In Seven Lies About Catholic History, historian Diane Moczar leads us through a lively survey of some of the worst distortions of Church history. Fabrications about the Inquisition, Galileo affair and Crusades are corrected, along with those regarding the “Dark Ages” and other topics. Many readers — Catholics among them — will be surprised to learn that what they think they know about Church history just isn’t so.
For example, Moczar explains that physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei was never harassed in a hall loaded with his enemies, nor was he tortured or even threatened with torture. In fact, the Church acted cautiously in the matter, unlike the bombastic Galileo, who, though he was on the correct side of the issue in question, was unable to back up his claims and was wrong on other important matters of science. He thought comets were optical illusions, to cite one notable error.
Curiously, misrepresentations of the Galileo case originated over a century after his death. This was due to the desire of deists in the 1700s to paint the Church as an enemy of science and progress, an audacious lie indeed. The Church has been the greatest friend of science, which Moczar hints at, and which is explained at more length in How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Why would anyone adhere to or promote the idea that the Church is the enemy of science? Moczar explains that “nearly all the lies discussed in this book, which are truly lies about history, lead back to basic questions about the Catholic faith” and that “most of the lies were originally told by people who opposed the Church,” rather than people who had a legitimate misunderstanding of a particular event.
One of the most obvious examples of this is the set of lies emanating from the so-called Protestant Reformation, the foundational one being that the Catholic Church was so corrupt that its complete overhaul was necessary. This overhaul was carried out by disgruntled men inventing their own religions.
Moczar explains that the Church, made up of human beings, will always have its share of problems and that before the Reformation some of them were schisms and clashes with domineering secular rulers. The “Reformers” exploited these problems in their attempt to discredit the Church and to construct replacements of their own making.
The false doctrines and practices associated with the Reformation brought about not only loss of souls, but civic disunity, poverty and ugliness. The sacking of monasteries and hospitals in England left the poor and sick without the help they had previously received, and an appalling iconoclasm reigned. Works of sacred art that had adorned churches for centuries were destroyed in the name of “reform.” Such actions reveal themselves to be unnecessary and injurious not only on doctrinal grounds, but also on sociological ones.
The Church is also on the side of what is best for the temporal order when it comes to World War II. Moczar mentions in the last chapter the totally unsubstantiated whopper from that time — that Pope Pius XII helped the Nazis exterminate Jews. In reality, the exact opposite is true: The saintly Pope helped save many thousands of Jews from the Nazis. Moczar mentions some books attesting to the fact that the Jews had no better friend than Pius XII. Among them is Rabbi David Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, a concise and coherent work that sets the record straight.
Moczar straightens out many other matters in Seven Lies, which serves as a solid start for those who want to get to the truth in matters of Church history. Once the smoke of error is dispersed and the truth revealed on selected issues, six brief tips on how to communicate this knowledge to others are set out in an appendix.
This is followed by a second appendix, which names additional resources delving further into specific topics. There is only so much space to go around, making a comprehensive review of any given subject impossible.
Seven Lies About Catholic History contains forceful but fair defenses of the Church, along with admissions of guilt when necessary. Getting past the guilt (which in most cases is actually due to misconceptions about what actually took place) opens the way for appreciation of the countless benefits the Church has bestowed on mankind, not only in the spiritual order, but also on the natural plane as well.
The Church’s enemies would do themselves and everyone else a great service by heeding the words of Pope Pius XII from Sertum Laetitiae: “It is indeed true that religion has its laws and institutions for eternal happiness, but it is undeniable that it endows life here below with so many benefits that it could do no more even if the principle reason for its existence was to make men happy during the brief span of their earthly [lives].”
True indeed, and Diane Moczar has helped to pave the way for more people to understand this.
Register correspondent Trent Beattie writes from Seattle.
