Catholic sources of modern science

"The [Catholic] Church's true role in the development of modern science remains one of the best-kept secrets of modern history," writes Thomas Woods points out in his article, "The Church and the Birth of Modern Science," in Latin Mass magazine (Spring 2004). Writes Wood: "The Catholic Church has been unjustly attacked over the years on more grounds than many of us care to recall, but her alleged hostility toward science may be her greatest debit in the popular mind. The caricatured and cartoonish version of the Galileo affair with which most people are familiar is very largely to blame for the widespread belief that the Church has obstructed the advance of scientific inquiry." It was not coincidental, notes Wood, that the birth of science as a self-perpetuating field of intellectual endeavor should have occurred within a Catholic cultural milieu. (Read more.)