As we all know and as many of our well established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history, Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called “Hitler’s Pope,” the Dark Ages were a stunting of the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment, and the religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long held beliefs were all wrong? In this stunning, powerful, and ultimately persuasive book, Rodney Stark, one of the most highly regarded sociologists of religion and bestselling author of The Rise of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco 1997) argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the least positive light are, in fact, fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so strongly and for so long? And if our beliefs are wrong, what, in fact, is the truth? In each chapter, Stark takes on a well-established anti-Catholic myth, gives a fascinating history of how each myth became the conventional wisdom, and presents a startling picture of the real truth. For example, Instead of the Spanish Inquisition being an anomaly of torture and murder of innocent people persecuted for “imaginary” crimes such as witchcraft and blasphemy, Stark argues that not only did the Spanish Inquisition spill very little blood, but it was a major force in support of moderation and justice. Instead of Pope Pius XII being apathetic or even helpful to the Nazi movement, such as to merit the title, “Hitler’s Pope,” Stark shows that the campaign to link Pope Pius XII to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Pope Pius XII was widely praised for his vigorous and devoted efforts to saving Jewish lives during the war. Instead of the Dark Ages being understood as a millennium of ignorance and backwardness inspired by the Catholic Church’s power, Stark argues that the whole notion of the “Dark Ages” was an act of pride perpetuated by anti-religious intellectuals who were determined to claim that theirs was the era of “Enlightenment.” In the end, readers will not only have a more accurate history of the Catholic Church, they will come to understand why it became unfairly maligned for so long. Bearing False Witness is a compelling and sobering account of how egotism and ideology often work together to give us a false truth.
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Bearing False Witness by Rodney Stark
I've been addressing anti-Catholic tropes on the internet for the last twenty years. When I started, I honestly believed that these accusations were supported by fact, or, even, if not totally accurate, were substantially accurate. My particular forte of late has been the slander that the Catholic Church supported Hitler and the Nazis. By going past the books that everyone is reading into the books written by those involved in the “Church Struggle,” I have established that the modern view is a total distortion of the facts. Germans, Europeans and the world knew that the Catholic Church was completely opposed to National Socialism for a variety of reasons, including its exaltation of nation and race over God as the supreme good. I have newspaper articles from the New York Times that demonstrate that the German Catholic bishops repeatedly condemned National Socialism from 1923 through 1945. The German Catholic Bishops excommunicated Nazi party members. Catholic electoral districts did not vote for the Nazis at anywhere near the rate of Protestant districts. The Nazis lumped “political Catholicism” in with international Bolshevism and international Judaism as one of its three great enemies. These points are not opinions or apologetics; they are facts.
Yet, I repeatedly am shown pictures of purported Catholic priests – who are often Lutheran – performing the Hitler salute – which was required on penalty of imprisonment - and told that Catholics made National Socialism possible.
Needless to say, my interlocutors are as ignorant as a box of rocks, and yet they are arrogant with the arrogance that only indoctrination into an unshakable belief can give.
Weird and insidious.
Stark's recent book is an effort to shake this modern faith. This is not a work of Catholic apologetics. Stark is not a Catholic. It is, rather, a different kind of “apologetics.” It is a work of “historical apologetics.” Stark reveals as his conclusion that his purpose is nothing less than to defend history, which has become distorted by ignorance and political ideology, and encrusted generations of bigotry, to create the “perfect storm” of ignorance, and a dangerous ignorance since rejecting Catholic history effectively paves the way for rejecting Western History and Western values.
Stark's approach is to state the conventional wisdom of Catholic duplicity or evil and then point out with simple facts how false the conventional wisdom is in root and branch. Candidly, for a reader who has read Stark's other books, much of this is a rehash, but this book is useful in collecting the many false tropes in one source, and he does offer additional and new insights. The topics that Stark covers are Antisemitism, the non-canonical gospels, persecution of pagans, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, religion and the rise of science, slavery, the Catholic Church and fascism, and the Catholic Church's alleged social stagnation. In very simple and clear statements of data, Stark debunks the myths. This is not to say that Catholicism has never done anything wrong, but Stark absolves it of guilt for the grossest crimes it has been repeatedly accused of.
This book should be required reading at a high school or college level simply out of fairness for the years of defamation. Also, it would advance the project of knowing the truth, which education supposedly has as its goal. The lay reader would undoubtedly have one of two reactions. The reaction of many, unfortunately, would be denial because the facts don't fit the myths. The second, more hopeful reaction, might be “mind-blowing” as the imagined past is replaced by the actual past.
For someone who has mastered the facts, the more interesting question is “why?” Why is it that in the space of 80 years, Catholicism went from the undisputed opponent of the Nazis to its putative handmaiden?
Stark points to a number of factors. One factor is the burden of history. Protestantism, particularly Protestant England, waged a “cold war” against various Catholic powers, including Spain and France, and made much use of the “black arts” of propaganda. Once the “Black Legend” had been launched into the universe, it has been impossible to eliminate from the essentially Anglophone world. This traditional Protestant propaganda has merged with an ideological stream that is either anti-religious or secular leftist:
“Although Gibbon was one of the very first “distinguished bigots,” he is in excellent company— the 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!”
Stark doesn't mention the theory of the former Romanian spy chief, General Ion Mihai Pacepa, that Soviet Union engaged in its own “black arts” of propaganda in crafting its own “Black Legend” that indoctrinated millions into believing that Pope Pius XII was a Nazi sympathizer. [See Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.] For all of his interest in Sociology, Stark doesn't offer an explanation as to why these streams have merged, endured, and been accepted by so many. It may seem obvious to Stark, who grew up breathing in anti-Catholicism with his Lutheran mother's milk, but it does seem that modern anti-Catholicism is different from the prior kind insofar as it has such an appeal to Catholics, who may be finding themselves identifying more with ideology or nation than faith.
The hopeful sign is that the pressure from the outside, from the “distinguished bigots” who more and more are not distinguishing between Catholic and Protestant, is pushing Catholic and Protestant closer. Stark points out that the ecumenism in his own university, Baylor – a traditionally Bible-Belt Baptist institution – has grown to an extent unimaginable when he started teaching.
For myself, I will offer my own sociological insight: I think that traditionally anti-Catholic Protestants have learned that anti-Catholicism is a luxury they can no longer afford. It was once possible to enjoy a book that depicted Catholicism as corrupt and criminal, but when Dan Brown's execrable “The Da Vinci Code” came out and provided pop pabulum history that a basic Christian doctrine like the divinity of Jesus had been adopted by a vote on the slimmest margin – a lie – Protestants began to understand that the Catholic limb they had been sawing on was the limb they were sitting on. Likewise, Protestants have seen attacks on the Crusades turned into attacks on Western Christianity generally. The dark art of propaganda is easily turned.
And, then, there has been the intellectual damage done to scholarship as propaganda becomes the coin of the academic realm and scholarship is judged by how it fits the narrative rather than how it fits the facts.
Let's hope that Stark is successful in his project.