SEVEN LIES ABOUT CATHOLIC HISTORY
Infamous Myths About the Church’s Past — and How to Answer Them
By Diane Moczar
TAN Books, 2010
189 pages, $12.95
To order: tanbooks.com
(800) 437-5876
John Zmirak: We Are All Islamists Now
Benjamin Wiker: The Church and the (Secular) State
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Thank you for inviting me to comment on this article. My book Hitler’s Pope did not accuse Pius XII of helping Hitler to exterminate Jews. The book argues that Cardinal Pacelli and Pius XI negotiated a treaty with Hitler that played into the dictator’s hands. In exchange for benefits, especially educational benefits, for the Catholic Church in Germany, Pacelli agreed that Catholics should withdraw from social and political action. This demoralised dissent in 1933 before the police Nazi police state was erected, scandalised the young, and gave Hitler credibility abroad. In this sense Pacelli, unwittingly and of course uninetentially, proved to be an ideal Pope for Hitler’s purposes: hence in this sense only, Hitler’s Pope. Pacelli’s neutrality as Pope similarly served Hitler well. I am sure that it is important to offer corrections to historical lies about the Catholic Church; but the Church like other institutions must learn from history. The truths of history emerge from the pluralistic endeavor of many historians and commentators, peer review, debate, and constant reviews of the facts. I do not say that my view is the only correct view on Pius XII, but the debate was necessary and has brought to light many new facts and perspectives since it was first published in 1999l. With every best wish, John Cornwell needed35
Pius XII could have saved 6 million Jewish lives if he had threatened Catholic Nazis with ex-communication.
He did no such thing. Catholics were excommunicated for advocating cremation of the dead or for voting
for the Italian Communist Party but not for membership in the Nazi Party, membership in the Waffen SS, participating in genocide etc. Nazis could and did attend mass and receive the sacraments. Top Nazi officials inside and outside Germany were practicing Roman Catholics. After the war top Nazi war criminals escaped to South America through the Vatican-run “rat-line” that used monasteries as “safe-houses”. Sure Pius XII saved some Jewish lives here and there after the war had turned against Germany. This was to “hedge-his-bets” in a war whose outcome was far from certain. Pius XII was one of the bad popes and he should be condemned not praises
What a wonderful find! I look forward to checking this out as soon as my book budget allows. I also really appreciate the “Saturday Book Pick” column!
While remaining a Catholic, I realize the church is fallible and has made mistakes in the past (and even today with the bishops handling of sex abuse caases). People who try to deny history turn me off (just like those holocaust deniers, or Obama birthers). Just having read the above article and what is said about the Galileo case turns me off. Seems to me this book is trying to rewrite history and portray things as they wish rather than as they happened.
I’ve often thought about writing a book just like this. Congratulations to Diane Moczar for actually writing it!
This past year I completed a study of church history, and by the time it was over it was clearly evident that the Holy Spirit alone has kept us going after more than 2,000 years! God has raised up overwhelming numbers of saints and great popes, but a number of sinners and political events affecting the church often threatened to kill it off time and time again.
That being said, the church is often put down by its enemies for “crimes” of which it is not guilty, and only Catholics who educate themselves can effectively correct the record. The Holy Father recently blessed the new Vatican website and urged us all to use new technology to evangelize. It’s time we learn our faith and about our “family tree” so we can follow Pope Benedict’s example.
Too many Catholics have heard these seven old lies repeated so often that they accept them as genuine. It’s time we all armed ourselves with the truth to rebut such slander.
I’m proud to be Catholic and celebrate the great contributions the church has made to civilization. With the church being put down on a regular basis by secularists, heretics, atheists and other enemies, we need to stand up and defend our Mother.
I hope every Catholic reads this book and learns how to defend our faith instead of believing what our detractors say about us!
Hmmmm, ye olde “papist/spanish inquisishionnnnnnnn” ... that good ol’ sneer never seems to die, and largely because we live in a nation, formed from a set of 13, sometimes very disputatious and not always “united” former colonies of PREDOMINATELY PROTESTANT colonizers and their descendants. They even went to lengths to make sure their slaves were going to be Protestant. (They feared ‘em badly enough from Maine to Georgia, as “pagans” or “mohammadens”...as Muslims were largely referred to in the 17-19th centuries. It wouldn’t take a leap of imagination to hear them beseeching the good olde Protestant Father of everything forbid, an influx of devout Catholic slaves…one only can imagine what THAT would lead to! Who knows, they might even ally themselves with the remaining French and their ever convenient allies, those “merciless savages” whom the Jesuits craftily manipulated into accepting popery.”
One can also imagine how such “fertile mental plowing using only the best compost” consisting of old fashioned Yankee Calvinist Puritanism and Tidewater Cavalier Anglicanism has made such a lasting imprint on the average American’s history/government/civics formation. Old myths die hard, and they have enormous lasting power when they’ve been, —again—ever so conveniently, “secured” with such prejudicial “intellectual substance” (matching the strength of perhaps today’s “Gorilla Glue.”
