The importance of the Catholic Church in Western civilisation

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“The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people.”

Kenneth Clark

The late Lord Clark understood and recognised the importance of the Catholic Church´s unique achievment. However, it is sad to note that in our age, even among educated people, there is an enormous ignorance about the Church´s contribution to Western civilisation.

Fortunately there is now a much needed scholarly book available that corrects the often very biased and superficial picture of the Catholic Church: "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by professor Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Here is an excerpt from an article in which professor Woods introduces his book:

From the role of the monks (they did much more than just copy manuscripts) to art and architecture, from the university to Western law, from science to charitable work, from international law to economics, the book delves into just how indebted we are as a civilization to the Catholic Church, whether we realize it or not.

By far the book's longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church's alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have spent the past half-century drastically revising this conventional wisdom, arguing that the Church's role in the development of Western science was far more salutary than previously thought. I am speaking not about Catholic apologists but about serious and important scholars of the history of science such as J.L. Heilbron, A.C. Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, and Thomas Goldstein.

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To say that the Church played a positive role in the development of science has now become absolutely mainstream, even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public. In fact, Stanley Jaki, over the course of an extraordinary scholarly career, has developed a compelling argument that in fact it was important aspects of the Christian worldview that accounted for why it was in the West that science enjoyed the success it did as a self-sustaining enterprise. Non-Christian cultures did not possess the same philosophical tools, and in fact were burdened by conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science. Jaki extends this thesis to seven great cultures: Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya. In these cultures, Jaki explains, science suffered a "stillbirth." My book gives ample attention to Jaki's work.

In another more recent article professor Woods focuses on Pope John Paul II´s views on the role of the Church in Europe:

He had known all along that overthrowing Communism was a necessary but not sufficient condition for restoring the kind of decent and dignified life that befits human beings, and the moral state of Poland in the aftermath of Solidarity’s triumph only confirmed him in this view. “Giving in to desire, to sex, to consumption: that is the Europeanism that some supporters of our entry into Europe think we should accept,” John Paul told the faithful. “But we mustn’t become part of that Europe. We were the ones who created Europe….”
We were the ones who created Europe.
That stunning remark doubtless ruffled some feathers. Yet never were truer words said. In recent weeks Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of “the decisive contribution of Christianity” in the creation of European civilization. At a time when the media and other opponents of the Church are gleefully exploiting her present discomfiture, this is a truth all Catholics, and indeed all of Western civilization, would do well to revisit.