Rodney Stark - Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History

Templeton Press
300 Conshohocken State Road, Suite 500
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
www.templetonpress.org

2016 by Rodney Stark

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stark, Rodney, author.

Title: Bearing false witness : debunking centuries of anti-Catholic history / Rodney Stark.

Description: West Conshohocken, PA : Templeton Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016008676 | ISBN 9781599474991 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Catholic Church--Apologetic works. | Catholic Church--Controversial literature--History and criticism. | Catholic Church--Doctrines. | Church history. | BISAC: RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic. | RELIGION / Biblical Studies / History & Culture. | RELIGION / Christianity / History.

Classification: LCC BX1752 .S76 2016 | DDC 282.09--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008676

eISBN 978-1-59947-500-4

Printed in the United States of America

16 17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction:
Confronting Distinguished Bigots

In Memory of
Andrew M. Greeley
and Richard John Neuhaus

The myth of Catholic barbarity: This 1598 engraving, published in Holland, shows a Spanish don feeding Indian children to his dogs. It was typical of the anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic propaganda of the time.

INTRODUCTION

Confronting Distinguished Bigots

W HILE GROWING UP as an American Protestant with intellectual pretensions, I always wondered why Catholics made such a fuss over Columbus Day. Didnt they see the irony in the fact that although Columbus was a Catholic, his voyage of discovery was accomplished against unyielding opposition from Roman Catholic prelates who cited biblical proof that the earth was flat and that any attempt to reach Asia by sailing West would result in the ships falling off the edge of the world?

Everybody knew that about the Catholics and Columbus. We not only learned it in school, the story of Columbus proving the world to be round also was told in movies, Broadway plays, Yet, there they were every October 12: throngs of Knights of Columbus members accompanied by priests, marching in celebration of the arrival of the Great Navigator in the New World. How absurd.

And how astonishing to discover many years later that the whole story about why Catholic advisors opposed Columbus was a lie.

By the fifteenth century (and for many centuries before) every educated European, including Roman Catholic prelates, knew the earth was round. The opposition Columbus encountered was not about the shape of the earth, but about the fact that he was wildly wrong about the circumference of the globe. He estimated it was about 2,800 miles from the Canary Islands to Japan. In reality it is about 14,000 miles. His clerical opponents knew about how far it really was and opposed his voyage on grounds that Columbus and his men would all die at sea. Had the Western Hemisphere not been there, and no one knew it existed, the Nia, Pinta, and Santa Maria might as well have fallen off the earth, for everyone aboard would have died of thirst and starvation.

Amazingly enough, there was no hint about Columbus having to prove that the earth was round in his own journal or in his sons book, History of the Admiral. The story was unknown until more than three hundred years later when it appeared in a biography of Columbus published in 1828. The author, Washington Irving (17831859), best known for his fictionin The Legend of Sleepy Hollow he introduced the Headless Horseman. Although the tale about Columbus and the flat earth was equally fictional, Irving presented it as fact. Almost at once the story was eagerly embraced by historians who were so certain of the wickedness and stupidity of the Roman Catholic Church that they felt no need to seek any additional confirmation, although some of them must have realized that the story had appeared out of nowhere. Anyway, thats how the tradition that Columbus proved the world was round got into all the textbooks.

By Washington Irvings day, this was a well-worn pattern, as many vicious distortions and lies had entered the historical canon with the seal of distinguished scholarly approval, so long as they reflected badly on the Catholic Church (keep in mind that Catholics were refused admission to Oxford and Cambridge until 1871, and some American colleges did not admit them in those days either). Unfortunately, unlike the Columbus story, many of these equally spurious anti-Catholic accusations remain an accepted part of the Western historical heritage. Indeed, a survey of Austrian and German textbooks conducted in 2009 found that the falsehood about Columbus and the flat earth was still being taught in those nations!

It all began with the European wars stemming from the Reformation that pitted Protestants versus Catholics and took millions of lives, Nevertheless, this impression of Spain and of Spanish Catholics remains very much alive in our culturemere mention of the Spanish Inquisition evokes disgust and outrage.

But it wasnt only angry Protestants who invented and embraced these tales. Many of the falsehoods considered in subsequent chapters were sponsored by antireligious writers, especially during the so-called Enlightenment, whose work was condoned only because it was seen as anti-Catholic rather than as what it truly wasalthough more recently such scholars have paraded their irreligion as well as their contempt for Catholicism. In his day, however, Edward Gibbon (173794) would surely have been in deep trouble had the bitterly antireligious views he expressed in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire not been incorrectly seen as applying only to Roman Catholicism. But, because in the days of the Roman Empire Catholicism was the only Christian church, Gibbons readers assumed his attacks were specific to Catholicism and not aimed at religion in general.

Although Gibbon was one of the very first distinguished bigots, he is in excellent companythe list of celebrated, anti-Catholic scholars (some of them still living) is long indeed. We will meet scores of them in subsequent chapters, some of them many times. Worse yet, in recent years some of the most malignant contributions to anti-Catholic history have been made by alienated Catholics, many of whom are seminary dropouts, former priests, or ex-nuns, such as John Cornwell, James Carroll, and Karen Armstrong. Normally, attacks originating with defectors from a particular group are treated with some circumspection. But, attacks on the Church made by lapsed Catholics are widely regarded as thereby of special reliability!

In any event, should you doubt that your knowledge of Western history is distorted by the work of these distinguished bigots, consider whether you believe any of the following statements: