In the book How the Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas Woods, he describes the Catholic church as civilization. Civilization is defined as “an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture,science, industry, and government has been reached” by Dictionary.com. Our modern culture, Western Civilization, was completely built by an institution that is ironically criticized by society today: the Catholic Church. Woods manages to do a great job of defending his thesis through three themes: Church and State, Faith and Reason, and Religious Pluralism. These three themes enabled the Church to impact many and create a more modern civilization.
The relationship between the Church and State allowed the Church to grow and …show more content…
As the Church evolved it brought society with it bettering the world through technical, scientific, and intellectual advancements truly building Western Civilization. One example found in Woods is when King Clovis marries a catholic woman. “It would be a number of years but Clovis would eventually be baptized” (Woods 13). His conversion to Catholicism was to help his people grow and intellectually move towards a more advanced civilization not like that of their barbarian ancestors. Monks also played a huge role in Faith and Reason improving civilization though their work. They created clocks ahead of their time, started charities, and evidence has been found “near Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, of a degree of technological sophistication that pointed ahead to the great machines of the Industrial Revolution” meaning that the monks developed technology that literally built today’s civilization (Woods 37). Furthermore, the University system found today derives from that established by the Church. The Church is the creator of modern education with the idea to create an institution devoted to “the preservation and cultivation of knowledge” (Woods 47).“The institutions that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval world” (Woods
The relationship between the Church and State allowed the Church to grow and …show more content…
As the Church evolved it brought society with it bettering the world through technical, scientific, and intellectual advancements truly building Western Civilization. One example found in Woods is when King Clovis marries a catholic woman. “It would be a number of years but Clovis would eventually be baptized” (Woods 13). His conversion to Catholicism was to help his people grow and intellectually move towards a more advanced civilization not like that of their barbarian ancestors. Monks also played a huge role in Faith and Reason improving civilization though their work. They created clocks ahead of their time, started charities, and evidence has been found “near Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, of a degree of technological sophistication that pointed ahead to the great machines of the Industrial Revolution” meaning that the monks developed technology that literally built today’s civilization (Woods 37). Furthermore, the University system found today derives from that established by the Church. The Church is the creator of modern education with the idea to create an institution devoted to “the preservation and cultivation of knowledge” (Woods 47).“The institutions that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval world” (Woods