False pride
The author performs no meaningful in-depth analysis of current or historical contexts and events, applying instead personal opinion. He violently massages the facts in order to portray an overwhelmingly favorable picture, thus encouraging pride in place of humility.

Bad science
Wittingly or not, the author attempts to manipulate the reader with what he calls reason, which in reality is nothing more than tempering with logic and producing faulty conclusions in matters where logic probably should not be used at all. While doing this, he contradicts himself on so many occasions, that reading the book becomes an exercise in self discipline.

Arrogance
Worst of all, the author explicitly states that, according to aforementioned "reasoning", no religion, philosophy, nothing other than Catholic Christianity is capable of producing a civilized society. This arrogant point of view is expressed so many times and in so many ways, that it seemingly becomes the unproven thesis of the book, which brings us back to bad science.

The text is a messy collection of every and any argument for ultimate superiority of the Catholic, which in itself is both heresy and non-scientific. I can not believe a true Catholic or a scientist can write something like this.

Woods has written a book which is generally excellent.He demonstrates that the Catholic Church has been at the center of positive developments in the sciences,arts,architecture,education,law,and ethics over the centuries.One minor complaint is Woods' decision not to explicitly connect Galileo(discussed on pp.69-74) and Kepler(discussed on pp.110-113).Woods gaves the impression that each worked in isolation from the other. In fact ,both Kepler and Galileo closely followed the work of the other.There was a good deal of correspondence between the two.Galileo's mistake,then,is to have not taken Kepler's work more seriously than he did,especially since Kepler's work was directly based on the generally accepted observations made by Kepler's instructor,Tycho Brahe (not Tyco,p.268).
The major problem in the book appears in chapter 8.First, Murray Rothbard is not a great Twentieth Century economist.Murray Rothbard is a great Twentieth Century Libertarian-Austrian economist.Second,the 16th and 17th Century Spanish "Late" Scholastic philosophers cited repeatedly by Woods throughout chapter 8 are not in the same class as the 13th century great Scholastics of the School of Paris(1200-1350 AD).NONE of the ECONOMIC discussions of St.Albert the Great,St.Thomas Aquinas,and Duns Scotus are referred to anywhere in chapter 8.This creates a severe problem for the potential reader who will not realize that the question Woods is dealing with had already been analyzed in detail by the Great 13th Century Scholastics. Albert the Great,Thomas Aquinas,and Scotus had all agreed that the fair and just price was the price determined in the market place at the particular time that the transaction between the buyer and the seller was proposed .However,there were 3 very important qualifications that the latter, minor,Spanish Scholastics failed miseribly to comprehend.The market price is NOT a fair and just price if there is any compulsion,coercion,or uncertainty existing at the time the transaction took place.The standard " Lemon Problem " discussion of asymmetric information ,taught in all basic microeconomiic courses, impacts falls directly into the uncertainty(partial uncertainty)category.The negotiated or agreed upon price of a good carried out under conditions of asymmetric information is NOT a just and fair exchange.

Only John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith,both of whom are considered the greatest two economists of all time,except by Libertarians, understood the nature of the original arguments put forth by the School of Paris Scholastics .Keynes makes it quite clear on pp.351-352 of his General Theory (1936)that the 13th Century Scholastics had a very good intuitive understanding of the differences between making decisions under risk versus making decisions under uncertainty and/or ignorance.Smith's position [See Wealth of Nations,pp.290-340,Modern Library(Cannan)edition] is practically the same as the positions on the rate of interest,usury laws,and speculation held by the 13th century Scholastics ,but rejected by the 16th and 17th century Spanish Scholastics.Woods needs to totally rewrite this chapter(chapter 8) of his book.It is an intellectual mess that detracts from the rest of the book.

A great and badly needed volume. Beautiful cover artwork.
I wish I could donate scores of this book to our high schools and colleges in the U.S. where the decidedly skewed Protestant and Atheist version of history is being taught. Basically little or nothing good existed before the frenzied cries of Sola Scriptura! in the 16th century using the Bible - a document assembled by the Catholic Church as the center piece of this new man made tradition.
One wonders how an institution so evil and corrupt could last almost 2000 years and be the largest and universally (catholic) dispersed Christian group on the planet? Luther, Calvin and company's spiritual children have been around for 500 years and look at how many denominations have formed from that mindset and those splits and yet more splits
Catholicism and it's echoes surround us every day in our legal system, architecture, agriculture, art, literature etc.
Somehow Mendel (the father of genetics) was left out of this volume but another great companion piece to this book is "Catholic Churchmen and Science" by James J. Walsh.
Thank you for the research and enlightenment.
We as Christians and a Church have typically taken the stance that we are called to be Christlike and transform the World with no publicity sought or given for most of what we do. The unfortunate reality is that we live in a World which deals out a great deal of "noise" and erroneous facts, so intelligent rebuttals like this are needed to educate those willing to seek out the fullness of Truth.

A great and badly needed volume. Beautiful cover artwork.
I wish I could donate scores of this book to our high schools and colleges in the U.S. where the decidedly skewed Protestant and Atheist version of history is being taught. Basically little or nothing good existed before the frenzied Sola Scriptura! cries of the 16th century using the Bible - a document assembled by the Catholic Church as the center piece of this new man made tradition.
One wonders how an institution so evil and corrupt could last almost 2000 years and be the largest and universally (catholic) dispersed Christian group on the planet. Luther, Calvin and company's spiritual children have been around for 500 years and look at how many denominations have formed from that mindset and those splits and yet more splits
Catholicism and it's echoes surround us ever day in our legal system, architecture, agriculture, art, literature etc.
Somehow Mendel (the father of genetics) was left out of this volume but another great companion piece to this book is "Catholic Churchmen and Science" by James J. Walsh.
Thank you for the research and enlightenment.
We as a Church have typically taken the stance that we are called to be Christlike and transform the World with no publicity sought or given for most of what we do. The unfortunate reality is that we live in a World which deals out a great deal of "noise" and erroneous facts so intelligent rebuttals like this are needed to educate those willing to seek out the fullness of Truth.

You can't read this book without thinking of the famous Monty Python scene from Monty Python's Life Of Brian - The Immaculate Edition where the People's front of Judea inadvertently lists every improvement that the Roman have ever brought to their land. This would be a great modern description of the politically correct view of the history which would like to forget all of the contributions of the church in everything from Science to Law to ethics, education and even the preservation and copying of books via the monks.

These facts are stubborn things and Mr. Woods wastes no time diving in showing over and over again how things that we take for granted have their base in Catholic belief and practice and the actions of faithful Catholics in particular and the church in general. The list is very long and the presentation is a celebration of the Civilization that these faithful catholics helped build and the results that all of us enjoy today without a thought.

The best way to understand where you are is to understand where you have been. This book does that job very well.

I saw this guy on EWTN espousing his revisionist propaganda. Illuminating only for its psychological revelations about the author and his attempt rehabilitate the Catholic Church's doctrinal contribution to the darkest ages of mankind. I mean come on, the scientific and industrial revolutions were a product of the intellectual freedoms born out of the Reformation. Give it a rest, the truth shall set you free.

Dr. Woods has written a book that has long been needed: one that tells the truth about the Church and the development of western culture over and against the lies, distortions and misrepresentations of to-day's anti-Catholic, anti-God visual and print media--not to mention the rabid hatred of the Church in much of academia.
The chapter on the Church and science will be particularly enlightening to those who have accepted, carte blanch, the often repeated modern mantra about the Church being anti-science--always using a distorted version of the Galileo controversy as the ONE example in 2000 years to "prove" the Churches' scientific backwardness and authoritarian posturing: nothing could be further from the truth. Such a view is not only wrong; it is the opposite of wrong.
Those anti-Catholics, both Protestant and secular, who dare to come to terms with the historical content and insights in Dr. Woods' book will find themselves with a new understanding and appreciation of the true roots and foundations of the moral, relational, scientific and metaphysical concepts they have previously taken for granted.
How many converts will the book influence? It's hard to say. But those who read it with even a remote sense of fair-mindedness are likely to lose much of the Catholic animus they may have previously harbored--and that, in itself, is a good thing.
Dr. Woods' book also has a virtue that Catholic homilists are encouraged to develop: transparency. It is very easy to understand. Difficult concepts and ideas are explained with a simplicity and clarity even a Fulton J. Sheen would have admired.
The text is extremely lucid and enjoyable to read.
An outstanding introduction to a great diversity of ideas and disciplines, Dr. Woods shows that virtually every thing we have and value in the West, with the possible exception of peanut butter, finds its origin in the past and its sustaining bulwark in the present in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,.

I know that Catholics gets a bad rap, but this book is way over the top in the opposite direction. To say, and I quote page 221, "All these areas: economic thought, international law, science, university life, charity, religious ideas, art, morality - these are the very foundations of a civilization, and in the West every single one of them emerged from the heart of the Catholic Church," should have any thinking person saying, "Yeah right." Just because a Catholic person did something in science, lets say, does not me that it was done by the Catholic Church. To strongly imply, if not state, which this book basically does, that the Catholic Church is the foundation of Western Civilization, makes me think, I guess, that I should thank god for the Church otherwise we would all still be living in caves. This book is a Catholic Apologist's dream.

This book kicks holes in the Dark Ages and makes it bleed light. A must for anyone with an interest in the West. Find out the great contributions to literature, art, science, education, farming, the legal system, industrial technology and much more.

This was an eye-opening encounter with the past. Thomas Woods takes us step by step through the growth of civilisation from about the 8th century onwards.

It is amazing how much modern myth has been generated by those who have had and still have a bigoted view towards the Catholic Church. Its also equally amazing how easily we have been manipulated those polemic views.

Tackling one prejudice at a time, the author lays out the effect of the Catholic church's existence and its motives behind every great institution we have today. There seems not to be a single area of modern existence, which has not been made possible by Catholic Christianities efforts, which is simply astonishing!

Some have accused this author of being too one-sided, but I see no evidence of this. He clearly states at every stage what he is talking about, why it came to pass through the direct influence or action of the Catholic Church, and why it had not or could not come about under the influence of other elements in society.

A book like this is long overdue. Woods has done a wonderful job of showing how the Vikings,Magyars and Muslins efforts to destroy Western Civilization was unsuccessful through the efforts of the Catholic Church by its unfailing vision and determination of its popes,bishops,monks,priests,scholars and civil administration.
The Church not only preserved from destruction the advances in civilation made by the Greek and Roman Civilizations ,as well as previous Civilizations;but also advanced all areas of learning ,keeping the flame of civilization alive and giving us what we have today.
The history of the Middle Ages has been distorted over the centuries,and Woods sets it straight.
An overall interesting read ,that will show ,without doubt,that struggles against evil isms ,materialism and secularism,have tried to destroy Western Civilization and the greatest force to combat them has been Christianity led by the Catholic Church.

The rating should be 3 or 4 stars instead of the 2 that you see. This book seeks to counter the prevailing hostility against The West both from without, and, incredibly, within. I recommend it highly though one must keep in mind that the positive contributions of the Catholic Church are the subjects here. The author pointed this out to me in an exchange, asking why he couldn't choose to do so without answering for that emphasis and I must say that he has a point. I also confess to having made an error regarding a point of erudition in which the author convinced me of my mistake.

To judge from contemporary versions of the history of Western Civilization, the time period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment was a dark time. Superstituion ruled the day. Intellectual curiousity was non-existent. Science was bound to keep its conclusions in line with religion. And the Roman Catholic Church supressed anything resembling independent thought.

In How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas Woods, Jr. shows that what we thought we knew about almost 1000 years of Europrean history was wrong. Rather than holding Europe back, the Catholic Church was the primary force in holding it together through the chaos that came with the collapse of Roman rule and in planting and cultivating the seeds that would eventually grow in the intellectual powerhouse that we know today.

Most of the things that we take for granted today -- charity, morality, economics, international law, natural rights, art, architecture -- all have their roots in Catholic teaching and their growth and development were encouraged by the Church. Often, the greatest minds of the Middle Ages in these areas came from the Church itself, serving as priests, monks, bishops, and even popes. Even science, the area where the Church is often accused of suppressing thought in the name of religion, was cultivated by the Church. Woods also makes a persuasive case for why science itself could have only arisen in a society that possessed the theological world view of the Catholic Church, and why it never achieved its full potential in other civilizations.

