The Crisis of Civilization [Paperback]

Hilaire Belloc (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2009

Here the great Belloc shows that ever since the disaster of the Protestant Reformation, Western civilization (which was formed by the Catholic Faith) has been coming apart--since Calvinism opened the door to usury, unbridled competition, the domination of the mind by money, and ultimately the return of slavery. Belloc says our 2 choices are a return to Catholicism or chaos! Essential for anyone who would understand our world today!

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: TAN Books and Publishers (May 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895554623
• ISBN-13: 978-0895554628
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #136,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from the Publisher, March 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crisis of Civilization (Paperback)

Our choice, says Belloc, is Catholicism or chaos, and "the crisis ... does not permit of indefinite delay." He shows in this work that ever since the disaster of the Protestant Reformation, our civilization has been coming apart. Catholicism built the Western World - from Roman times through the Dark Ages to the High Middle Ages - but the false doctrine and social philosophy of Protestantism, based on Calvin, is causing a steady and continuing breakdown of that world. Belloc shows the Reformation's evil results in the economic sphere, through the dissolving of Catholic restraints on usury and on unbridled competition. He states that "Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money." Belloc concludes that the return of Catholicism is the only remedy for our crumbling world, because our basic principles of civilization are Catholic in origin and only by being energized and guided by the Faith will they - and our civilization - continue to be what they are and continue to help poor, fallen mankind in this world. Belloc maintains that we are drifting back towards slavery and only by re-embracing Catholicism will disaster be averted.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendous!, April 3, 2005

By 

Michael Tozer (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Crisis of Civilization (Paperback)

Long have I searched for an excellent and readable overview of the history of Western Civilization. In Belloc's tremendous work, I have found it. This is doubtless the greatest and most important broad overview of the Western Civilization I have ever encountered. Belloc herein argures that Christianity changed the foundation of the Graeco-Roman Empire from slavery to Faith. He further postulates that the Reformation was a terrible catastrophe in its resultant disintegration of unified Christendom. Belloc argues that Judeo-masonic communism and Judeo-protestant capitalism are the forces that undermine the future of civilization. This work is awesome, prophetic, and uniquely insightful. It is also tremedously well written. Indeed, reading Belloc is like having a conversation with a learned and wise old friend. You savor each word, and don't want the converstation to end. This is a great book!

Addendum 03-Apr-06

I have had occassion this past weekend to reread this very important book. In the interim, I had read on the order of twenty of Belloc's other titles, the four volumes extant of Warren Carroll's history of Christendom, several of William Thomas Walsh's great works, and a smattering of Dennis Fahey, Nesta Webster, and Gordon Craig Alexander, among others. What the latter intensive reading has demonstrated is the amazing wisdom contained in this short, but terribly imporant book.

Belloc completed this book in the late 1930's, near the conclusion of his amazing literary career. He then wrote at a time when FDR's New Deal Socialism controlled the United States, Hitler's national socialism directed Germany, which Belloc still called Prussia, and Stalin's scientific socialism ran the Soviet Union. What the programs of all three despots had in common, of course, was socialism. And it was this evil in all of its various disguises that Belloc here inveighed against. Of course, a greater crisis soon ensured, the tragedy of World War II, ended by the unspeakable horror of nuclear immolation of Japan's most Catholic city, Nagasaki. Yet the words of Belloc still ring true, even in this dawning decade of the 21st century. Without a societal return to the Faith, we are certainly doomed to serfdom, and possibly much worse. Read this wonderful and beautifully written masterpiece, and be well informed and richly blessed by the process. God bless.

57 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a Right Wing Attack on Capitalism., November 26, 2003

By 

zonaras (Jimbo's House of Pie) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crisis of Civilization (Paperback)

