XPost: alt.religion.christian.catholic, soc.history, alt.christian.religion   
   XPost: alt.christnet.theology, alt.religion.christianity   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Why is this non-Catholic scholar debunking "centuries of anti-Catholic   
   history"?   
      
   An interview with Dr. Rodney Stark, sociologist and author of "Bearing   
   False Witness"   
      
   May 07, 2016 03:21 EST   
      
   Carl E. Olson   
      
   Dr. Rodney Stark has written nearly 40 books on a wide range of   
   topics, incuding a number of recent books on the history of   
   Christianity, monotheism, Christianity in China, and the roots of   
   modernity. After beginning as a newspaper reporter and spending time   
   in the Army, Stark received his Ph.D. from the University of   
   California, Berkeley, where he held appointments as a research   
   sociologist at the Survey Research Center and at the Center for the   
   Study of Law and Society. He later was Professor of Sociology and of   
   Comparative Religion at the University of Washington; he has been at   
   Baylor University since 2004. Stark is past president of the Society   
   for the Scientific Study of Religion and of the Association for the   
   Sociology of Religion, and he has won a number of national and   
   international awards for distinguished scholarship. Raised as a   
   Lutheran, he has identified himself as an agnostic but has, more   
   recently, called himself an "independent Christian".   
      
   His most recent book is Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of   
   Anti-Catholic History (Templeton Press, 2016), which addresses ten   
   prevalent myths about Church history. Dr. Stark recently responded by   
   e-mail to some questions from Carl E. Olson, editor ofCatholic World   
   Report.   
      
   CWR: You begin the book by first noting your upbringing as an American   
   Protestant and then discussing "distinguished bigots". What is a   
   "distinguished bigot"? And how have such people influenced the way in   
   which the Catholic Church is understood and perceived by many   
   Americans today?   
      
   Dr. Rodney Stark: By distinguished bigots I mean prominent scholars   
   and intellectuals who clearly are antagonistic to the Catholic Church   
   and who promulgate false historical claims.   
      
   CWR: How did you go about identifying and selecting the ten   
   anti-Catholic myths that you rebut in the book? To what degree are   
   these myths part of a general (if sometimes vague) Protestant culture,   
   and to what degree are they encouraged and spread by a more secular,   
   elite culture?   
      
   Dr. Stark: For the most part I encountered these anti-Catholic myths   
   as I wrote about various historical periods and events, and discovered   
   that these well-known ‘facts” were false and therefore was forced to   
   deal with them in those studies. These myths are not limited to some   
   generalized Protestant culture—many Catholics, including well-known   
   ones, have repeated them too. These myths have too often, and for too   
   long, been granted truthful validity by historians in general. Of   
   course secularists—especially ex-Catholics such as Karen   
   Armstrong—love these myths.   
      
   CWR: The first chapter is on "sins of anti-Semitism," perhaps the most   
   divisive and controversial of the topics you address. How have your   
   own views on this issue changed, and why? Why do you think there   
   continues to be a wide-spread belief or impression that the Catholic   
   Church in inherently anti-Semitic?   
      
   Dr. Stark: When I began as a scholar, “everybody” including leading   
   Catholics knew the Church was a primary source of anti-Semitism. It   
   was only later as I worked with materials on medieval attacks on Jews   
   that I discovered the effective role of the Church in opposing and   
   suppressing such attacks—this truth being told by medieval Jewish   
   chroniclers and thereby most certainly true. Why do so many   
   ‘intellectuals,’ many of them ex-Catholics, continue to accept the   
   notion that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope,” when that is so   
   obviously a vicious lie? It can only be hatred of the Church. Keep in   
   mind that it is prominent Jews who defend the pope.   
      
   CWR: Why have various historians, such as Gibbons, presented the   
   ancient pagans as either benevolent or mostly tolerant toward   
   Christianity? What was the actual relationship between Christianity   
   and paganism in the first centuries of the Church's existence?   
      
   Dr. Stark: In those days, the safe way to attack religion was to let   
   readers assume it was only an attack on Catholicism, so that’s what   
   Gibbon and his contemporaries did. Perhaps surprisingly, once the   
   pagans were no longer able to persecute Christians, they were pretty   
   much ignored by the Church and by emperors and only slowly disappeared   
      
   CWR: How did the mythology of the "Dark Ages" develop? What are some   
   of the main problems with that mythology?   
      
   Dr. Stark: Voltaire and his associates made up the fiction of the Dark   
   Ages so that they could claim to have burst forth with the   
   Enlightenment. As every competent historian (and even the   
   encyclopedias) now acknowledges, there were no Dark Ages. To the   
   contrary, it was during these centuries that Europe took the great   
   cultural and technological leap forward that put it so far ahead of   
   the rest of the world.   
      
   CWR: What relationship is there between the mythology of the "Dark   
   Ages" and the myth of "secular Enlightenment"? How rational and   
   scientific, in fact, was the Enlightenment?   
      
   Dr. Stark: The “philosophes” of the so-called “Enlightenment played no   
   role in the rise of science—the great scientific progress of the time   
   was achieved by highly religious men, many of them Catholic clergy.   
      
   CWR: The Crusades and the Inquisitions continue be presented as epochs   
   and events that involved Christian barbarism and the murder of   
   millions. Why are those myths so widespread and popular, especially   
   after scholars have spent decades correcting and clarifying what   
   really did (or did not) happen?   
      
   Dr. Stark: I am competent to reveal that the Crusades were legitimate   
   defensive wars and that the Inquisition was not bloody. I am not   
   competent to explain why the pile of fine research supporting these   
   corrections have had no impact on the chattering classes. I suspect   
   that these myths are too precious for the anti-religious to surrender.   
      
   CWR: In addressing "Protestant Modernity" you flatly stated that Max   
   Weber's thesis that Protestantism birthed capitalism and modernity is   
   "nonsense". What are the main problems with Weber's thesis?   
      
   Dr. Stark: The problem is simply that capitalism was fully developed   
   and thriving in Europe many centuries before the Reformation.   
      
   CWR: You emphatically state that as a scholar with a Protestant   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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