The book is a quick read, and highly enjoyable, but it is by no means the definitive book on the Catholic Church's role in the rise of Western Civilization. As a beginning, though, and a reminder for those who have been influenced by a century of contrary history, it is an excellent place to start.

This book is definitely a work out. The book really shows the impact the church has had on the world. The book does focus exclusively on the catholic church. The book is very well documented. He goes through several stories about various catholic clergy's impact in various sciences. The book does focus on the churches impact in the middle ages. The book does show a different perspective on the middle ages. I think any reader will learn something new. A reader will see the positive impact of the church. The book rambles at times with the various stories. A reader will get lost in the details. The book focuses to much on the science stories. The author does have good points about how the church's impact on culture in general. The author has a good conclusion in how he points out the impact on society on the decline of the church.

This book presents indeas on how the Catholic Church has helped in forming Western Civilization.

An amazing piece of research work! Professor Woods did a great job in compiling and transforming into a time line oriented text all the great myths taught on world schools about the Catholic Church, and demystifies them with pure true history. The historical facts break all those mainstream thoughts about the relations with the Knowledge, with the Science, with the Economy, Art, Morality, International Law, Medicine, Humanitary Help (!)... It's just a question of reading, and the historical facts can all be confirmed.
After this book you'll at least reflect on the position that the Church was the great evil and brake of the world in the Middle Ages, and probably abandon it. Just give it a chance to read the "other side" of the history, and not what the 20th century historiography wants you to believe.

In a time when the Catholic Church is enduring persecution on a scale to rival the Klan attacks of the 1920s, here is an objective, historical account of what good the church did throughout the ages.

Mention the Catholic Church from the Middle Ages and you'll hear tales of the inquisitions and resistence to enlightened thinking. This text highlights the achievements mankind takes for granted and has forgotten are the product of a Christian continent. The university system, the sciences, libraries... Woods' lists and examples are as surprising as they are awe-inspiring sources of Catholic pride.

Like any history book, the text is long, intricate and not celebrated as a 'page-turner'. That being said, its a great one to delve into on a long flight or retreat weekend.

It is, perhaps, a generalization to see a misrepresentation of Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular in the popular notions of history today. But such misrepresentations are not new nor should they be unexpected in light of the warnings from Jesus in the gospels. With each generation apologists have attempted to counter the tendency of the world to misunderstand or misrepresent the faith. We like to believe that our high sense of right and wrong today with our distaste for racial bigotry and environmental sensitivities all came about on our own accord and that our righteousness surpasses the righteousness of our fathers. Yet we are but standing on the shoulders of the giants of past generations who laid the foundations for today's morality. The western world did choose to right the wrongs of the past despite the church, but it was the teachings of the church that instigated the desire to right those wrongs in the first place. Prof. Woods has given us just a few of many examples to challenge the notions of skeptics who see only a hinderance to progress in the church. It is a salve to the faithful and a solid scholarly response to the skeptic.

Most individuals today if asked about the Middle Ages would blithely write the period off as dark detour in the advancement of civilization. Associating the Catholic Church with advancing western civilization would be thought unlikely. It is exactly that cutting across the grain of conventional wisdom that makes this book so intriguing and important. Throw away your assumptions. What we now take for granted in modern science, free market economics, rule of law, human rights, charity, reason, and so on are grounded in the work of the Catholic Church after the fall of the Roman Empire. We are indebted to the Catholic Church as the architects of western civilization. This is essential reading.

the catholic church did not build western civilization.the econimic system, universities, and public education systems were created by the greek which was continuesd by the romans.if the church built the western civilization why do we call the period that followed the collapse of the roman empire and when the church took power THE DARK AGES.it was called the dark ages because over two thirds of the people didn't know how to read, because the system of aquaducts built by the romans were allowed to fall apart, most children did not go to school, technology and building techniques became primitive, people didnt bathe because the superstition of the church told them that THE DEVIL lived in water.It was the greeks, egyptians, and romans who built western civilization, which fell apart when the catholic church took over.we have more the muslims to thank for western civilization then the catholic church. if it wasnt for the turks for over throwing the byzantine empire greek refuges would have never come back to europe.the greek refuges who came to europe reintroduced the works of socartes,plato,aristotle,galen,heron of alexandria, and archimedes back to the west.how can some one insinuate that the church bult something that predates christianity as a whole?can any one answer that?

p.s. i know my spelling and gramr are horrible i wrote this very fast.

the catholic church did not build western civilization.the econimic system, universities, and public education systems were created by the greek which was continuesd by the romans.if the church built the western civilization why do we call the period that followed the collapse of the roman empire and when the church took power THE DARK AGES.it was called the dark ages because over two thirds of the people didn't know how to read, because the system of aquaducts built by the romans were allowed to fall apart, most children did not go to school, technology and building techniques became primitive, people didnt bathe because the superstition of the church told them that THE DEVIL lived in water.It was the greeks, egyptians, and romans who built western civilization, which fell apart when the catholic church took over.we have more the muslims to thank for western civilization then the catholic church. if it wasnt for the turks for over throwing the byzantine empire greek refuges would have never come back to europe.the greek refuges who came to europe treintroduced the works of socartes,plato,aristotle,galen,heron of alexandria, and archimedes back to the west.

p.s. i know my spelling and gramr are horrible i wrote this very fast.

This author knows what he's talking about. I'll be looking for more of his books

I read this book, here in Brazil, last year.
This book is excellent and definitive, about this subject.
The failures of this book are small.One of them is to explain, what went wrong with christianism in middle East and north of Africa, before Islam.
When the religion can changes, the society can changes too.
Islamic world is ever in medieval thinking, because of Islam itself can't change, since it was created, in VII Century.
Economy and politics are all produced from religion itself.

The book 'How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization' was a book I enjoyed reading. It presents an often overlooked idea, the importance of one of the longer-lasting and widely influential institutions in the Western world. It reminded me very much of Thomas Cahill's book, 'How the Irish Saved Civilization', both in content and in tone. Indeed, one of Woods' early chapters deals with some of the same information - the Irish of Cahill's text were primarily the monastic communities, and Woods develops this theme more generally (and more briefly) in his chapter.

