and come away with a much broadened understanding of the topics explained.

I'm normally a lurker here on Amazon, benefiting from other people's reviews but never contributing any of my own. That's changing, starting now. This is an extraordinary book.

Let me first correct the reviewer below me, who complains that the book fails to mention the trouble Giordano Bruno got into over heliocentrism. He seems unaware that most modern scholars reject the idea that Bruno's troubles had anything to do with his cosmology. Do a Google search for "Richard W. Pogge," a professor at Ohio State University, for more on this.

Back to my review: this is one of those books that comes along once every five to ten years that changes the intellectual landscape. Thomas E. Woods has brought so much evidence to his argument that the old anti-Catholic arguments we hear all the time will never be the same again. They will have to take Woods into account, or look foolish.

It took a special kind of author to write a book like this. The author seems equally at ease when discussing science, economics, philosophy, theology, law, history, and many other topics.

The author is also a wonderful wordsmith, his writing flows effortlessly.

A wonderful book to educate yourself, to learn about why you should be PROUD TO BE A CATHOLIC, and to give to your friends who have fallen away: it gives them thousands of reasons to return.

Over the last 30 years it has become fashionable (perhaps mandatory) to misrepresent the Church's role in science, education, economics, law, medicne, philosophy, and charitable acts. 90% of the postmodern myth about Catholicism is one-sided, intentionaly combative, and overflowing with ridicule -- the Church has done only evil and Christianity has stood in the way of everything good and progressive. This book is a wonderful response to these attacks and addresses the biases authors exibit. It is compelling and uplifting. It expounds on the role of the Church in the advancement of the sciences, the rights of women, and moral conviction.

Is the author biased? Certainly, but what author is not. After decades of attacks, ridicule, and contempt from so many quarters, it is wonderful to see someone discuss the contributions of the Catholic church.

George Will once wrote that if you wanted to find Alexander Hamilton's legacy, all you had to do was "look around you."

That's even more true of the Church. Everything from the hospital, the factory, and the university system to the notion of universal human rights and classical economics has its root in the thinking and teaching of the Catholic Church.

Woods' book is the perfect antidote to the dim view of Catholicism's contributions that students are shown in many history courses. Believe it or not, there's more to the story than black legends about the Crusades and the dreaded Inquisition. In "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization", students of any age will learn

- Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
- How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics 500 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

Worth noting are Woods' sources, as he builds his case on the works of historians of science like Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant and J.L. Heilbron, and classic Church historians like Christopher Dawson, Philip Hughes, and Henri Daniel-Rops. About the latter, one can hope that Woods sparks a renewed interest in these past masters.

Especially relevant is the chapter on the contributions of the monks. At a time when Europeans have turned their backs on Christianity in favor of atheistic humanism, a greater appreciation for St. Benedict - "the father of Europe" - and his tireless monks is much needed. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why then-Cardinal Ratzinger chose Benedict as his papal name.

For a free chapter of the book, Google the words "free chapter" and "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization."

I was under the impression that book reviewers should actually read the book they condemn but apparently that is not the case.

I have read Thomas E. Woods, Jr. PhD's "How the Catholic Church built Western Civilization" and found it well documented, scholarly and most of all completely accurate.

However, I have found three of the critiques on Amazon so bizarre as to be worthy of comment. One Robin Artisson (who is a devotee of Wicca/Neo-Paganism: a religion of very recent origins and deep antagonism toward Catholicism) does not appear to have even bothered to read the book but launches into a screed that postulates one of the most bizarrely inaccurate accounts of the fall of the Roman Empire that even the most jaundiced reading of Gibbon would blush from the volume of errors encapsulate in such a limited spaced. The next Worthy Scholar (who appears be from the South and longs for the days of the Confederacy) also did not read the book but leans a hand by putting a cut and pasted view of "Colleague" in France who in spite of reading a book written only in English can't quite compose a critique on his own in English or place it on the Amazon site. Most of the French is abysmal but the information is trite and inconsequential. It has been dealt with and is pure fantasy and simple-minded polemic. It would be appropriate for one to point out to the French that the legacy of the French Revolution and the Parisian Commune left considerably greater bloodshed in its wake than any activity of the Catholic Church cumulatively or singularly accounted for.

Then there is the crown jewel of polemic masquerading as review from Anthropologist 101 living. In this collection of disjointed logic that also appears to be written by a person who has not to bother to read the book, we are indulged with such certitudes as "Lets begin with the Renaissance, which was an upheaval against the catholic churches fierce suppression of art, science, and life." Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Renaissance would understand what an absurdity this comment is. Protestantism was the puritanical reaction against the Renaissance and Catholicism not the other way around.

His contentions about Capitalism show even less understanding. Neither Adam Smith nor any of the other notables of the Scottish Enlightenment invented capitalism. Capitalism was a system of economics that operated in every society for countless millennia wherever private ownership of property was found and goods were exchanged for money and funds advanced for a return.