We are living in the land founded by those who came over to escape the (original) “Popery” within the “Romanist” church, and any Protestant established church still holding on to those old “Romish” practices, traits, titles (ohhh, they hated the thought of bishops, even the King’s and Parliament’s rubber-stamped approved protestant ones coming over here!) But they sure as heck didn’t frown on importing some of their olde and ancient bugaboos and bogeymen, especially if they were related to those Spanish and French Catholics, whose empires (and outsourced/privatized Indian allies) they always were on the watch out for ... and for good reasons. Yet, although our early forefathers fought the French, plus the Jesuit-converted Indian privatized “allies” ... the biggest scorn when it came to the actual teaching of Protestant values and their compared worthiness for those “freedom loving” English colonists to “judge and see for themselves” what a monstrous “perfidy” and “barbaric” bunch the “papists” were (everywhere) ... nothing topped their favorite whipping boys, the Spanish and especially their Spanish Inquisition.
The good olde Protestant teachers of yore didn’t just pore into their kids heads, they mixed it in with (a dash of good olde Yankee molasses, the super strong glue of their time, all made possible “thanks” to the unpaid—efforts of English slaves working on sugar plantations on England’s colonial possessions in the Caribbean)they fully intended that so long as most of the colonies and/or newly independent American states would not only be predominantly “Christian” in character/social makeup, but also PROTESTANTIZED CHRISTIAN ... the good old Inquisition would be forever put before every child’s eyes under the watchful eyes, of course, of a good Protestant, school marm.
Small wonder they also worked like the devils to make sure every kid would be put in PUBLIC SCHOOLS where reading and praying from the King James Bible would be mandatory, regardless of whether the little fannies sitting behind their desks would belong to (GASP! little papists) or the other immigrants whose faith of very deep Semitic origins, the WASP establishment was quite wary of, even through World War II and into the early years of the Cold War; notwithstanding what happened to six million of their fellow worshippers under Hitler, (and God knows how many under Stalin.)
The Inqusition is very much alive and well. And I’ll bet it’s getting new lumber and firewood down in Texas no thanks to the Lone Star State’s Textbook Commission’s recent decision to make sure all future cowboys n’ cowgirls down there will get their full measure of a Christianized history curriculum, meanin’ folks ... American History ‘cordin’ to Calvinist perspectives.
Come to think of it, I like Texas’ Guvnah Rick Perry’s earlier yearnings for committing good ol’ fashioned “sesech” politics. That way he wouldn’t be considered as a serious contender for the GOP nomination and Texas would be on its own. On the other hand, what kind of “ejahkachun” would all those lil’ Cat’lic and non-Calvinist, plus the Jewish and Muslim kiddies have as backup history classes if their parents weren’t well-off financially or simply uninterested in home schoolin’.
They sure as hell would be then. Thomas Jefferson’s botched and de-miraclized bible was a reflection of his opinions. With apologies to the good late (and thankfully Papist) Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, (D-NY) at least Jefferson would’ve never insisted that his chopped up New Testament was worthy of consideration by any public school officials (of all people!)to use as “factual” history for their charges assigned reading material.
Odd, whenever I read about the Pilgrims landing in Massachusetts and their desires to practice their faith freely, there was nary any mention of the fact that as Protestant English Christians, their “freedoms” to practice their version of Christianity resulted from what the Protestants forcibly took from the Catholics (especially under Henry, his son Edward and his half-sister, and quite bloody “Good Queen Bess.”
No wonder Native Americans raise hell on Thanksgiving every year, especially in Plymouth. Hmmmm, maybe Catholics should have some similar “set the record straight” counter demonstrations of their own whenever Protestants celebrate Reformation Day. Let’s see: first we’ll have to get a permit from local fire chiefs to erect a gallows, but instead of hanging or drawin’ n’ quarterin’ stray effigies, we can just toss a few officially recently approved “American history textbooks” on the fire.
First things first: make to check in with non-Protestant police and fire chiefs first.
@Paul wrote: “Pius XII could have saved 6 million Jewish lives if he had threatened Catholic Nazis with ex-communication”...what an incredibly stupid comment. You obviously need to turn off your computer and do some “book” research.
Steven, you took the words right out of my mouth!