Author Thomas Woods, Jr. states that one of his intentions is to remedy the generally pervasive attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church these days in historical studies which is either negative or lacking in reference altogether. There are history books (quite often those used by the public school system) that try to downplay the role of the church in Western history or eliminate it altogether. In part this is due to church/state issues and fears on the part of textbook buyers; in part it is also anti-Catholic bias in society that pops up in different ways.

I do have a few quibbles with the book. In trying to combat the negativity of much of the tone of the history of the Catholic Church, Woods goes a bit too far in the other direction at times. This is a balancing book, but it is not a balanced book - it is the argument in favour, and as such, overlooks at times the very real responsibility the church had in certain historical situations. Woods minimises where other histories tend to overplay, and neither stance is the best to take in interpretations. However, this is not a fatal flaw in Woods' narrative, it is the case that history built upon facts, and Woods doesn't play fast and loose with the facts.

Woods primary intention does work fairly well - to give credit where credit is due, and much credit is due to the church for its influence in government, art, culture, education, and even in areas such as science (where the church is often most heavily criticised). Law in both the domestic and international sense owes much to the church, as does the idea of community charity, education, and civic engagement. Perhaps the most surprising chapter to me was the one on the church and economics, which introduced the idea of currency exchange and inflation being described in the literature of the Scholastics.

There is a good index, a good collection of notes, and the style is written in a manner that is both accessible to the general reader yet interesting to those looking for something with substance. Overall, this is a reasonable response to the general negative tone in other texts. The importance of the church in Western history should not be denied, and Woods' book helps bring that to life.

How ironic that the media these days are always charging the Catholic Church with being irrational and anti-scientific - even with being the enemy of reason. How ironic that the majority of these criticisms seem to emanate from university science departments. Ironic because the Catholic Church alone was responsible not only for the creation of universities - and the tradition of rational discussion which is, or should be, the hallmark of university education - but for the origins of modern science itself.

Scientific discoveries and technological developments occurred in many different cultures and many parts of the world, but experimental science, as we know the term today, only arose once: in Christian Europe.

Using the findings of other scholars, particularly Stanley Jaki, Woods demonstrates how the Christian concept of the universe as the product of a loving and reasonable God led logically to the conclusion that all creation must operate by consistent laws which could be discovered by human reason. And equally importantly, he explains why other cultures, which believed either in fallible and even vengeful gods or in a sentient universe, could not come to this conclusion.

This book is deliberately popular in style, however unpopular its message may be in some quarters. It is not deep, and would probably be of little use for scholars except as an introduction, but what it lacks in depth, it more than makes up for in breadth and readability. It is an impressively thorough survey of the enormous influence of the Church on virtually every aspect of western civilization: the development of hospitals and medical care, legal systems, economic theory, and so much more.

In particular, Woods documents the role of the much-maligned monks in keeping civilization alive through the so-called "Dark Ages" by feeding the poor, by caring for them, by developing technology, by promoting agriculture of all kinds, and particularly by devoting themselves to the preservation of the literature of antiquity from the barbarian tribes that were intent on burning everything they did not understand.

The writing is unhesitatingly polemical, but this is okay; in fact, it is long overdue. So many people, particularly people in the media and in educational institutions, are ignorant about the matters he discusses. So many of us have been fed lies all our lives.

This is a wonderful book. I would love to give it 5 stars.

Unfortunately I can't.

The writing is very uneven - sometimes inspired, but all too often sloppy. Woods often overstates his case, and he repeats himself far too often. He develops some topics in too much detail and leaves others with gaping holes - eg after a fascinating section on the development of international law by the Spanish Dominicans, he really says nothing about the historical impact of their ideas.

I repeat: this is a great book, and I think everyone should read it. But it could have been so much better.

This is a very good read, and - if such a concept makes sense - a very good social apologetic for the Catholic Church. As an R&D guy my whole working life, I knew that historic scientific eminences like Newton were all, basically, religious men. I also knew that the monastic system played a huge role in the transmission and preservation of knowledge over the Middle Ages. But I did not know the role that religious thinking played in other fields like law and economics.
Be aware, this is a Catholic book written by a Catholic. I can't really argue with some of the points he makes as Dr. Woods knows a heck of a lot more history than I do. He does tend to give the impression that he always gives the benefit of the doubt to the Church, but one can hardly fault him for that. It's rhetoric in the classical sense, and I give him high marks for the intellectually sound, tasteful way he has written the book.
I gave the book four out of five stars because I'm comparing him as an author to Thomas Cahill. He's not quite that good, but he's definitely breathing down Cahill's neck.

Much of what we Americans know of European history is based on English historians who came after Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church. Many clearly had an anti-Catholic bent as have many other European historians who wrote after the Reformation. The French purged libraries during the French Revolution so little reliable French history predating the reformation exists there. German Lutherans and Swiss Calvinists did much the same.

Does this mean that history as we know it is wrong? It seems more than probable.

Thus this book becomes rather important.

While fairly well written, it is a bit dry in some areas. Woods' research and reasoning seems sound. He can editorialize a little, but unlike many other historians I have read, he does not try to hide the fact.

By presenting the Church in, at times a neutral and at other times a favorable light, Woods departs from long held historical assumptions. That can be disturbing to some, but he is quick to cite sources and, where important, mentions whether the sources are secular or not.

If you enjoy history, you will find this book intriguing, especially if you like conspiricy theories.

Being a buff on the history of denominations myself, enjoying especially the works of Kuiper, I find works like this interesting to say the least. I appreciate the time and effort it takes to accummulate such knowledge and also the way it is presented. It gives a serious researcher much to think about.

I haven't finished reading the book, but am absolutely amazed at the information presented. It is easy to understand. It is also backed up by an very large amount of Notes. I had read his earlier book on American History that was also very interesting.

After reading Dr. Wood's book I've realized just how much we've missed in our standard histories. To Protestant and Secular textbook writers it has unfortunately been important to write the Catholic Church out of history. Dr. Woods shows, with excellent research and references from the times he is recounting, that the history of Western Civilization cannot be written without taking into account the force and the continuity of the Catholic Church in almost every aspect of life and culture. Medicine, Science, Law, Education, Charity and Morality in Western Civilization were shaped in the bosom of the Church. He doesn't attempt to excuse or explain much of the human flaws we hear about so frequently in standard histories, but there is so much more that was going on in Western Culture. See the real story of Galileo and don't fall for the popular accounts of Church oppression again. See how the Reformation in England contributed to impoverishing the population when hospitals, schools, charities were confiscated with the monasteries un Henry VIII. You never hear these accounts in standard histories. Dr. Woods shows how important it is to keep in mind who is writing the more commonly accepted history texts and to seek the truth in multiple sources.

This book supports what the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, "It would be hard to find 100 people in the world who hate the Catholic Church, but there are many thousands who hate what they "think" is the Catholic Church." In this day and age we are so impressed by our modern opinions and our technological advances, yet we have lost a lot of the wisdom we once had. We act as if our society came out of nowhere and we are not the least thankful for those people and institutions who came before us and left our civilization so much.

This is a must read for anyone who thinks that the Catholic Church is here only to stop us from "having a good time."

Factual & well written to hold one's interest especially these days when God is considered dead promoting His so called irrelivancy in our modern thoughts through economics, science & psychology in particular which are elevated at the expense religion & Christianity in particular. The Catholic Church, led & protected by the Pope maintains unity & universality because it is centrally governed and of course flies directly into today's thinking of materialism & relativism, etc. That's why this book is relevent because it spotlights the Catholic contibution not only to the West but how her truths can contribute to the entire world not by force but by simply sharing.

This book is typical of Christian and Catholic apologetics which try to claim that the Catholic Church created Western Civilization. There is a new book by Rodney Stark which does the same thing.

Let's get real: the Catholic Church accepted a view of Jesus not accepted by his earliest followers led by his brother James of Jerusalem. Jesus had nothing to do with what became Catholic belief. The Catholic Church is the most evil institution next to the Nazi Party.

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.

I was very disappointed to discover that the author presents his subject matter in such a radically lopsided fashion that it is not unfair to characterize it as dishonest. I can't imagine why he would do this. I am a devoted catholic and love the church. I know that the church has done (and continues to do) much that is worthy of the highest praise, for the (salvation and) advancement of humanity! However, to claim that the church is solely or primarily responsible for the creation of, or just about every advancement in art, science, law, industry, etc. is well, excuse me, but not just false, but a ridiculous claim. The contributions of the Mother Church to the preservation and advancement of Western civilization are awesome in scope and value, and out of respect for the Catholic Church, history, and the reader, demand an honest apraisal.

How The Catholic Church Built
Western Civilization
By Thomas E. Woods Jr. Ph.D.
Regenery Publishing Inc.
Washington DC 2005


Reviewed by Frank J. Capone
TCRNews.com



Since at least the time of the Enlightenment it has been the prevalent notion in Western intellectual circles that organized religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular are a threat to the building of an enlightened civilization. During the past one hundred or so years this idea has trickled down to popular culture, even as many intellectuals are now beginning to question it. Movies and Science Fiction novels, for example, have promoted the idea that the Church is a tyrannical institution that would distort scientific inquiry and establish some kind of outright thought control which it is alleged to have done during the Middle Ages. They fear a return to intolerance, persecution, and religious wars. In their view a society based on the Church's teachings and spirituality would set society back several centuries.

Thomas Woods' recent book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is a serious challenge to these notions. He has built a strong case that, far from being a detriment to the advancement of Western civilization, the Church has been the prime architecht in building the foundation of Western civilization in the first place, and actually formed and promoted many of the concepts that the secular intellectual elites themselves cherish! One who has been indoctrinated with the secular-humanist propaganda of the present day may very well be surprised by the enormous evidence marshalled by Mr. Woods in this important work. And it is hardly a dry work filled with many technical terms but is a very easy read.

Science

One outstanding example is in the area of science (ch. 5). Many in the scientific community believe that religious ideas must be kept out of scientific inquiry. True knowledge can only come about when there are no preconcieved ideas of a Prime Mover directing things. As Dr. John Hubert brought out in a recent article at TCR, they believe in a "methodological naturalism" which excludes anything not verifiable in the material realm, such as a First Cause, Prime Mover, Final Causality, etc. This concept is the main impetus behind the opposition to the growing Intelligent Design movement. Because Intelligent Design posits a Designer, and thus a purpose to creation, they are afraid that if this concept catches on it will be to the detriment of true "scientific" advancement.

What Mr. Woods shows is that, far from being a hindrance to scientific advancement, the Church promoted a worldview that made science inquiry itself possible! He directs the reader, for example, to the work of Father Stanley Jaki, a historian of science, who brings out the point that it was the Christian outlook that created the intellectual enviroment that made it possible for scienctific research to advance. Science couldn't develope in the other great cultures of antiquity because of "their lack of belief in a transcendent Creator who endowed His creation with consistent physical laws." (p.76-77) They saw creation permeated by a mutiplicity of human-like gods and goddesses and nature having a mind of its own. It was the Christian insistence of a God who transcended nature and who ordered it that "..allowed Christians to view the universe as a realm of order and predictability."(p.77) For Mr. Woods, "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".(p. 81.)

Woods also calls on the examples of twelfth century philosophers who endeavored to find the natural cause for things without reference to divine power, believing that nature was significantly autonomous while, at the same time, believing that God was the ultimate author of it. Also brought out are the contributions of priests and other Catholic scholars who made tremendous contributions to genuine scientific knowledge, contributions we don't often hear about. What Mr. Woods has presented here may come as outright shock to those used to reading the works of scientists such as Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Dawkins.

International Law, Unity of the Human Race,
Human Rights

Another noteworthy contribution the Church made to Western civilization is the concept of international law and basic human rights.(ch. 7) Mr. Woods presents the examples of 16th century churchmen like Father Francisco De Vitorio, who laid the foundations for international law, and Bartolome de Las Casas, who helped further the concept that the natives of the New World were as entitled to basic human rights as Europeans (how often do we hear that?). They based their thought on the principles of natural law laid out by St. Thomas Aquinas. The actions of the Spanish in the New World stirred these and other theologians to examine Church teachings concerning the dignity of human beings, natural rights, and concluded that "The treatment to which all human beings were entitled-e.g., not to be killed, expropriated, etc.- derives from their status as men rather than as members of the faithful in a state of grace."(p.139)

It is from the work of these men, Woods believes, that the present day concepts of international law and dignity of every human individual owe their origins. He states:

"The Catholic Conception of the fundamental unity of the human race, on the other hand, informed the deliberations of the great sixteenth century Spanish theologians who insisted on the universal principles that must govern the interactions of states. If we criticize Spanish excesses in the New World, therefore, it is thanks to the moral tools provided by the Catholic theologians of Spain that we are able to do so.'(p. 150)
Dignity of Women

There are many other examples of surprising facts brought out in this work that would come as a shock to anyone who believes modern secular propaganda concerning the Church. For instance, contrary to ultra feminist teaching, the Church actually worked toward the emanicipation of women, giving them freedoms unheard of in the ancient world. He also relates how the Church restored the dignity of marriage by insisting that relations were to be confined to husband and wife and that it is just as adulterous for a man to cheat on his wife as it is for a woman to be unfaithful to her husband (a novel concept in the ancient world!) Thus the dignity of women was actually greatly increased because of Church teachings, as well as the importance of the family as the basis of human life.

War and Peace

Also, concerning the concepts war and peace, the just war concept promoted by the Church became a basis for thinking twice before going to war. "Thus the developement of a distinct intellectual tradititon in the West whereby the moral rectitude of wars is held up to scrutiny according to certain fixed principles has been the work of the Catholic Church."(p. 208) ( For further illustration of this read Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, Bantam Books, New York . 1971. by Telford Taylor, U.S. Chief Council at Nuremberg. Taylor says many of the same things as Woods does concerning the role of Catholic theologians in the forming of international law and the Just War concept.)

Jurisprudence

Also brought out in ch. 10 is how Church canon law "became the model for the various secular and legal systems that would now begin to emerge."(p. 190) Up tuntil the 11th century Europeans still lived under a primitve system of law filled with blood feuds, ordeals by fire and unsavory superstitions. But the "rational proceedures called for by canon law thus hastened the end of these primitve methods."(192) This runs counter to the Enlightenment myth that it was science and reason that ended superstitious practices promoted by religion.

In other areas there are numerous other examples of how the Church influenced Western architechture, economics, charity (an almost unheard of concept in the ancient world until the Church came along) education and art.

It has been said that society must be now based on humanistic principles and not religious ones. The Enlightenment, it is believed, has made it possible to grow "beyond" any dependence on the Creator. Those who say this, as previously mentioned, believe that a religious society would only lead to intolerance and conflict. If religions now believe in tolerance and human rights, the story goes, it is only because they have embraced concepts that have sprung up from Enlightenment principles.

What Mr. Woods has deftly shown is that if anything, the opposite is true. Many of the principles that the Enlightenment promoted and that secular humanism embraces have actually been borrowed from Catholic thought! Far from being a threat to the concepts of equality, human dignity, peace, the advancement of science and other of the good concepts that secular thought cherishes, the Catholic Church is the very foundation on which these ideas are supported! Far from being a hindrance to the advancement of human culture, the Church was the only reason Western Civilization actually did advance at all! One shudders to think what would happen if Western culture did indeed altogether abandon its Catholic roots!

The Quest

If society hasn't completely fallen apart yet, it is because people have not yet completely abandoned the the teachings and principles of the Church. Indeed, "Western standards of morality have been decisively shaped by the Catholic Church."(p. 203) Included among these are those which people still cling to.

Not a few today, thankfully, have rejected the logical implications of biased secular thought and are on journeys in search for a more solid basis for knowledge, science and existence. In doing so they are travelling on roads that will eventually lead back to Rome. Mr. Woods has provided a roadsign that will point many in the right direction if they as they continue on their quest. Every objective inquirer should get this book.

Woods has done an excellent job highlighting how much Western Civilization has received from Christianity. Chapter by chapter, he walks us through every institution of Western society to show the pivotal influence of the Church:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ch. 1 The indispensable church 1;
Ch. 2 A light in the darkness 9;
Ch. 3 How the monks saved civilization 25;
Ch. 4 The church and the university 47;
Ch. 5 The church and science 67;
Ch. 6 Art, architecture, and the church 115;
Ch. 7 The origins of international law 133;
Ch. 8 The church and economics 153;
Ch. 9 How Catholic charity changed the world 169;
Ch. 10 The church and Western law 187;
Ch. 11 The church and Western morality 203;
Conclusion : a world without God 217

While the aim of the book legitimately focuses on the positive influences, it feels strangely incomplete. The Church often has destroyed the very thing it built. Especially in recent years, it has more and more reduced faith virtually to morality. The Western world has turned away from God due to that reductionism of God to the moral and the rational.

There is a violent side to the prevalent Catholic God-image that has threatened to destroy the very grand contributions Woods rightly attributes to the Church. This shadow side has been philosophically and theologically explicated by Europe's most prolific theologian, Eugen Drewermann. M. Beier's introduction to Drewermann's balanced critique of Catholic Christianity, in his remarkable book A Violent God-Image (Continuum, 2004) is recommended to all those who want to get the full picture.

I found this book very enlightening.
Some previous reviewers had problems with the book omitting criticism of Catholic Church or not including protestant accomplishments.
The truth is that it was not a purpose of this particular piece of work.
The author simply sticks to the subject.
And a subject is very important one. Book is easy to read, well planned and full of historical data.
I agree with T. Woods, that we live in the time of amnesia....

As some of the below reviewers reflect, this book lacks balance with the Church's shortcomings and mistakes over the centuries. However, the book seems written more to offset the mountain of unbalanced criticism heaped upon it over the years. He does turn it into an apologia, rather than a "pure" history text. But it would be odd to write a book focused upon benefits, and then summarize in some way not in keeping with the thrust of the book.

Correction must be made to some of the antagonistic reviewers below who are themselves subjects to gross disinformation.

