How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.

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• 
  lefty104
  April 4th, 2023
  

  

  How the Catholic Church Built Pedophilia. The Church was on the wrong side of so many issues over the course of history.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Fireplace
  April 4th, 2023
  

  The Academy of Sodomy. The Institution that brought you the Inquisition. A “unique sense of human rights and freedom” indeed.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  pryderi
  April 4th, 2023
  

  In 1362 the Carthusian friars Pietro Petrone and Gioachino Ciani told Bocaccio that he should burn all his books. At the time, this would have brought the Renaissance to a dead halt.
  Fortunately, Petrarch was able to persuade his disciple that burning books is never a good move.
  This luminous fact is all anyone ever need know about the Catholic Church’ contribution to Western Civilization.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  caleb99
  April 4th, 2023
  

  

  Thanks for all your uploads.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  alansmithee99
  April 4th, 2023
  

  I never realized child abuse was so foundational to western civilization.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  StarLantern
  April 4th, 2023
  

  As a recovering Catholic - now atheist, I truly get all the bashing comments. However, ALL OF THAT NEGATIVITY is seen with eyes focused only on one thing, which is NOT this author’s point! Yes, the Catholic Church in the 1900’s was abhorrent to all of us alive now, but the author’s focus is on how their OTHER DOINGS over the centuries allowed for the foundations of Western Civilization to evolve and prosper in OTHER AREAS.

  I hate all the bad, as much as anyone else, but just like The Bible, it’s an entire thing, filled with good and bad that we don’t get to cherry-pick for what we like or is most palatable. The author is a professor, not a shrink. Listen to it for the relevant facts, not your prejudices.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  illodiini
  April 4th, 2023
  

  First of all, it freed us from all those pesky witches. Be grateful and repent.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Roger2020
  April 4th, 2023
  

  Western Civilization is now built on lgbtqia+ and none white people

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Roger2020
  April 4th, 2023
  

  @lefty104 you need jesus

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Helvetica
  April 5th, 2023
  

  What a load of bloody rubbish! “Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church” - perhaps by Catholics who were then persecuted, accused of heresy and burned at the stake, “How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics..” The Greeks had that 2,000 years ago. AND coins minted in different cities (each city minted coins with the magistrate and/or city name on it) could be used all over Greece. “How the Catholic Church invented the university” - the ancient Greeks had universities in every big city. “How Western law grew out of Church canon law” - nope, not that either. Most of Western law was based on Lex Romana, from the Romans.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Malachie520
  April 5th, 2023
  

  @Roger2020 …So did the priests.

  But, beyond that, @StarLantern has the right of it. History is filled with pros and cons. There have been better institutions than the Catholic [Universal, in this context] Church and there have been worse.

  @Roger2020 Proud of you for knowing the acronym; however, lgbtqia+ orientations and genders can also be white, just maybe not your kind of white. And to think that none of the history you learn was ever created by the ‘els’, ‘gees’, or ‘bees’ (the ‘tees’ have always had it bad but also had historic contributors) is plain stupidity, not even ignorance since we know for a fact that they did. Even in the Church.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  apnea
  April 6th, 2023
  

  

  The church gets credit for inventing the western lawyer who’s a master a defending child rapists. The church is also credited for inventing the travel agency via moving child rapers to church hide-outs all over the known world.
  Sending them out as missionaries was a way to get them away from civilization’s kids. Ship em overseas where they can rape the savage’s kids all they want - who cares? They are only 3/5th human at best right? According to American law. No wonder there was no shortage of volunteers.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  caesar963
  April 13th, 2023
  

  

  Absolutely stunning levels of bigotry & hatred towards Catholics in the above posts. This has been so for centuries in the Anglo world.
  The institution which houses the greatest level of child abuse is - the family. Always has been, always will be. After that, the teaching profession & the medical profession. It’s about evil people placing themselves where they can obtain access.

  The Church created, inter alia, the university; spread literacy, learning & knowledge; preserved ancient texts in scriptoria; created the concept & doctrine of human rights; developed the hospital; cared for the poor & sick - when no one else would (incl many outcast maladies, such as leprosy); created the most effective & unprecedented charity networks, famine relief; developed a concept of equality wholly unknown to the Roman world; actually drove four major renaissances (as well as localised instantiations); spearheaded developments in art, architecture, science, mathematics, economics, music, philosophy; introduced agricultural reforms which generated higher yields, in order to feed more people, & support a (finally) growing population; created the first mass peace movements in history (Peace of God, Truce of God); gave rise to international law & the first international human rights treaty/covenant/instrument, etc. etc.
  This - finally - was something like civilisation. What other institution has contributed on this scale?

