Should I read this certain book that I borrowed from a friend?

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Does anyone have any imput on the book called - " How the Irish saved civilization " by Thomas Cahill ? Basically a couple weeks ago I was at a friend’s house and remembered how a few years before he had offered for me to borrow any of his books that he had on the history of Celtic people , by his front door there is a book shelf and it looked like he probably had 5 or 10 books on the subject. Back then I never took him up on it , but I thought maybe it would be a good thing to maybe strengthen our friendship ,and provide something for us to talk about next time we hung out. The book he gave me was just a random one , at first I thought it was cool that it seemed to be about Monks , the dark ages , and Rome as I read the inset on the way home , as I’m a bit interested in that kind of stuff now since coming back to the Catholic Church recently. But then I was thinking maybe it’s full of a lot of exaggerations and things that aren’t completely true , I don’t want to put time into reading something that just going to end up confusing me or making it more difficult to discern whole truth of our Catholic Faith.
So has anyone heard of or read this book , do you recommend that I read it or should I just return it to my friend and just say that I have been to busy to read it and don’t want to keep it forever and risk losing it or something to that affect ?
 
Cahill writes pop history in an informative, entertaining way, sticks to the actual historical fact more than do most such writers, and the book is fine as an intro to the topic of the so-called dark-ages. He has a book on the Jews whis is also excellent, and shows how much Jewish religion and culture have done to shape western civilization. But he does not do original research, merely synthesizes work on social history done by others.
 
Glimpse_Ahead said:
Does anyone have any imput on the book called - " How the Irish saved civilization " by Thomas Cahill ? Basically a couple weeks ago I was at a friend’s house and remembered how a few years before he had offered for me to borrow any of his books that he had on the history of Celtic people , by his front door there is a book shelf and it looked like he probably had 5 or 10 books on the subject. Back then I never took him up on it , but I thought maybe it would be a good thing to maybe strengthen our friendship ,and provide something for us to talk about next time we hung out. The book he gave me was just a random one , at first I thought it was cool that it seemed to be about Monks , the dark ages , and Rome as I read the inset on the way home , as I’m a bit interested in that kind of stuff now since coming back to the Catholic Church recently. But then I was thinking maybe it’s full of a lot of exaggerations and things that aren’t completely true , I don’t want to put time into reading something that just going to end up confusing me or making it more difficult to discern whole truth of our Catholic Faith.
So has anyone heard of or read this book , do you recommend that I read it or should I just return it to my friend and just say that I have been to busy to read it and don’t want to keep it forever and risk losing it or something to that affect ?
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I have the book.It’s droll and amusing.🙂
 
It’s not bad. It’s a good starting point, in that you’ll learn a lot of names and places to look for more information.
 
ok. , thanks guys
so it sounds like nobody thinks it’s a bad book ,
so it basically stays along the correct path that we know to be accurate history , all historical facts ?
 
Glimpse_Ahead said:
ok. , thanks guys
so it sounds like nobody thinks it’s a bad book ,
so it basically stays along the correct path that we know to be accurate history , all historical facts ?
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it is not serious history as I say, it is a synthesis reduced for popular audiences, and of necessity is a gloss that does not cover each and every relevant situation but his underlying thesis is sound, that Irish monks can be said to have saved civilization, if you describe that as western language, culture and literature, specifically scripture and religious works. There are some serious historians who would debate whether the Irish “saved” civilization single-handedly, or whether the church-based culture they preserved indeed equates to “civilization.” But yes it is a good read.
 
I haven’t read the book but I did hear that it was a little anti Catholic. If you go to Amazon you will be able to read the reviews; be sure to read the one star as well as the five stars to get a balanced picture. If the book is a synthesis of other sources then it will be as accurate as the sources.

If you are interested in Ireland you might like Msgr Eric Barr’s blog Celtic Spirituality

celticprayer.net/index.html
 
yinekka said:
I haven’t read the book but I did hear that it was a little anti Catholic.
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It’s not so much anti-Catholic as it is that in a few places the author’s doctrinal disagreements with the Church creep into and bias his narrative. If one is already clear about Church teaching, these glitches are obvious and easy enough to overlook. After all, no one is perfect, and Cahill doesn’t present himself as being thoroughly orthodox.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
mlchance said:
It’s not so much anti-Catholic as it is that in a few places the author’s doctrinal disagreements with the Church creep into and bias his narrative. If one is already clear about Church teaching, these glitches are obvious and easy enough to overlook. After all, no one is perfect, and Cahill doesn’t present himself as being thoroughly orthodox.

– Mark L. Chance.
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Mark, that is a great way of putting it. I agree that the book is very readable. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who wanted to learn about Catholicism. Also, if you read a couple of Cahill’s books you notice that he keeps using the same sources. He’s quite fond of St. Augustine’s “Confessions”.
 
