The Church and Western Civilization

Hat tip to Denice at Pope Benedict XVI Blog for this excellent article from Zenit.

"Contrary to popular opinion, the Catholic Church historically has been the champion of scientific, economic, legal and social progress. " Read entire story here.

So true! Let's take for example, the history of higher education which finds its roots in the Catholic Church as explained below by The International Federation of Catholic Universities:

As one looks over the 20 centuries of our era, it is not difficult to show that the Church has had a continuing interest and involvement in education. All histories of education recognize the role of the Church, and of its scholars such as Saint Augustine, Alcuin, St Thomas Aquinas, Comenius, Bacon, Copernicus, all of whom wrote on education. One has but to recall the catechetical schools, the cathedral schools, the monastic schools which eventually led to the creation of universities [Universitas Scholarum or Studia Generalia].

Finally the clergy and the teaching congregations, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the Ursulines, the Christian Brothers, the Holy Cross Fathers, the SVD's, the CMI's, the OSB's, the CSSP's, the SDB's, to name but a few, and many other groups of Catholics, not forgetting lay people, have all provided significant services to education at all levels and in all parts of the world.

The first universities, Paris, Bologna benefited from support from the Church: charters, privileges and immunities stemmed from Church initiatives. Most of the 75 or so universities founded before 1500 owe much to the Church's contribution in juridical as well as academic and financial matters.

With the Renaissance, civil and lay authorities became involved, but the interest did not wane in the Church. It is in 1588 that the first ministry of education in the world, namely the "Congregatio pro universitate studia romani" was created. In Appendix 12A one may see that between 1400 and 1799, at least 17 universities were founded as Catholic, and still are such.
In the 19th century 118 universities were started and in the 20th century no less than 574 universities were established by a Church group. The Appendix 12B provides a breakdown by region for 1990.

The Directory of Catholic Universities and other Catholic Institutions of Higher Education published in 1990, the first of its kind, lists 1046 Catholic institutions of higher education. All this to indicate ever so briefly the role of the Church in education.

Read more here.