It’s time to re-claim our Catholic Heritage and insist that people discuss it on our terms. We could start with a discussion on Faith and Reason. Then move on to a comparison of Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of the order of life appearing on the planet (Summa Contra Gentiles: 4.11.1-5) - it makes Darwin look like a low-level plagiarist. And there’s so much more….
I was an agnostic when I entered college, partly because of the lies I was told about Church history. Then one day in world lit class we were covering Dante’s Divine comedy, and here Dante believ3ed that the world was round (Purgatory was a mountain on the other side of the globe from Jerusalem.)
“But this was centuries before Columbus, and he was the one who proved that the world was round.” I objected.
“Oh, that’s just something that we tell little children.” my professor replied.
So I started looking deeper into Church history. Roe v. Wade, though, was the final push. (Am I giving away my age?)
@THERESE60640: So long as I left you with a smile on your face when those words went out, I couldn’t ask for more, except to remind myself NOT to type so doggone fast that I end my posts with clunker sentences like “...make to check in with non-Protestant police and fire chiefs first.” It sure looks like I left one word out. That’s what happens when you get so used to writing long sentences. When it comes time to write a short one, I’m bound for perdition or at least purgatory. If it’s a case of the latter and since we’re here in the land of the witch-hangers instead of fryers, that can only mean three possible spots an American soul could be found flitterin’ about. The air spaces above Atlanta’s Hartsfield, Chicago’s O’Hare and NYC’s Kennedy airports.
Therese, you made a very good point about reclaiming and teaching our “Catholic heritage” especially when we realize how much work we have cut out just to have enough of a handle on the first task. Come to think about it, that’s just our biggest problem. How are we going to “reclaim” what so many of our fellow Catholics and non-Catholic citizens and citizen desirees have no clue about no thanks to our very Protestanized public school system and even some Catholic colleges and diocesan school systems?
Talk about betraying one’s age, (great post, Don!)I can remember those “good old days” when the Baby Boomers were starting to hit their teen years, and we enjoyed enormous economic growth (sans the Grand Canyon-like disparity we have now thanks to the deregulation of almost everything King Kong himself couldn’t have nailed down for safe-keeping.) During that time we Catholic Americans ... that choice of word order is key ... were thumping our chests and for some pretty good reasons. Our parents contributed mightily to the defeat of the Axis in Europe and the Pacific and kept the Russians out of the rest of Europe. That was no mean or even an “imperialist” feat, notwithstanding what so many book-smart, street-stupid “intellectuals” were saying as they looked down their Franco/Europhile noses at our strong, albeit—sighhhhhh—“inferior materialistically inclined ‘culture.’” Catholics still took it on the chins because no matter how hard our parents’ and grandparents’ generations worked hard to demonstrate for all the free world to see, “We’ve made it” and even put a Catholic in the White House ... we were so much like our nation’s Founding Fathers, who, no matter how erudite and far ahead of the intellectual curve than the rest of the world’s leaders of their time ... were still looked down upon for the smallest and petty things; treated like proverbial country bumpkins ... and I’m referring to the Anglican Tidewater Cavalier Plantation Oligarchy!
Now is THE TIME for Catholic Americans to dust off their older history books and start reading up on their historical forebearers, heroes and bums alike. But even more to the point, our parents have to take the initiative to make sure our next generations learn about both their Church’s and nation’s histories and how they intersect each other in so many fascinating ways. Pardon my paraphrasing, but Gordon Wood, a longtime historian and Pulitzer Prize Winner pointed out during a discussion with fellow historian Jay Winik at the National Archives (5/18/11) that our ability to learn and better understand history keeps us from experiencing a roller coaster life.
Studying history and sharing its more succinct and easy to digest “teachable moments” and sayings with our children in our homes and especially at the dinner table will do far more to bring this country together than 1,0001 slickly packaged Glenn Beck produced farces. For all his attempts to gin up our patriotic spirits in hopes of bringing about greater social unity, it’s best to remember how guys like Beck get to pull off these big and downright schlocky but hollow extravaganzas: He made his fame and shameless piles of filthy lucre and booty by appealing to the very worst in our society and where oh where will guys li ke this be when the real mess has to be picked up? Why he’s renting a three million dollar pad in Texas. Yep, pardners, it’s a Texas-sized pad, too. For the past several years, Beck had been serializing one big disaster to come after another; all for the purpose of whipping people into an emotional frenzy, and before we all k now it, they’ll be following this pied p ip er to Israel, no doubt formenting some kinds of tension surrounding the site of the Old Temple and the Muslim’s Dome of the Rock. Apparently Beck and his followers want to push the hand of God along so as to start up a very unholy rapid escalation of tensions to get one side or an other to fire the fist shots of the ultimate religious wars of all times over the full retaking of the Temple by the Jews, destruction of the Dome of the Rock and al Aqsa Mosque and hasten the Second Coming.