  On economics: as to the Greeks, they achieved a hell of a lot, but free-market economics, specifically? No. That would be the Catholic University of Salamanca, centuries before Smith (more Anglo misattributions).
  The discipline was first encompassed by moral theology, developed by the Doctors of Salamanca, who were trained in the Thomist tradition. They were at least as pro-free market as the Scottish tradition came to be much later. Plus, their theoretical foundation was even more solid: they anticipated the theories of value & price of the “marginalists” of late-nineteenth-century Austria.

  Because natural law & reason are universal ideas, the Scholastic project was to search for universal laws that govern the way the world works. These scholars were led to economic reasoning as a way of explaining the world around them. They searched for regularities in the social order & brought Catholic standards of justice to bear on them.

  Vitoria, Navarrus, Covarrubias, & Molina were four of the most important among more than a dozen extraordinary thinkers who had solved difficult economic problems long before the classical period. Schooled in the Thomist tradition, they used logic to understand the world around them, & looked for institutions that would promote prosperity & the common good.

  Moreover, the faculty at Salamanca laid the foundation for modern-day law, international law, in addition to modern economic science.
  Another faculty member, Luisa de Medrano, was likely the first woman ever to give classes at a university.

  On the university: the ancient Greeks did not have universities - they had schools devoted to a particular philosopher. The Catholic Church created the university - the first being at Bologna. The Sorbonne is another early example; the university developed out of Catholic Monastic schools & Cathedral Schools (from the 5th century on).

  On Western law: the Romans were great, but Canon Law was determinative. Much of this is because of the Christian focus on the individual soul - dignified personhood, rights-bearing, and based on the Imago Dei. Consequently, the concept & doctrine of human rights grew out of Canon Law. The Roman concept of personhood was enormously impoverished, by comparison (slaves were killed with impunity; infanticide was practiced; & torture & murder were presented as mass entertainment spectacle).

  On science: Roger Bacon (a Franciscan friar) developed the scientific method (thx, Rodge!). St. Augustine proposed that life developed along evolutionary lines. Nicolaus Copernicus was a priest. Gregor Mendel (an Augustinian friar & abbot) founded the modern science of genetics. He furthermore established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

  Jean Picard, priest & first person to measure the size of the Earth to a reasonable degree of accuracy; also developed what became the standard method for measuring the right ascension of a celestial object; the PICARD mission, an orbiting solar observatory, is named in his honour. Not actually named after the Star Trek lad.
  Nicolas Steno, bishop, called the father of geology and stratigraphy, & is known for Steno’s principles.

  The Jesuits achievements in the sciences - in all branches of learning - is utterly remarkable, & that was merely one order within the entire Church (seismology also described as “the Jesuit science.”). Roger Joseph Boscovich, a Jesuit physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, & polymath, produced a precursor of atomic theory & made many contributions to astronomy, incl the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from 3 observations of a surface feature & for computing the orbit of a planet from 3 observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon.

  Fr. Georges Lemaître (also educated by Jesuits) was a theoretical physicist, mathematician, astronomer, & professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first to theorise that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He first derived “Hubble’s law”, now called the Hubble–Lemaître law by the IAU, & published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, 2 years before Hubble’s article. Lemaître also proposed the “Big Bang theory” of the origin of the universe, calling it the “hypothesis of the primeval atom.”

  In addition (& just coz I like the guy), William of Ockham, another Franciscan friar, philosopher, theologian; considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought & was at the centre of the major intellectual & political controversies of the 14th c. He is commonly known for Occam’s razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, & also produced significant works on logic, physics and theology.

  There are countless such vital contributions.

  Also - as mentioned, the Church created the university, of course. Where do we imagine that scientific speculation & developments took place?

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  caesar963
  April 13th, 2023
  

  

  And thanks, Mojo. Although the historically incurious - those who need it, won’t read it.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  pbcaddy
  May 21st, 2023
  

  I could easily refute every single thing caesar963 says but frankly he sounds like the kind of guy who has his mind made up and the facts aren’t going to change that. I quit arguing with people like that 20 years ago when I finally grasped the notion that there are a lot of stupid people in this world who revel in their stupidity. You know, trumpers for instance.

  He might however just for kicks Google ‘Eratosthenes of Cyrene’ who some 200 years before Christ was born proved the earth was a sphere and came within a few per cent of estimating its actual dimensions.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  pbcaddy
  May 21st, 2023
  

  By the way had there been a Catholic Church during Eratosthenes’ lifetime he would have been hauled before the Inquisition (just a formality, he would have already been judged a heretic) and shortly thereafter burned at the stake. Fun group those Jesuits.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  caesar963
  May 31st, 2023
  

  

  …those who need it, won’t read it. Quod erat demonstrandum right there.

  “the earth was a sphere” - Uh, yes? This was known throughout the Christian era, both within the Catholic university (created by the Church), and without. The clue is in the symbolism around the orb & sceptre - also used throughout the era. (You might want to Google, well, everything.)
  The sphericity of the orb indicated the world.

  So they might’ve burned you, but not Eratosthenes. However, that would be more of a “stoopidity” thing, than a heresy deal.

  “I could easily refute every single thing caesar963 says” - Yeah. I’ll take that could never happen for $500, Alex. You either didn’t really read what I wrote, or, having read it, you couldn’t understand it.

  “has his mind made up & the facts aren’t going to change that.” - That’s just it. As a teenager, I thought somewhat as you indicate here. My mind was made up. But the factual historical record changed all that.

  “there are a lot of stupid people in this world who revel in their stupidity.” - Precisely. However, you finally need to read - and understand - history & philosophy.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  qp1029384756
  June 18th, 2023
  

  Galileo was condemned for his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and not the contrary, an idea that on 24 February 1616 the Inquisition of the Catholic Church declared “formally heretical” as well as “foolish and absurd in philosophy.” Heliocentrism had become a matter of theological discussion following Galileo’s work Sidereus Nuncius (Sidereal Messenger) published in 1610. In the work the astronomer brought his telescopic observations to support the heliocentric hypothesis; however, this idea had already been circulating in the celestial treatises for nearly a century.
  Heliocentrism had been a cherished approach since ancient times, with its first formulation in the Western world being attributed to the Greek mathematician Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BC. However, it was the Polish Nicolaus Copernicus who, in 1543, refuted the geocentric system of Ptolemy in his book De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), published shortly before his death, which led to another expression borrowed by science from the vernacular: the Copernican revolution. But although the work of Copernicus is considered one of the foundations of astronomical science, interestingly at the time the Copernican theory did not raise the suspicions of the Catholic Church, which saw the work as a mathematical hypothesis and not an actual physical phenomenon. It was Galileo who transformed heliocentrism into an explanation of nature when he succeeded in making a hitherto unpublished observation of the firmament thanks to his invention in 1609 of the first practical telescope. Among other reasons, the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo refuted the idea that all heavenly bodies revolve around the Earth as the centre of the universe, and the phases of Venus suggested that this planet orbited around the Sun. The defence of heliocentrism as a practical idea began to bother the Catholic Church, which maintained the literal interpretation of the Bible according to which the Earth is stationary while the sun rises and sets. But in fact it was not the publication of Galileo’s work that began to arouse a reaction from the Church, but rather a letter that the astronomer sent in 1613 to his former student, Benedetto Castelli, in which he suggested that the interpretation of the Bible should be flexible and should not contradict the observations of nature. In February 1615, a copy of the letter came into the hands of the Congregation of the Holy Office, which on 19 February of the following year convened a commission of theologians to rule on the claims of Galileo. Six days later, the commission published its verdict and ordered Galileo, by means of an injunction, to abandon his “opinion that the sun stands still at the centre of the world and the earth moves” and that he could no longer “hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing.” Otherwise, the document continued, the Holy Office would undertake “proceedings against him.” According to the minutes of the proceedings, Galileo “acquiesed in this injunction and promised to obey.” Following that episode, the Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo. However, in 1632 the Italian’s ideas were ratified in his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which led him to be tried by the Inquisition. On 22 June 1633, the astronomer was condemned for heresy and sentenced to indefinite detention, which led him to renounce his ideas in writing and gave rise to the legend of the phrase that he likely never uttered. The next day his sentence was commuted to house arrest. The ban on the works of Copernicus and Galileo remained until 1835, and it was not until 1992 that Pope John Paul II acknowledged the “error of the theologians of the time,” adding that “the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning.”
  However for the Jesuit and astronomer George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory, the statement of John Paul II perpetuated “a myth” when referring to the case of Galileo as a “tragic mutual incomprehension.” “It is a genuine historical case of a continuing and real contrast between an intrinsic ecclesial structure of authority and the freedom to search for the truth in whatever human endeavou.” According to the astronomer, the “tragedy” has not been explicitly recognized, which put an end to the career of a man who was “a pioneer of modern science.” Galileo died in 1642, blind because of glaucoma and still under house arrest. Eppur si muove? The truth is that he never broke his oath. Shortly before his death, he wrote, “the falsity of the Copernican system ought not to be doubted in any way, and most of all not by us Catholics who have the undeniable authority of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the best theologians.” But he also added, “if the observations and conjectures of Copernicus are insufficient, those of Ptolemy, Aristotle and their followers are in my view even more false.”