Based on what everybody here is saying , I think it’s safe to go ahead and give this book a read , so that’s what I’ll do.
Mr. Mark Chance , are those doctrinal disagreements that you mentioned all spread throughout the book , or are they clustered up at all , how numerous are they . The only reason I ask is that I see your a Senior Member and as you can see I’m like a Junior Member , my point being that I might not have such a keen eye for them , and therefore I might be more susceptible to not recognizing them and thus adopting them into my understanding of the truth. Can you maybe list a couple of the biggest ones so I can have my eye out for them ?

Also , Yinekka – thanks for the info and the link , when I read the name of the gentleman who runs that blog I was like , forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/eek.gif , because he has the same last name as me , and it’s kind of a rare name that I basically never see anyone else with. Having grown up in sunny Southern California here I haven’t really had a chance to meet a lot of other Barrs. I sent him an e-mail and I’m definitely going to purchase his book , I want to put it in my friend’s hand and see what he says ! I mean the same friend I mentioned above , see he is all into the fact that he’s Irish and I don’t really know too much about where my family comes from . When I first meet this guy I told him I thought that my family originally came from England and ever since then it’s been like a joke and a funny part of our friendship because he says the Irish don’t like the English.
When he see’s my name on a book about Ireland , it’ll be pretty funny , it’ll be good fodder for the fact that he thinks that I really must be Irish and not English , Thanks so much for your having responded with that info !
 
I read it and thought it was a pretty good read. Nothing wrong with it.
 
Glimpse_Ahead said:
Mr. Mark Chance , are those doctrinal disagreements that you mentioned all spread throughout the book , or are they clustered up at all , how numerous are they .
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It’s been a while since I’ve read the book. All I can recollect is him not being quite fair regarding the Church’s teaching about sexual morality, seeing the Church’s stance as repressive. To Cahill’s credit, there have been times when this has been true, even if not universally or doctrinally true.
Glimpse_Ahead said:
The only reason I ask is that I see your a Senior Member…
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That’s only because I’ve posted a lot more than you. Membership seniority around here isn’t a sign of special accomplishment.

😃

– Mark L. Chance.
 
The “Irish” one is not so bad-- fun even. Pop history, facts mostly correct, if a bit short-sighted. Serves mostly as a starting point from which to launch into deeper waters.

Where Cahill really goes off the rails is “Mysteries of the Middle Ages” where his “progressive church” bias is so strong it is ridiculous. That book is literally unreadable for it’s complete silliness of trying to connect all sorts of modern ideas and people to past saints and attitudes. Some of the attemped connections are absolute howlers. He spends huge chunks of valuable writing space on tangents to promote his progressive agenda. He even ends the book with a polemic against the Church, complete with “solutions”. (His liberal stuff is easier to get past in “Irish”.)

You’ll likely enjoy “How the Irish…”, but do yourself a favor and steer well clear of “Mysteries of the Middle Ages.”

Cahill is NOT a historian. And that book is NOT a history.
 
Thanks NPS , I’ll definatly steer clear of that one then , I appreciate the good advise . 🙂
 
I have this book and have read it a few times. It is kind of a wild ride. It may be less history and more of a love-letter from Cahill to the Irish People.

I did not get an anti-Catholic feel from this book. From what I remember it does paint the heroic Saint Patrick as sort of the anti-Augustine. So, while the book is not anti-Catholic, I would say it was anti- St. Augustine. (Perhaps this is not consistent with Cahilll’s other work. I would like to read more from him eventually.)

Did the Irish truly save civilization? This book ignores so many important contributions in the preservation of Western learning and culture.

My vote, absolutely worth reading because it is fun and informative. It covers so many events in Irish history. I think it can be a good introduction to further topics of reading and research.
 
My pastor gave a talk on this book and I found it was quite interesting. My pastor is very Irish and so am I. Interesting stories were given and I still remember that the Celts sometimes were know to charge naked to try to throw-off the opposition in battle. They were also very “community” minded in the sense they banded together so much. This led to them not getting along with a heirarchical Church since that was not something in their culture or so it goes.

mdcpensive1
 
Chiltepin and mdcpensive1 , thanks so much for the good information , that’s making me eager to read it now , right now I’m reading the book I got off of Catholicscomehomedotorg called Rediscovering Catholicism and am almost done ( good book by the way ). I was thinking there is probably so many good books out there about the Saints and stuff like that , that I didn’t want to waste valuable time reading something that was going to turn out to be like the DiVinci Code or something of that ilk , but this book sounds o.k. so as soon as I finish Rediscovering Catholicism I’ll take a crack at "How the Irish … "
 
If you want history, try “How the Catholic Church built Western civilization”, by Thomas Woods.
 
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