The debt owed to free exchange of ideas from outside of Europe is frequently overstated and misrepresented by anti-western forces as begin only one sided and beneficial. Asia also contributed the Black Death, The Huns, Tatars and the rapacious onslaught of Islam all of which did more to assure the destruction of European Civilization than the exchange of ideas and techniques from the East.

The advances in Medicine, Politics and Science from Catholic Europe that aided Asia and the Middle East at the same time are too innumerable to list but they included: Celestial Navigation, the sanctity of the individual, public hygiene and the printing press.


It should also be noted that the Catholic Faith alone defended Europe from external aggression that destroyed and subordinate Orthodox and Christian cultures in Asia Minor, North Africa and Spain for over 800 years. It is well documented how well those subjugated lands prospered under Islam.

Protestantism stood passively by during the epic struggles between the West and the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century while profiting from the peace and stability provided by the valor of Catholic Arms.

No Sirs, Christianity made Europe great and for the critical first Fifteen hundred years it was solely Catholicism that created Western Civilization as we know it and benefit from.

This is a stunning book. I consider myself an educated Catholic and I barely knew any of the information Woods packs into these 280 pages. I sort of vaguely knew the Church had built the West, but I had no idea her contributions were so substantial and so widespread over so many areas.

You'll want to read this book on the strength of the science chapter alone. Never again will you have to listen to people who say the Church has discouraged science. Get the truth about the Galileo case, plus hundreds of fascinating stories and facts about the Church's contributions to science. (Did you know that cathedrals in Paris, Bologna and Rome were built to function as solar observatories, and that the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna was used to confirm Kepler's theory of planetary motion??)

Woods also shows that modern historians of science (Catholics and non-Catholics alike) are now, finally, giving the Church her due. I'm telling you, you'll agree with me that this chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

But the book has many chapters -- on such topics as the university, law, economics, charity, morality, international law, the arts, etc. To have all this information at my fingertips is wonderful from a reference point of view but positively exhilarating from a reading point of view. I smiled through much of this book, silly as that sounds.

Get this book for yourself, for the students in your family, and above all for your pastor and even your bishop. Organize a reading group at your parish, as we've done (not just for this book, of course). But definitely let people know about it. It's a wonderful antidote to the demoralization of American Catholicism that has occurred over the past few years.

I've read reviews by people with axes to grind before, but there's one for this book that takes the cake. So I'd like to address that one first.

I'm pretty sure Catia Grace and I read the same book, but here's what she says:

1. Woods supposedly claims that "all advancement in human struggle can be traced back to the benevolance [sic] of the church." That's funny; I see no such claim in my copy. What I see is that the author says the Church has been responsible for more good things than most people know about. Given that he also says that the Church embraced good things that existed in ancient Greece and Rome, he obviously rejects Catia Grace's caricature.

2. Woods supposedly claims that Oxford University was "a gift of the Vatican." Again, the reviewer seems to have some special edition of the book, since in my copy, the entire discussion of Oxford consists of the point (which happens to be true) that the Pope officially granted its right to issue degrees in 1254, even though it had been doing so unofficially for years. Talk about distorting Woods' words! And this reviewer thinks WOODS has an axe to grind?

3. Thomas Aquinas was "not exactly the brightest bulb in the intellectual box" because of his views on heretics and women. This is hilarious, since the reviewer's beloved Greece oppressed and marginalized women far, far worse than the Church could ever have dreamed. In medieval Europe, women ran convents, schools, etc., on their own -- UNTHINKABLE in 5th-century Athens.

Plato, for his part, said that a poor man too sick to work should be left to die. Was he, too, "not exactly the brightest bulb in the intellectual box"?

4. The rest of the review is leftist claptrap about the book justifying "hatred." I invite you, dear reader, to read the book yourself and see whether it is Woods or Catia Grace who is justifying "hatred" and distorting the truth.

5. But I can't resist: "The world we live in was framed by the church, but not helped by it." Not helped at all?

Well, here is where this book comes in. Woods cites case after case of outstanding fruits that have derived from the Church. And he cites mainstream, non-Catholic historians to support him. Are they part of the grand pro-Catholic conspiracy to suppress the truth as well, my dear Catia Grace? What exactly would they stand to gain from that?

This is a wonderful book, and although short (280 pages), it's of a length that ensures people will actually read it rather than let it collect dust on their shelf.

The chapter titles say it all:

The Indispensable Church
A Light in the Darkness
How the Monks Saved Civilization
The Church and the University
The Church and Science
Art, Architecture and the Church
The Origins of International Law
The Church and Economics
How Catholic Charity Changed the World
The Church and Western Law
A World Without God

Again, this book is a delight, and the fact that it enrages hostile, hateful myth-makers like our friend Catia Grace is just the icing on the cake. Enjoy!