Some (Catia Grace Villatorio) seem to be reading largely wacko fringe authors. [The Christians did not burn the library of Alexandria (as Freemasons and others used to claim), Rome and Greece denegrated women, pre-Christianized Rome was hardly a picture of toleration (hence the persecution of Christians), paganism was hardly cruelty-free, etc., etc..]

Others seem to have fallen into the common cursory knowledge of Protestant history (Tom Tozer). For the Bible was in German before Luther, and at least partially in English even before Wycliffe. Wycliffe is reputed to have been the first to produced a complete English translation of the Bible from the Vulgate, though More, Cranmer, and Foxe all mention the existence of English Bibles prior. Tyndale was no quiet Bible translator. He spoke his views loudly, and even included them as commentary notes in his Bible. Thus he gained the ire of both Rome, and the King of England. In fact, it was agents of Henry VIII that pursued him to Brussels, and instigated his execution in Oct. of 1536, prompting Tyndale's final words, "Lord, ope the king of England's eies." This was two years AFTER Henry's founding of the Church of England.

Michael C. D. and Lee Carlson appear better read than most, but the former obviously paints to broadly his condemnations, and over-generalizes the Churches power. Both seem to miscast the Inquisition. Neither seem to have a sense of larger historical perspective by which one might compare the Catholic Church to other institutions. And to think that ancient Catholics (esp. including Acquinas) were not considering their faith when working on philosophy or science is quite silly. The brain's modular structure does not prevent areas and concepts from interelating. It is already proven (not theory) for instance that women incorporate more regions of their brain in various thought processes than men. Modularity indicates specialized functions, not solitary. And the Galileo incident was about maintaining tollerance for other views, which the intollerant Galileo was stridently not inclined towards. However, Carlson makes some good points about this sense of need to control.

Overall, the author's point remains that Catholicism was not the complete wet blanket to progress as has been frequently portrayed. However, he could afford to be more generous with credit to non-Catholics, and not give the Church quite so much credit for the accomplishment of individuals. After all, even with the environment provided, the U.S. Government is not to credit for the ideas of Thomas Edison.

Upon first sight, I was a bit put off by the title of this book, believing it to be at least a little bit pretentious. But Dr Woods makes a great case that the Church provided an intellectual and social framework in which many advances were made in Western Civilization. There are chapters addressing Science, Economics, Art, Law, Charity and other topics.

This is a very high-level discussion of the men and women who made major contributions in these disciplines. Was it the ~intention~ of the Church to support these advances? Most probably not, but it was within the framework of the Church that they were made. The author show that monasteries and monks, for example, were preservers of ancient knowledge and are responsible for providing a certain continuity of knowledge and skills through the centuries.

Dr Woods does avoid almost entirely any discussion of the corruption in and abuses by the Church during this long period, but that is probably to be expected. This book is, after all, a response to those that say the Christian Church or even religion in general has only been detrimental to society. And to those claims, this is an excellent rebuttal.

The book is easy to read, (even the discussions of economic theory), and does not get bogged down in details of each discipline. As a Catholic apologist, he takes the occasional jab at Protestants (who by the way share that history up until the Reformation) but not too much. And the book ends with a "why we're in the mess we're in" chapter in which he addresses the results of the fall away from the Catholic Church in the past century.

There is a good bibliography and notes section. If you have doubts about what you see here, check it out. Overall, this is an excellent book and I would recommend it for young and old alike.

"The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." This would not be if we remembered St. Paul's admonition that "all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God," and applied Jesus' teaching that "he who is without sin [should] cast the first stone."

This book, while not ignoring the bad that has been done in the name of Catholicism, seeks to disinter the good that has gone largely ignored. On balance the Catholic faith has given rise to far, far more good than bad.

To see how much good the Church has done in the secular world, and where it has done that good, read the book. After reading the book, you might wish to try "For the Glory of God" and "In the Name of God" by Rodney Stark, and also "Aristotle's Children" by Richard Rubenstein. It is hard to overstate the influence that Catholicism has had in shaping Western Civilization, but Woods comes close to doing it. The works of Stark and Rubenstein will provide some balance.

Two interesting contentions that Woods makes: 1. He argues that the Church's censure of Galileo for his heliocentric ideas was in keeping with good scientific principles. I'm not sure he carries his point, but his argument is ingenious and engaging. 2. He argues that the Church's rejection of Aristotelian ideas on religious grounds served to free science from the straight jacket imposed by philosophic Aristotle-worship. Stark makes a similar point in his work. Rubenstein would weigh in on the other side of the argument.

"The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." This would not be if we remembered St. Paul's admonition that "all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God," and applied Jesus' teaching that "he who is without sin [should] cast the first stone."

This book, while not ignoring the bad that has been done in the name of Catholicism, seeks to disinter the good that has gone largely ignored. On balance the Catholic faith has given rise to far, far more good than bad.

To see how much good the church has done in the secular world,and where it has done that good, read the book. After reading the book, you might wish to try "For the Glory of God" and "In the Name of God" by Rodney Stark, and also "Aristotle's Children" by Richard Rubenstein. It is hard to overstate the influence that Catholicism has had in shaping Western Civilization, but Woods comes close to doing it. The works of Stark and Rubenstein will provide some balance.

One last thing. A subtheme of the book seems to be that, while everything good about Western Civilization came from Catholicism, most of the bad came from Protestantism. I was taught long ago that you can't build yourself up by tearing others down. The book would have benefited from a little less anti-Protestant polemic.

"How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization"
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 0895260387
trade cloth (hardcover)
256 pages
2005-05 (May 2005)

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?
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.

This reviewer hastens to add that the RC Church hierarchy has
been infiltrated, so what passes for Catholic nowadays is often
bogus. smwa.org buries info in its archives about what happened;
don't throw out the baby with the bathwater...

Although the following book is not written by a Roman Catholic,
I wholeheartedly recommend it to all, be you Christian/Protestant
or Jewish or Muslim or agnostic:
"Power in Praise", by (Methodist chaplain) Merlin R. Carothers
ISBN: 0943026016. It tells you what YOU can do RIGHT NOW without
fanfare or money to get things back on track and right with God.

