Okay, I just finished writing a big post answering that article and it came out to almost 4,000 words, way longer than CAF wants me to post. Instead, let me just quote a few portions of my answer and I’ll link you to a Google Doc where you can read the whole thing if you want, okay?
[The] author [claims] that “Europe suffered through zero economic growth in the centuries from 500 AD to 1500.” This was a staggering claim to me. … [The] only way to there could be zero economic growth for 1000 years would be if all the existing money simply got shuffled around. That would mean no new jobs were created, or if any were, they were canceled out by an equal number of jobs that got eliminated.
However, that just sounds ridiculous to me. … Just take the monks as an example. When you colonize an uninhabited area, as they did, you automatically bring an economy to a place where it didn’t exist before. People bring the economy, at Least a bartering economy, and eventually a monetary one. … they started out with areas where there were Zero people and Zero economies, and they created communities there where people produced goods and traded them. …
…[The] problem for the early medieval period is that any growing community was constantly looted and destroyed by Danish pirates. (Vikings…) … the decline of literacy and the primitive sewage systems…were [Also] due to barbarian raids… It was only with the peace and stability provided by emperors like Charlemagne, King Alfred, and the Ottonian Dynasty that an economy could take off…[and those kings] all prove that wherever the barbarians were defeated, learning sprang up as a consequence. … Learning also took off in places where the vikings never entered. …
The author complains that the west learned Latin but not Greek. However, Irish monks were noted for excelling at Greek. …John Scotus Eriugena…translat[ed]…the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. The Irish Catholic philosopher Dicuil was also knowledgeable of the Greek classics…[such as] Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Hecataeus… [T]he Greek-speaking Catholics of the Byzantine empire [had Aristotle’s] works… Arabs aren’t the only ones responsible for keeping the works of Aristotle alive during the so-called “dark ages.” Catholics at the University of Constantinople copied Aristotle’s works and taught from them works as well. …
The author claims that the Greeks added to a variety of scientific fields, but “the Christians replaced efforts to understand the world with an attempt to know God.” … In the field of astronomy, St. Bede the Venerable’s astronomical works made astonishing discoveries that had not been made by the Greek and Latin astronomers, such as the relationship between the tides and the phases of the moon. In medicine…Paul of Aegina wrote the most influential work on [medicine]…[There were] Catholic medical schools like the School of Salerno and the medical college of the University of Constantinople. In geography, we have Dicuil. In physics, we have John Philoponus. In engineering, we have Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus. In chemistry, we have Kallinikos of Constantinople. In clockwork, we have St. Boethius. All these people were from the so-called “dark ages.”
As the above examples show, the truth is that “dark age” Catholics contributed new material and useful compendiums of previous data to all the fields mentioned by this article. …
[One] contradiction [in the article] touches his claim that Boethius was “the last serious philosopher for 350 years.” My first thought was, What about John Scotus Eriugena? And St. Paschasius Radbertus, and Bl. Rabanus Maurus, and St. Cyril the Philosopher? They were all serious Catholic philosophers from right in the middle of that 350 years where he denies any “serious” philosophers. … Catholics made important contributions to philosophy during this period including the development of the just war tradition and solving the problem of universals. The Church’s thinking on social doctrine is also notable at this time, with its study of natural law and its implications for human society. …
In the section on how the Church was Responsible for the “dark ages,” the author also complains about suppression of “free thought.” … It is also laughable that he claims freethought was “best exemplified by heretics and dissidents.” He cites the Cathars in this regard, which I thought was hilarious because this author is a libertarian. His whole political system, which they pride on being rational, is based on the fulfillment of contracts. but the Cathars denied the validity of all foundational western contracts because they were all based on oaths, which the Cathars thought were immoral. They were the opposite of free thinkers from the libertarian perspective and would be as subversive of a libertarian political system as they were to the feudal system.
A similar point can be made about Arius and the Donatists. …these two heresies were just as irrational and opposed to free thinking as the Cathar heresy.
The author also has a problematic view of mystery…faith and reason…[and] our belief in the spiritual world…
His section on the persecution of heretics is problematic for several reasons. He names the Arians, Donatists, and Cathars as groups that were unjustly suppressed, but he fails to mentions that these groups persecuted Catholicism first, and what Catholics were doing was defending themselves. …
Lastly, we come to Galileo, and the Inquisition. … However, Galileo was not punished primarily for his scientific theories, but for a combination of teaching theology without a license and being a jerk toward the pope and other scientists. …
I think that answers most of his criticisms. Let me know if this helps!
Here is a link to where you can read the full version:
drive.google.com/open?id=1ApXQiT0IXG0yTSg_SPGA90j6mxKq7dBDwZurpopmoCs
