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panireads's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
An important review of the legacy ond role of the church in the building of western civilization. Though a lot of it is one sided, presenting only the good things and brusñshing off the worsy chapters of church history, it's worth a read to understand a lot of medieval history, and the origing of things like international law, the university system, and human rights.
raldrich24's review
informative
medium-paced
3.0
A very interesting book and I learned a lot. I listened to it, and think this is one I need to go back and read in hard copy to really think about all the information it gives! This book is full of facts and lots of topics I'd like to dive deeper into.
dangerousnerd's review
informative
sad
slow-paced
2.0
Oof. Some interesting stuff here, especially his quick and easy to understand explanations on philosophical concepts. But, yikes dude, stay in your lane. If you’re writing a history book, do that. Don’t complain about kids today and their modern art and ability to see past binaries. 😬
guojing's review
1.0
This is one of those books which I just cannot bring myself to finish. It is horrible. Just so polemical, so childish, and such an extreme failure to make its case. Imagine a 5-year old named Catholic Church. Little Catholic has just been caught doing something bad. So, to justify himself, Master Church tells the most long-winded fairy tale about himself, but only ever mentioning anything that can only be interpreted as being a positive while so obviously refraining from mentioning anything in any way negative that all credibility is lost. That is how I felt reading this book.
The author likes to say weaselly phrases like, "according to one authority," or "this author" - leaving you to check the notes at the back to see who the hell he's talking about. This really got on my nerves. One of the few names of authors that he did actually mention, however, is my favorite: beloved Will Durant. It seemed odd, quite frankly, that he should be using Will Durant as his defender of the Church, considering his tendency to describe the Church in the most wretched of terms in his books, especially the one I'm currently working on, The Age of Voltaire. I'd like to offer just part of a paragraph from this book on the Church, if I may:
Nobody who reads this book will ever know anything about any of that. To he who is so unfortunate that How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is the only source he has for the history of European society, he shall be profoundly ignorant and damnably one-sided in his understanding. There is no fairness in Thomas E. Woods's fictionalized history. There is no reference wherever to anything but the absolute goodness and intellectual superiority of the Church, while any suggestion otherwise is written off as a base calumny with hardly more than a passing mention, just enough to get you to know what is being talked about without actually repeating the truth of the matter. There is no crime so horrendous that the Church does not have an apologist in the form of Thomas E. Woods.
The fact remains, the Catholic Church itself has been a force for remarkable evil throughout most of its existence. Perhaps not so bad anymore, thanks to its impotence following Risorgimento, and I am fuzzy on the early history (hopefully not so much once I finish Diarmaid Macculloch's The History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years). But, for the medieval part, up until the Renaissance when the popes finally did some good things (offering patronage to Michelangelo and Raphael, among others), and into the Counter-Reformation, the Church is evil. I am also currently reading The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. This book shows one side of the Church which any reader of Thomas E. Woods would not believe exists: the tendency to kidnap Jewish children, refuse their parents ever to see them again, and raise them as Catholics! The Church has committed crimes against humanity, crimes against rationality, and crimes against morality, ever since its conception. No amount of polemical bull will ever make up for that.
The author likes to say weaselly phrases like, "according to one authority," or "this author" - leaving you to check the notes at the back to see who the hell he's talking about. This really got on my nerves. One of the few names of authors that he did actually mention, however, is my favorite: beloved Will Durant. It seemed odd, quite frankly, that he should be using Will Durant as his defender of the Church, considering his tendency to describe the Church in the most wretched of terms in his books, especially the one I'm currently working on, The Age of Voltaire. I'd like to offer just part of a paragraph from this book on the Church, if I may:
...in France the Church was a powerful organization owning a large share of the national wealth and soil, and yet bound by supreme allegiance to a foreign power. It seemed to be draining more wealth from secular into ecclesiastical hands through its role in the making of wills and the guidance of bequests; it refused to pay taxes beyond its occasional "gratuitous gift"; it held thousands of peasants in practical serfdom on its lands; it maintained monks in what seemed to be fruitless idleness. It had repeatedly profited from false documents and bogus miracles. It controlled nearly all schools and universities, through which it inoculated the minds of the young with stupefying absurdities. It denounced as heresy any teaching contrary to its own, and used the state to enforce its censorship over speech and press. It had done its best to choke the intellectual development of France. It had urged Louis XIV into the inhuman persecution of the Huguenots, and the heartless destruction of Port-Royal. It had been guilty of barbarous campaigns against the Albigenses, and of sanctioning massacres like that of St. Bartholomew's Day; it had fomented religious wars that had almost ruined France. And amid all these crimes against the human spirit it had pretended, and had made millions of simple people believe, that it was above and beyond reason and questioning, that it had inherited a divine revelation, that it was the infallible and divinely inspired vicegerent of God, and that its crimes were as much the will of God as were its charities.
Nobody who reads this book will ever know anything about any of that. To he who is so unfortunate that How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is the only source he has for the history of European society, he shall be profoundly ignorant and damnably one-sided in his understanding. There is no fairness in Thomas E. Woods's fictionalized history. There is no reference wherever to anything but the absolute goodness and intellectual superiority of the Church, while any suggestion otherwise is written off as a base calumny with hardly more than a passing mention, just enough to get you to know what is being talked about without actually repeating the truth of the matter. There is no crime so horrendous that the Church does not have an apologist in the form of Thomas E. Woods.
The fact remains, the Catholic Church itself has been a force for remarkable evil throughout most of its existence. Perhaps not so bad anymore, thanks to its impotence following Risorgimento, and I am fuzzy on the early history (hopefully not so much once I finish Diarmaid Macculloch's The History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years). But, for the medieval part, up until the Renaissance when the popes finally did some good things (offering patronage to Michelangelo and Raphael, among others), and into the Counter-Reformation, the Church is evil. I am also currently reading The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. This book shows one side of the Church which any reader of Thomas E. Woods would not believe exists: the tendency to kidnap Jewish children, refuse their parents ever to see them again, and raise them as Catholics! The Church has committed crimes against humanity, crimes against rationality, and crimes against morality, ever since its conception. No amount of polemical bull will ever make up for that.
booksladycma's review
3.0
My mother asked me to read this book, in return for her having read The Chalice and the Blade. I really wish I could have had an opportunity to discuss it with her.
It was interesting to see how involved the Church was in the fundamental pillars of civilization, but I don't agree with some of his statements, such as that pagan societies had no science. Overall I found his tone rather smug, which was irritating; he was quick to dismiss achievements of societies other than the Catholic as simply precursors of the "real" achievements of the Catholic Church.
In all, it would have been a fun debate, with me defending pagan achievements and Mom defending Catholic ones, until we reached some kind of middle ground.
It was interesting to see how involved the Church was in the fundamental pillars of civilization, but I don't agree with some of his statements, such as that pagan societies had no science. Overall I found his tone rather smug, which was irritating; he was quick to dismiss achievements of societies other than the Catholic as simply precursors of the "real" achievements of the Catholic Church.
In all, it would have been a fun debate, with me defending pagan achievements and Mom defending Catholic ones, until we reached some kind of middle ground.
che11eo's review
3.0
Very interesting book on the influence of the Catholic church on science, art, law and western morals. The audiobook narrator lean towards a monotone delivery which I think worked against the book but didn't dimenish the content.