It has been said that there are two Catholic Churches - the Catholic Church that people believe exists, and the Catholic Church that actually exists. Many people, non-Catholic and Catholic alike, see the Church exclusively from the perspective of today's monolithic media presentation. As a result, they equate the Church as rigid, unbending, anti-science, anti-intellectual, intolerant, sexist, racist, euro-centric, etc. And to a certain extent, there is credible evidence that the Church - an institution of human beings - has indeed suffered from human failings over the centuries.

HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILT WESTERN CIVILIZATION dispels many of these misconceptions (or places them in a more holistic context). Professor Woods, a best-selling author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," meticulously and thoughtfully examines the influence of the Church in science, art and architecture, law, economics, ethics, morality, charity and social justice.

The book is relatively brief (about 265 pages including bibliography and endnotes), yet engagingly explores the Church's role in preserving the last vestiges of western (Greek, Roman) civilization during the "dark" and middle ages. However, Professor Woods does not show a strident pro-Church, ignore-the-faults bias; rather, he sheds light on a variety of the Church's failings, in balance with its many triumphs throughout history. The text is well organized and flows well. There are a few areas in which major failings are glossed-over, but in general, the book is objective.

The book remains true to the title and does not become mired in theology or doctrine. I recommend the book to anyone seeking a more balanced interpretation of Catholic history and an introduction to leading Catholics (many now obscure) of various disciplines.

1) One reviewer comments that Woods writes of anti-Catholic prejudice in America without giving evidence. This is a matter of historical record: from individual events like the burning of the Ursuline Convent to movements like the KKK (founded against Blacks, Jews, and Catholics), the Eugenics movement (ostensibly to rid society of the so-called "feeble-minded," but pushed by uber-eugenicist Margaret Sanger against "Southern Europeans" - i.e., Italian Catholics) - to the Know-Nothing party to the entire "nativist" movement in the US to the vicious and ignorant response to John F. Kennedy's campaign (and I am only scratching the surface!) anti-Catholicism in the US is well documented and would fill volumes.

The same reviewer wants "evidence" of the ignorance about the middle ages - well, open just about any popular book on history and there it is - a thousand year blank between the Greeks and the self-proclaimed Renaissance! Many, many textbooks and even historians are just as bad - they skip over the rich, thousand-year tapestry of the Middle Ages - which had universities that in some ways were even freer intellectally than our "political correct" thought police of today - with apparently no knowledge whatsoever of what an exciting and even radical time it was (do you think it was easy for St. Thomas Aquinas to introduce Aristotelian ideas?) The Church did not stifle debate - they were its source! The evidence won't fit in an Amazon review - or in an encyclopedia sized volume. The author shouldn't have to provide evidence for the self-evident!

2) The same reviewer's most startling comment is that the people profiled in the book should be seen merely as philosophers or astronomers, without seeing Catholicism as their "defining characteristic." They should be seen as "individuals" doing "real" work, with their religion as "ancillary!" This betrays both a stunning ignorance of the depth of a Catholic understanding of the world as well as the modern prejudice - projected back into the past - for the primacy of something like modern American consumerism; for the consumer, ideas are merely "ancillary" products. Yes, in the modern world we might say that if a lot of scientists play tennis, then tennis didn't build science, for it is an ancillary hobby. But Catholicism is infinitely more: it is a way of seeing the world. It was an anti-Gnostic, anti-Platonist realism about the world (science did not arise under the religions of the east!); it was a moral vision (the very idea of "charity" would have astonished the Greek philosophers - they had no concept of "agape;" in addition, the original UN documents on human rights draw very, very heavily from Catholic social justice encyclicals); and it is spiritual vision that includes that ultimate worth and dignity of human beings.
This was their intellectual, moral, and spiritual milieu, which formed and shaped them; not something "ancillary."

3) Other comments in the same and other reviews betray the same kind of abysmal ignorance that undoubtedly motivated the author to write the book. The book is a general overview. For more details about why Woods is right about Galileo (most of what we think we know about the Galileo case came NOT from the historical record, but from anti-Catholic screeds, including a book by Sanford White and a particularly egregious play), do some *serious* research. The same is true of the Inquisition - a shameful event that did not need to be falsely expanded to involve "millions" dead, and needed to be placed in the context of those murdered under Protestants like Calvin, or the infinitely worse mass murders under atheists from Stalin and Pol Pot. The author does not justify, but uses his book as an opportunity to try and make people be more honest about what actually happened.

This review was not meant to be "helpful" in the way that other good reviews posted here are; it is merely to agree with the author, first that *ideas have consequences,* and Catholicism did indeed affect the way the West, as opposed to the East, saw and responded to the world. Second, some reviewers, in their lack of knowledge, exemplify precisely the problem that Woods uncovers. People don't even know that "separation of Church and State" goes at least back to Dante the 13th century. A letter-writer to the NY Times asked why anyone should refer to religion when discussing human rights, which, he said, were invented by the Enlightenment! This kind of ignorance is rampant. I haven't even mentioned the popularity of "The Da Vinci Code," which is entirely fictional and appallingly and blatantly false from top to bottom.

Rather than demand that it contain thousands of pages of evidence, readers should see Woods's book as just a first step, one that will lead them on a glorious search for the truth that has been so long buried under prejudice, ignorant, and willful hatred.

Thomas Woods book is mostly factual, at times repetitive, most often a corrective balance to revisionists "junk" advanced by anti-religion pseudo-intellectuals (example, another reviewer giving the French Revolution credit for democracy - one it is grossly off-target and misleading). I think Woods does whitewash some items, like simony, the crusades which helped increase the tensions between the East and West Churches, and the inquisition; but I think he means his book to be a corrective to anti-Catholic propaganda more than a thorough history of the Roman Catholic Church.

The book is strongest when dealing with the history of the richness of Catholic pioneers in the sciences. It is just factual, that the Catholic Church, through its emphasis on education and looking at God's laws as ordered and natural, lead Western thought in the physical sciences during the late scholastic and early enlightenment periods. Again, the Islamic religion completely lagged in the most important areas to scientific contribution in regards to physics and astronomy. Woods sets the Galileo record straight as well.

The section on international law is also very good and the idea of natural rights. I do think, however, some credit is due to the Reformation, which advanced political thought and literacy rates and education. These ideas of conscience also a