Steve Weidenkopf - The Real Story of Catholic History: Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths

The Real Story of Catholic History

Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths

STEVE WEIDENKOPF

The Real Story of Catholic History

Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths

2017 Steve Weidenkopf

All rights reserved. Except for quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, uploading to the Internet, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Published by Catholic Answers, Inc.

2020 Gillespie Way

El Cajon, California 92020

1-888-291-8000 orders

619-387-0042 fax

www.catholic.com

Printed in the United States of America

Cover design by Devin Schadt

Interior design by Sherry Russell

978-1-68357-047-9 hardcover

978-1-68357-048-6 paperback

978-1-68357-049-3 Kindle

978-1-68357-050-9 ePub

To my beautiful daughters, Maddie and Thrse (TT).

May you love the Lord and his Church with all your heart, mind, and soul.

Most of us are only half aware (and are becoming less aware with every added decade), that the air we breathe is anti-Catholic; that the history we are taught, the moral ideas behind the legal system we obey, the restrictions imposed on us, the political conceptions embodied in every public act, the general attitude toward foreign countries, are all the products of that Nationalism which their non-Catholic fellow-citizens regard as the sacred emotion.

Hilaire Belloc

Taken from Belloc's 1929 book Survivals and New Arrivals .

PREFACE

Nearly all the historical work worth doing at the present moment in the English language is the work of shoveling off heaps of rubbish inherited from the immediate past.

Hilaire Belloc

This is a book I wish I had when I was younger. As a Catholic teenager growing up in the Evangelical Protestant country of West Texas, I was mostly at a loss as to how to respond to challenges to the Faith and myths about Church history. Later in life I once again felt ill-equipped to respond when, for instance, a coworker claimed that the Catholic Church has killed more people than any other organization in human history. It brought me a great sense of closure and happiness to refute that myth in this work!

This book is organized chronologically, with individual entries on some of the most common anti-Catholic historical myths, and formulated in ways that Catholics might hear in conversation. Despite their chronological arrangement, the entries are stand-alone and can be read in isolation. Each myth is stated, and then refuted with authentic history; and a section titled The Real Story is provided at the end of the entry with salient points for those who need a quick answer to the myth. Extensive endnotes are also provided to enable additional research, and to answer potential charges that the answer is simply Catholic propaganda and not factual.

Originally this book was envisioned as a joint project with Diane Moczar, a Catholic historian who wrote Seven Lies About Catholic History (2010) . Reading that book emboldened me in my own desire to help give Catholics the resources they need to fight anti-Catholic prejudice in the study and writing of history. Unfortunately, Dianes health did not allow her to finish working on this project with me, but I thank her for her previous work and the example she set for me in writing authentic Catholic history.

Catholics arguably have plentiful resources for use in combatting the doctrinal and moral errors espoused by enemies of the Church or the merely ignorant; but there are not enough readily available resources for Catholics to defend the true history of the Church. As a result, most Catholics are unable to answer the anti-Catholic historical myths commonly presented in books, TV shows, and movies. If they do find a resource adequate to defending the Church, the retort comes that its author is Catholic and therefore biased and not to be trustedas if an anti-Catholic secular author is somehow free from bias!

Since the Protestant Reformationwhich was really a Revolutionin the sixteenth century, Catholics in the English-speaking world have been forced to concede the historical narrative to an English Protestant perspective, which does not seek to portray the Churchs history authentically. It is time to reclaim that narrative. It is time for Catholics to learn their true history and challenge the anti-Catholic bias of the mainstream media and academia. It is time for the false narratives to be corrected, and for the real story of Catholic history to be presented. It brings me great joy to see that some non-Catholic authors, such as Rodney Stark, also see this anti-Catholic bias in academia and have written books to combat it. In the Information Age, those who have authentic, reliable, and well-sourced information, and who proclaim it loudly and often in all forms of media, will win the day. It is no longer acceptable to allow the myths about Catholic history to stand unchallenged. It is my hope and prayer that this book will give Catholics the tools needed to shovel off the heaps of rubbish learned in school about Church history, to teach the real story of Catholic history to the next generation, and to spread it throughout the world.

Preface to Hoffman Nickerson, The Inquisition: A Political and Military Study of Its Establishment (John Bale, Sons and Danielsson, Ltd.: London, 1923), v.

History books are often several hundred pages long, and can be tedious to read unless one is very interested in the subject matter. Historians frequently write for each other and can find it difficult to write engaging works for a wider audience, so it is no wonder many Catholics do not pick up Church history books to read for leisure.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An author cannot complete his work without the patience, love, and support of his family, so I thank from the bottom of my heart my darling wife, Kasey, and our children: Maddie, Maximilian, Thrse, Luke, Jeb, and Martin. Thanks also to Todd Aglialoro for approaching me to work on this project and supporting it throughout the process, and sincere thanks to Jeff Rubin for his excellent editing of the manuscript. His work helped make this a better book. Special thanks are in order to Annie Adams, the library assistant at the Christendom College Graduate School for finding English translations of Pope Leo XIIIs Saepenumero Considerantes . I am also deeply indebted to my former students Adam Richard and Stephanie Pacheco, who reviewed the draft manuscript and provided invaluable feedback.

Lastly, I give thanks to St. Bede, a great Catholic historian, whose intercession throughout this project enabled its completion.

INTRODUCTION

Combatting Anti-Catholic Historical Myths

Misconceptions about the past can persist for centuries, despite the diligent work of historians, either because vested interests benefit from the distortions or because the fanciful version is more fun.

Piers Paul Read

Pope Leo XIII (r. 18781903) was annoyed. The Church was under attack by intellectuals seeking to limit its influence in society and by Italian nationalists and revolutionaries who intensely disliked the papacy. Leo was also concerned because when surveying the methods employed to cause suspicion and hatred against the Church and the papacy by its critics, he noted that the attacks were centered on ecclesiastical history. The myths formulated by the enemies of the Church took root in the minds of men because the press perpetuated them and schools taught them to the young. Leo decried the corruption of youths through teaching a false narrative of Church history because errors learned while young tend to persist in old age, primarily because people are not apt to do the research necessary to change what they have learned, and in some cases because the fixed narrative threatens their faith. To combat the falsification of the history of the Church and the papacy, Leo decided to open the Vatican Library to all researchers so that they could use primary documents to write authentic Catholic history.