Talk:Catholic Church/Cultural Influence


 * By spreading Christianity it battled, and in certain cases eventually ended, practices like human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy of evangelized cultures beginning with the Roman Empire.

Recent discussions

 * Archive 36
 * Archive 36 - second discussion
 * Archive 40
 * Archive 40 - second discussion
 * Archive 40 - third discussion


 * From Alvin SchmidtHow Christian Charity Changed the World - the entire book, a scholarly work with notes and bibiliography, is about the Church's influence - for a summary see the book's table of contents on page 4

Law

 * From Harold Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition Harvard University Press 1983 p. 166 "(Western legal systems) are a secular residue of religious attitudes and assumptions which historically found expression first in the liturgy and rituals and doctrine of the church and thereafter in the institutions and concepts and values of the law. When these historical roots are not understood, many parts of the law appear to lack any underlying source and validity."
 * Berman p. 195 "Western concepts of law are in their origins, and thereafter in their nature, intimately bound up with distinctively Western theological and liturgical concepts of the atonement and of the sacraments."
 * Berman p. 228 "(speaking about canon law of marriage) Here were the foundations not only of the modern law of marriage but also of certain basic elements of modern contract law, namely, the concept of free will and related concepts of mistake, duress, and fraud."

Economics
More sources to come. Thanks,  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 15:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Joseph Schumpeter wrote a scholarly work entitled History of Economics which talks about the Church's influence see

Social services

 * Guenter Risse Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals Oxford University Press 1999 discusses the Church and developement of the hospital system in chapters 2, 3 and 10.

Women

 * Thomas Greer and Gavin Lewis' A Brief History of the Western World published by Thompson Wadsworth 2005, used as a university textbook for Western Civilization courses in many universities. From page 167 "the teaching and practice of charity - especially caring for the sick - held rich and poor together within the Christian communities. Likewise, although Christianity accepted the subordination of women to men, the doctrine of equality in Christ made a real difference to the position of women in early Christian congregations. Christianity denounced the common practice of infanticide, of which girl babies were usually the victims, and preached that adultery by husbands was as sinful as by wives. Both Christian and non-Christian observers agreed that women formed the majority of converts ..."
 * Same book from page 130 describing Roman household customs "The father was responsible for the education and devotions of his children and, in theory at least, was absolute master of his household. He alone (as in Greece) decided the fate of newborn infants. Those showing physical defects were ordered abandoned; sons were more likely than daughters to be chosen for rearing. Significantly, upper-class daughters were not given personal names. They were called simply by the names of the aristocratic clans ... to which they belonged, and identified by such terms as "the elder" or "the third," or by the names of individual families to which their fathers or husbands belonged. ... If spared at birth, girls were expected to marry in their early teens and to bear children soon afterward."
 * Same book from page 172 "Thus unity of practice was achieved through the acceptance of a higher authority. Of the five patriarchs, Rome seemed to have the strongest claim to exercise this power. The Eternal City still enjoyed great prestige among the communities of the empire; Rome was the scene of the missionary work and martyrdom of the two leading apostles, Peter and Paul; and according to tradition, the Roman diocese had been founded by Christ's first disciple, Peter. Furthermore, the Roman bishops interpreted a passage in the Gospel of Matthew (16:18-19) to mean that Christ had founded his Church on Peter and had entrusted to him alone the 'keys of the kingdom of heaven.' This, they insisted made Peter supreme among the apostles. And since each bishop of Rome was the direct successor of Peter, the bishop of Rome was clearly supreme among the bishops of the world."  Nancy Heise   ''' talk 21:01, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Relevant articles

 * Christian slavery
 * Catholic Church and slavery

Issues

 * Whether the article accurately presents the Church's teaching and actual practice with regards slavery over the course of history Slavery and Slavery II and Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36
 * Whether the long note summarizing the Church's relationship to slavery is needed and of appropriate length and detail
 * Whether the article accurately presents the Church's teaching and actual practice with regards the equality of women over the course of history Cultural Influence II and Polygamy-Roman Empire and Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36
 * Whether the article adequately explains "excesses of the colonial era" Talk:Catholic_Church/Archive_36

Previous discussions

 * Archive 35
 * Archive 35 - second discussion
 * Archive 40
 * Archive 43
 * Archive 45