Does the Catholic Church Hold People Back?

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ClemtheCatholic

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(Sorry if it’s in the wrong forum!)

I was watching this thing where a women was describing how in the past the Catholic Church has held people back when it comes to advancing in the sciences and such. She was saying how after the Reformation everything took off with Age of Enlightenment and stuff like that… Anyway, she was also pretty negative about the Church in the present.

So I’m wondering if her arguments have any merit and how one should respond?
 
I think she needs to go back and study her history and see how the Church saved education and learning after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
 
McDale721 said:
I think she needs to go back and study her history and see how the Church saved education and learning after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
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More like the OP has the opportunity to study history and rebut the objections. I would suggest two books:

Woods, Thomas Jr. E. “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization”
Moczar, Diane. “Seven Lies About Catholic History”

Both have excellent chapters detailing how it was the Church that advanced learning and actually protected free thought and academic discourse during medieval times.
 
porthos11 said:
More like the OP has the opportunity to study history and rebut the objections. I would suggest two books:

Woods, Thomas Jr. E. “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization”
Moczar, Diane. “Seven Lies About Catholic History”

Both have excellent chapters detailing how it was the Church that advanced learning and actually protected free thought and academic discourse during medieval times.
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Precisely. And, on principle, non-Catholics or anti-Cathoics should not be listened to or consulted for any type of information regarding the faith. If they are not in the Church, then they are of the world, which opposes the Church.
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
(Sorry if it’s in the wrong forum!)

I was watching this thing where a women was describing how in the past the Catholic Church has held people back when it comes to advancing in the sciences and such. She was saying how after the Reformation everything took off with Age of Enlightenment and stuff like that… Anyway, she was also pretty negative about the Church in the present.

So I’m wondering if her arguments have any merit and how one should respond?
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Where did you see this? Who was this person making the claims? What was her evidence?

Peace,
Ed
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
(Sorry if it’s in the wrong forum!)

I was watching this thing where a women was describing how in the past the Catholic Church has held people back when it comes to advancing in the sciences and such. She was saying how after the Reformation everything took off with Age of Enlightenment and stuff like that… Anyway, she was also pretty negative about the Church in the present.

So I’m wondering if her arguments have any merit and how one should respond?
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Besides advancements in science and technology (to which the Church has historically been a great contributor), I don’t even know what “hold people back” is supposed to mean. It just sounds like atheistic polemics.
 
Yeah, it’s true that much science has its origin in the Church.

It’s also true that science advanced much faster under secularism than it did under Church rule.

Why’s that?

You could buy the Marxist power-struggle theory and say that it’s because the Church violently, unjustly suppressed hard-working blah blah blahs. But the more reasonable and charitable answer is that rapid scientific advance is the (only) benefit granted us by modernity’s hypertrophied attention to material and efficient causes.
 
Where is her proof? Sounds like a case of hoof and mouth disease.
 
ClemtheCatholic said:
(Sorry if it’s in the wrong forum!)

I was watching this thing where a women was describing how in the past the Catholic Church has held people back when it comes to advancing in the sciences and such. She was saying how after the Reformation everything took off with Age of Enlightenment and stuff like that… Anyway, she was also pretty negative about the Church in the present.

So I’m wondering if her arguments have any merit and how one should respond?
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Short answer: no.

But the Protestants have contributed to some of the positive evolutions in our social life and institutions in the West. So has the Catholic Church.

Some of the positive social changes in our institutional lives that Protestantism brought has been the expansion of education to children not born into elite or wealthy families. Developing certain things within our university systems like the seminar and requiring professors to conduct original research and not just lecture.

But the Italian Renaissance was essentially Italian and Catholic. I’m not 100% sure but I think many of the Protestant achievements came after the Italian Rebirth, and the Counter Reformation that gave us one of the greatest intellectual and pedagogical institutions in human history: The Jesuits.

If I’m correct then one might argue or at least suspect… that Catholicism acted as the husband and wife conjugally producing the offsprings of Protestantism and science as we know it.

Clem, if the Church was so far backwards as this woman says than the U.S. Presidents would be required or expected to be bilingual or multilingual. And the Popes would rarely or never speak more than one language. Both offices or position, after all, deal with a global world and are supposed to be global leaders.

Plus, in a global age who would speak only one language? Certainly not the U.S. President. Certainly not your typical American (U.S.). We are too advanced for that. Just like U.S. public schools under the influence of secular and atheist influences never graduate functionally illiterate 12th graders (of their own native language).
 
sw85 said:
Yeah, it’s true that much science has its origin in the Church.

It’s also true that science advanced much faster under secularism than it did under Church rule.

Why’s that?

You could buy the Marxist power-struggle theory and say that it’s because the Church violently, unjustly suppressed hard-working blah blah blahs. But the more reasonable and charitable answer is that rapid scientific advance is the (only) benefit granted us by modernity’s hypertrophied attention to material and efficient causes.
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Science advanced much faster under secularism? Source or evidence?

Peace,
Ed
 
It’s so obviously true I really don’t know what evidence needs to be provided. Establishment of state religions was the norm prior to the American Revolution. Secularism rapidly became the norm afterward. Did the industrial and scientific revolutions happen before, during, or after the transition to secularism? The answer is (obviously) the latter two.

You can argue these things were coincidental, but my point is they’re not. The same ideological commitments that led to secularism also led to the aforementioned hypertrophied attention to material and efficient causes, which was a boon to science (and science only). This isn’t a problem for us unless you think science is the be-all-end-all of everything like atheist scienticians do, but we aren’t them, so meh.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys!

The woman was on a programme called “The Big Questions”. It’s an English one which I watched on BBC iPlayer (I don’t have a TV but this site lets you watch programmes that have been broadcast on BBC channels). The show was an hour long with two questions this week. 1: Is it too late to renew the Catholic Church? 2: Do we need ten new commandments? (I might make another thread for this elsewhere!)

Anyway, she only spoke briefly but I found it interesting. One side of the room was very anti-Catholic whilst the other was pro. Sadly, as is the case all too often, the anti- spoke and applauded loudest and longest…

A Catholic replied that the big advances were a good while after the Reformation and a lot of religious tyranny was involved (saying you wouldn’t want to live in Calvinist Switzerland). But I still thought it to be an interesting point…

There seems to still be a mini debate on this thread. I’m watching it eagerly! 🙂
 
As a scientist I can say that the Church has held me back in comparison to other people. For example the Church expects me to act with integrity, not to make up data, if my data analysis goes against my initial theory I cannot disregard it just to publish a paper. If I am reviewing the paper of a competitor I am not allowed to delay its publication until I published my material first. I am also supposed not do divulge technical data if a I signed a confidentiality agreement. I guess that the Church does not want me to be a famous scientist. 😉
 
Cristiano said:
As a scientist I can say that the Church has held me back in comparison to other people. For example the Church expects me to act with integrity, not to make up data, if my data analysis goes against my initial theory I cannot disregard it just to publish a paper. If I am reviewing the paper of a competitor I am not allowed to delay its publication until I published my material first. I am also supposed not do divulge technical data if a I signed a confidentiality agreement. I guess that the Church does not want me to be a famous scientist. 😉
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Good point about encouraging honest science. :o
 
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