  By Javier Yanes

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  qp1029384756
  June 18th, 2023
  

  On February 16, 1600, the Roman Catholic Church executed Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher and scientist, for the crime of heresy. He was taken from his cell in the early hours of the morning to the Piazza dei Fiori in Rome and burnt alive at the stake. To the last, the Church authorities were fearful of the ideas of a man who was known throughout Europe as a bold and brilliant thinker. In a peculiar twist to the gruesome affair, the executioners were ordered to tie his tongue so that he would be unable to address those gathered.

  Bruno said the universe has no center, and stars are suns, surrounded by planets and moons. Remarkably, he thus outlined large-scale aspects of our cosmology. In the 1590s Bruno’s claim was considered heretical. Many authorities denounced it, including theologians, jurists, bishops, one emperor, three popes, five Church Fathers and nine saints. In 384 A.D. the belief in many worlds was categorized as heretical by Philaster, Bishop of Brescia, in his Book on Heresies. This condemnation was echoed by subsequent authorities, including Saints Jerome, Augustine and Isidore. Moreover, it was heretical according to the highest authority. In 1582 and 1591, Pope Gregory XIII’s official Corpus of Canon Law included this heresy: “having the opinion of innumerable worlds.” The Canon embodied the laws of the Catholic Church: all inquisitorial and church courts obeyed it. By analyzing all accusations, I found that the Inquisition’s strongest case against Bruno was, in fact, and contrary to the conventional wisdom, his belief in many worlds. It was the most frequently recurring charge. For example, one accuser testified that in prison one night Bruno brought a fellow prisoner “to the window and showed him a star, saying that it was a world and that all the stars were worlds.” Thirteen times, in 10 depositions, six witnesses accused Bruno of believing in many worlds. No other accusation was invoked even half as much. Three witnesses said that Bruno denied transubstantiation, but this transgression was hardly worthy of death, because the Pope had ordered that Lutherans in Rome should be treated well. Besides, Bruno testified that he believed in transubstantiation. Bruno insisted that alleged blasphemies were slander. He emphatically agreed with Catholic doctrines. He believed in ideas we reject: that Earth is a living animal with a soul. Nonetheless, some famous Copernican scientists believed that too, including Kepler and William Gilbert.

  Inquisitors asked whether Bruno doubted Mary’s virginity or whether Jesus faked miracles with magic. Bruno denied that, and he never said such things in his writings. Yet in nine books Bruno did assert his cosmology of many worlds. It was one of 10 propositions the inquisitors censured: “Again,” they wrote, “he posits many worlds, many suns, necessarily containing similar things in kind and in species as in this world, and even men.”
  In 1597, Bruno was confronted by inquisitors, including the authoritative theologian Robert Bellarmine. Bruno “was admonished to thus abandon his delusions of diverse worlds.” Nineteen years later, Inquisitor Bellarmine would go on to confront Galileo.

  In at least four depositions, Bruno refused to recant, insisting: Earth is a star (an archaic term for any heavenly body), and the stars include innumerable worlds. Inquisitors then confronted Bruno: “About this reply he was interrogated in the 17th Deposition, but does not seem to satisfy, because he relapsed into the same reply.” According to inquisitorial manuals, to relapse was to be a heretic.

  When Bruno was executed, a witness named Gaspar Schoppe penned two letters noting Bruno’s belief in worlds four times. Schoppe used the wording in which it was categorized as a heresy in Latin: mundos esse innumerabilis.

  Why did Catholics view this as heretical? Theologians explained: “we cannot assert that two or many worlds exist, since neither do we assert two or many Christs.”

  Bruno was condemned for several heresies, but the one about multiple worlds was the strongest case against him. He didn’t defend an esoteric belief in immaterial worlds. Instead, he asserted parts of our cosmology: our acentric universe has innumerable suns, surrounded by planets, even some that may resemble our inhabited Earth.

  Bruno said he inferred the existence of worlds from God’s omnipotence: by having infinite power God made innumerable worlds. Ironically, Bruno’s soaring view of the cosmos—more correct than Copernicus—stemmed from religious beliefs.

  Written by: Alberto A. Martínez, PhD, is a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project and professor of history of science at the University of Texas at Austin.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  caesar963
  June 23rd, 2023
  

  The proceeding relating to Galileo lasted an hour. And thereafter he continued to publish, & indeed he worshipped freely; living for a time with senior Church figures, who were also friends & admirers.

  As to the controversy, the priest-astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus (he built his own observatory), had formulated a similar heliocentric model yrs before. The Church did not hold that the heliocentric theory was heresy. Copernicus, also a canon lawyer & mathematician, with close church ties, had suggested a sun-centred model of the cosmos a hundred yrs prior to Galileo. But he did so as an abstract thought experiment, whereas Galileo theorised while mocking church officialdom. The Pope (Urban VIII) during the Galileo affair was, in fact, a better mathematician of astronomic phenomena specifically than Galileo, but Galileo had an intuition, a popular media platform, & a telescope, an instrument that had a scarcely entered into cosmological theorising at the time.

  Incidentally, Galileo was technically wrong. The sun moves. That is, its centrality is relative to an arbitrary frame of reference. Outside that solar system frame, the axis of the galaxy is actually central - but then again, it moves too. And all the galaxies & clusters of galaxies are moving. So, one may as honestly posit the earth as the immovable center of the universe as any other body, & imagine everything else swirling around it. Relativity guarantees that the heliocentric model is arbitrary. Indeed, the consciousness of earthlings surveying the rest of the universe around our planet gives to earth a kind of quantum mechanics centrality, after all.

  The Galileo affair did involve a personality clash. (It’s quite accurate that his personality was somewhat “alienating” to say the least.)

  In addition, Galileo could not account for the stellar parallax shift issue, which was of principal concern in terms of presenting definitive proofs.

  A major issue of the controversy was, of course, the background noise of the Reformation. It was comparable to the Cold War, with significant tensions forming the climate of the time. Protestants launched broadsides against Catholicism for being more committed to reason, in the Church-created university system & elsewhere, than literalist interpretation.

  Reading the record of the actual proceedings doesn’t even take that long. Seek out a simple explanation of stellar parallax shift. The scales fall.

  As to the case of Dominican priest, Giordano Bruno, from his seven-year trial it is moot precisely which of his ideas were found heretical, since the records of the case have not survived. Consequently, much of the commentary is conjectural.
  However, his emphasis on the magical & the occult has been a source of criticism, as has been his impetuous personality.
  As to Bruno being judged on his theological views, he was not only excommunicated by the Catholic Church but by the Swiss Calvinists, the German Lutherans & the English Anglicans as well.

  Bruno rejected the specifics of the heliocentric model, & went beyond it into the occult. The Copernican model had already gained popularity amongst contemporary Jesuit astronomers, but not by Protestant thinkers. Bruno advocated for a Neo-Platonist Hermeticism, more akin to a gnostic mystery cult than to actual science. In his Natural Philosophy, the sun became the “Monad of Monads” around which the universe revolved. Bruno also insisted that all suns also possessed planets that were populated by sentient creatures. But if this were true, he would have to admit that each star was its own Monad of Monads around which the entire universe also revolved, which isn’t logically consistent, let alone physically possible. Bruno wasn’t a scientist, he was more akin to Shakespeare’s gnostic magician Prospero. His theorising would not meet the standards of, for inst, the more empirically-based science of the much earlier St. Albert the Great (1193-1280) — an actual scientist.

  To be clear, neither the Catholic Church nor the Dominicans ever charged him with heresy. Rather, it was a peevish, superstitious, Venetian patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, who hoped to learn Bruno’s “magical secrets” & who lied to the Inquisitor’s Office, accusing him of heinous things. In 1591, Bruno went to Venice at Mocenigo’s invitation in the hope that Bruno would teach him his famed mnemonic system, which he had plagiarized from Ven. Raymond Llull. When Mocenigo realised that Bruno’s incredible memory was a matter of diligent study rather than “magic,” & thinking his money would have been better spent elsewhere, he denounced Bruno to the Venetian Inquisition. Bruno was later executed by the secular authorities.

  Rather than being a materialist in the modern atheistic sense, Bruno would be best described as an occultist; a mystical rationalist/Neo-Platonist defender of materialistic monism.

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• 
  Elbo3bo3
  June 18th, 2024
  

  Please seed brother

  How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization - Thomas E. Woods Jr.

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