Heroism and Genius: How Catholic Priests Helped Build - and Can Help Re-build - Western Civilization

"Every chancellery in Europe, every court in Europe, was ruled by these learned, trained and accomplished men—the priesthood of that great and dominant body."                                                          

                                                   — President Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom

With the evidence of stubborn facts, historians have given their verdict: from the genius of Christianity and the cultures of the Jews, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Germanic peoples, the Catholic Church built a new and original civilization, embodying within its structures the Christian vision of God and man, time and eternity.

Its construction and maintenance, amid attrition and cultural earthquakes, is a saga spread over 1600 years.  In the early stage of Western Civilization from A.D. 300 to A.D. 1000, because Catholic priests numbered so many men of heroism and genius, and due to their triple mission to teach, sanctify and govern, they became the pioneers and irreplaceable builders of a new culture and socio-political order.

Heroism and Genius presents some of these formidable men: Fathers of chivalry and free-market economics; leaders of nations, statesmen, and defiers of tyrants; music composers, pioneers of universal education, and architects of some of the world's loveliest buildings; and the clandestine revolutionaries behind the flowering of the culture of romantic love that is the classic model for relations between men and women. This is a popular history of the key role of the Catholic priesthood in laying the foundations for the socio-political-cultural ideals of Western Civilization.

Recommended by Robert Cardinal Sarah, Raymond Cardinal Burke, Fr Mitch Pacwa and Thomas Woods, PhD

Format: Hardcover