Catholic Thought discussion

Dr. Carroll begins by defining “Christendom” as the reign of Christ. Since Christ has been part of both the creation and formation of the world Dr. Carroll begins with man’s recording of history and the formation of the Bible. We may think it unusual that a history of “Christendom” would go back several thousand years prior to the birth of Christ. However, this coincides with God’s revelation of Himself to us. Dr. Carroll will loosely track civilization’s development in the light of revelation in the Bible.

Very early in the introduction Dr. Carroll clearly identifies that he is a Catholic writing from a Catholic perspective. He clearly puts forth his belief that Jesus Christ founded the Roman Catholic Church and that it will always be His Church. What does having a perspective mean to those who are reading history written by Dr. Carroll? Will he be objective; certainly I believe the answer to be “yes.” He is making us aware of his world view yet he will not alter events or strain the facts to fit that world view. You will see throughout the book that Dr. Carroll uses footnotes and references very prolifically; he does this primarily to show that he is not afraid of having his work questioned, in fact, invites it. In today’s age there is an aspersion that one connected to a certain faith tradition cannot be factually objective to events within that faith tradition. That is a false assertion. We often hear comments such as, “he is an atheist and therefore will be objective.” We fail to recognize that an atheist views the world through his prism of nonbelief, the same could be said for the prism of a Protestant, Jew, Hindu or any other faith tradition. I believe that the key is to acknowledge the prisms and lenses which have developed a person’s world view. And then to honestly report events that have occurred in recorded history.

For those of you that have listened to the LibriVox recording that I posted in the background information section for this book, you will find Dr. Carroll’s writing very refreshing since he is accurately portraying information regarding the Catholic Church which perhaps has been distorted or repressed for centuries by those opposed to the Catholic Church.

In Dr. Carroll’s prologue he observes that “time began with creation; history, in its broadest sense, began with man’s appearance in the universe God had created.” To me this outlined very clearly Dr. Carroll’s perspective toward history in God’s world.

What a great introduction Mike! Just a like oppressive heatwise here right now so I'll be joining the discussion on the first 2 chapters later when it gets a little more bearable.

I think I'm having an emotional day, but it's hard to read where he talks about Christendom having faded to the edge of invisibility (written in 1985!). I can't help but contrast our lives back then with today's crisis of values in society, widespread violence, etc. I've been reading a wonderful book on September 11 called "Waiting for the World to Change" that discusses, in roughly fifty pages per day, each day of the first week of that horrible tragedy and how those events have changed our world in so many ways since then.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the book, but I think the part about animals not having souls is definitely subjective, and something I disagree with. Moving on....