Thorolfr #39
And what major musical, artistic, architectural or political achievements that transformed the world can be attributed to the Catholic Church?
Father John McCloskey, reviewing *How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization *by Thomas E. Woods Jr. - published by Regnery Publishing, 2005, writes:
**“Woods notes, ‘Western civilization stands indebted to the Church for the university system, charitable work, international law, the sciences, and, important legal principles. … Western civilization owes far more to the Catholic Church than most people — Catholic included — often realize. … The Church, in fact, built Western civilization.’ ” **[My emphasis].
With all of the facts available, and readily accessible, the refusal to face the reality betrays a simplistic and inherent bias against that reality. Even many scientists just don’t know the debt that the world owes to the Catholics who have discovered and developed science.
But, in
Science and Creation Father Stanley Jaki lists seven great cultures in which science suffered a “stillbirth” – Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya – they did not have the Catholic conception of the divine. Fr Jaki emphasises that “nature had to be de-animized” for science to be born. (
Creation and Scientific Creativity, Paul Haffner, Christendom Press, 1991, p 41). “During the twelfth century in Latin Europe those aspects of Judeo-Christian thought which emphasized the idea of creation out of nothing and the distance between God and the world, in certain contexts and with certain men, had the effect of eliminating all semi-divine entities from the realm of nature.” (
How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Dr Thomas E Woods, Regnery, 2005, p 93).
“From Ockham through Copernicus, the development of the heliocentric model of the solar system was the product of the universities — that most Christian invention. From the start, the medieval Christian university was a place created and run by scholars devoted entirely to knowledge. The autonomy of individual faculty members was carefully guarded. Since all instruction was in Latin, scholars were able to move about without regard for linguistic boundaries, and because their degrees were mutually recognized, they were qualified to join any faculty. It was in these universities that European Christians began to establish science. And it was in these same universities, not later in the salons of philosophes or Renaissance men, that the classics were restored to intellectual importance. The translations from Greek into Latin were accomplished by exceedingly pious Christian scholars.
“It was the Christian scholastics, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who built up the field of physiology based on human dissections. Once again, hardly anyone knows the truth about dissection and the medieval Church. Human dissection was not permitted in the classical world (“the dignity of the human body” forbade it), which is why Greco-Roman works on anatomy are so faulty. Aristotle’s studies were limited entirely to animal dissections, as were those of Celsius and Galen. Human dissection also was prohibited in Islam.
“With the Christian universities came a new outlook on dissection. The starting assumption was that what is unique to humans is a soul, not a physiology. Dissections of the human body, therefore, have no theological implications.
catholicleague.org/resear…nd_science.htm
*Catholicism and Science *by Rodney Stark (from
Catalyst 9/2004)].
The twin pillars of Faith and Reason (
Fides et Ratio, St John Paul II) will always result in the best science – directed to the discovery of God’s laws and based on His natural moral law as to ends and means – with which Christ’s Church alone is fully equipped by Him to guide.
Everyone who knows the history of science sees the blindness so starkly in evidence.
Your misconceptions and falsehoods seem endless.