Hillaire Belloc's _The Crisis of Civilization_ is a reactionary polemic against runaway capitalist greed and the subsequent demands of international communism first published in 1937. The tone of this book is probably treasonous to many Amercans because of the disparaging comments about Capitalism and free-market economies. Belloc traces the history of Western Civilization from the rise of the Roman Empire to the state of the world in the twentieth century. The Roman Empire, which largely took on the philosophical initiative of the Greeks, was possessed of great organizational strength. However, the Roman Empire's prosperous economy was based on slavery and an overwhelming sense of despair prevailed. This was the setting where Christianity arrived to take center stage. Belloc describes the early Catholic Church much the say way as today's liberal historians: as an oriental mystery cult with a anthropomorphic God who died and rose again. The difference between the other mystery religions and the Christian Church was that the Church took the Death and Resurrection of Chirst as a literal truth rather than as a symbol standing for something else. Later theological and philosophical thought became more and more definite and less speculative as Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Belloc then goes on to describe the assault that the rise of Islam carried out on the Christian areas of the eastern Roman Empire under Constantinople. Europe would have become Muslim if Western Europe had not defeated Islam at Tours and later launched the Crusades which temporarily delivered the Holy Land back into Christian hands. Belloc regrets the subsequent schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern Church based in Constantinople. Feudalism was the form of government in Medieval Europe, where one's position was based upon status and hierarchical rank. Under this system, the peasantry gradually became more and more economically independent either as agricultural workers or small-business artisans. The guild system set up provided economic security to its members although it did not attempt to make everyone "equal." Competition was limited so that underselling from competitors did not swamp the lesser members of the guild out. This was so that monopolies could not be formed. Usury, the taking of interest on non-productive loans, was viewed as a sin and forbidden by Church law among Christians. Belloc does not idealize Medieval Europe, however. He relates how the Catholic Church became a "religious reign of terror" in the late middle ages. The Church had lost much of its moral authority because of the massive amount of material wealth it had accrued, particularly its extensive land holdings. The Church thus had to maintain its control by brute force. If a government has moral authority and goes in accord with human nature it does not have to resort to arbitrary tyranny to keep the peace. In some cases of heresy, the harsh retributions carried out reflected popular outrage at someone who would act destructively towards the Christian unity of society. Belloc likens these instances of rooting out heresy to the lynchings carried out in the South where law enforcement was not functioning properly. The Protestant Reformation, initiated by Luther against some Catholic practices, utterly destroyed the Catholic Christian unity of Western Europe. The result was a multitude of varying denominations all claiming to be possessed of the true faith but were rather groups following their own wills based on either personal ahistorical misinterpretations of the Bible or political agendas behind splits with the Catholic Church. King Henry VIII lined the English nobility's pockets when he broke from Rome and looted England's monasteries. Calvinism in particular was especially dangerous to the Catholic Church as it had the most complete system of theology, a well organized structure, and an international appeal. The chief errors of Calvinism were that it culminated in the belief that God's universe was mechanistic and deprived man of free will in matters of right and wrong. It denied that the Eucharist was the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, a dogma held by the Church from the beginning. After the Reformation, Capitalism began to arise. The traditional restraints placed upon usury were also removed. Capitalism and the Proletariat came with a vengeance in the 19th century. Industrialization produced nations of sweltering slums. Small businesses were unable to compete with massive conglomerates. Wealth became controlled by the few and the majority of the people were, in Marxist terminology, "wage slaves." Communism, as Belloc notes, was the natural reaction of despair to Capitalist exploitation. Communism was doomed to fail because it was only the bastard child of Capitalism and its idea of a man totally shaped by his economic circumstances goes against the organic and occasionally irrational nature of humanity. The dangers of radical leftism are well known. The French Revolution attacked the Catholic clergy in France as being "counter-revolutionary." The Russian Revolution savaged the Orthodox Church, trying to completely divorce Russia from her spiritual tradition. At the time _Crisis of Civilization_ was first published the Spanish Civil War was raging. In this case the counter-revolutionary forces of Francisco Franco aided by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was successful against leftist insurgents by adopting their tactics. Belloc concludes that a return to the guild system, a decentralized, non-competitive economy backed by law might have a chance at reversing the decay of society. This would not create any type of utopia on earth, but it would grant greater economic freedom with more people running their own businesses and a greater distribution of private property. Belloc notes that the problem with this system (which has been labeled "distributivism"), is that it presupposes the Christian faith as a basis for society and a prohibition against usury for it to be implemented. This book will definitely be of interest to those who are seeking a "third way" between neo-conservative/classical liberal capitalism (the Republicans) on one hand and the socialist left (the Democrats) on the other.