Yep, there’s that roller coaster’s very scary dip we should be aware of again. The same ability to exercise a heightened sense of historical perspective be it in the areas of purely religious matters alone or where religious issues touch on other areas, allows us the precious luxury of possessing that sliver of time necessary to take preventative action or simply not be caught unawares when it happens. Jesus himself touched on this necessity.
Not only does a [HEALTHY AND BALANCED] appreciation of our deep Christian history and its POSITIVE roots and impact on our nation’s historical development allow us to be ever watchful without delving into paranoia ... it also strengthens us when we need it such strength to not only what the right things to think, believe and take to heart privately, but they also give us the strength to say the right thing when the moment couldn’t be worse in the eyes and closed hearts of so many lesser formed men and women.
Good Lord, even though I live surrounded by many old famous colonial buildings and villages, just to get people to THINK in terms of what we as a nation have learned from our past and need to give to our kids seems like pulling teeth out of a tiger who wasn’t given the dart-gun treatment in due time. It’s not hard to be discouraged in this age of the “give it to us now, quick, simple, n’ sweet.”
Quoting from a Loyalist Tory pamphleteer Thomas Chandler, perhaps the most effective Tory voice against the soon-to-become majority rebel colonists, won’t earn anybody a lot of huzzashs and increased popularity now or 235 years ago.
Even today’s Tories would HATE Fox News if they had some thing like it in their corner back then because at least it can be said for yesterday’s Loyalists, they strongly believed in the necessity of a solid education, especially when it came to learning and understanding the history of one’s own faith, culture, and native (or adopted) homeland. But they would hate it even more for its role in deliberately ginning up old prejudices and resurrecting convenient bogeymen from the past to create and perpetuate these all-too timely manufactured and packaged visicous gripes where there had been no grounds for viscious gripes before.
How else is the plague of anti-Catholicism is able to be jump-started so easily and often? Is it just the mistakes of Catholics which brings this about? Hardly. But if we are not armed with the facts of our past, how can we reply in due (rapid) but charitable fashion? Ignorance leaves us defenseless. But ignorance, as bad as this is, is a lesser evil than to have at least some basis of understanding of where we came from and what makes our Church unique among others ... and not use this knowledge in timely fashion to set the record(s) straight on the Lord’s behalf first and ourselves a close second. Don’t afraid to gain more knowledge and use it when you have to. As the old Tory wisely put it, “Are you afraid of appearing singular in doing what is right?”
For the record, I grew up Catholic & was an altar boy for a number of years, back in the days of ‘Dominus vobiscum…’.I have only fond memories of church life, although haven’t been involved in religion for decades.
I find it distressing that so much blame is placed on Pius XII for not doing more to save victims from the death camps of WWII.It misdirects focus from the fact that there were people all across Europe of various Christian backgrounds who participated with relish, in the reporting & gathering of Jews, for transport to their extermination; either in the camps themselves, or locally; by the Einsatzgruppen. The fact that so many people with a Christian background assisted in the slaughter of innocents, demonstrated a deeply entrenched anti-Semitism in Europe. The church has always had faults & failings, but survived them all because of good & decent people within.The errors of the past must not be ignored or covered up,nor should they necessarily be seen as anti-Catholic. It must be remembered that here in Canada; the bishops of Quebec were adamantly opposed to any Jewish immigration ......after WWII. As for the creation of free & democratic societies, little or no credit goes to conservative thinking in general. The core concept of liberty & justice for all; is not something that conservative thinkers would ever have created or devised. One example from American history involves the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock fame.Yes, they fled Britain seeking the freedom to practice their faith without persecution.And, they found that freedom in Holland.But they also found freedom of religion for all faiths; which they were not about to tolerate.So, they headed to the new world, & the rest; as they say; begins with….Salem.
“Getting past the guilt (which in most cases is actually due to misconceptions about what actually took place)”. That statement would amuse most people, if it didn’t make them want to vomit.
We are reading this book for our church book club. Does anyone have book club questions?
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