Role of the Roman Catholic Church in civilization

The role of the Roman Catholic Church in civilization has been intricately intertwined with the history and formation of Western Society. For many of the past 2000 years of church history, the church has been a major source of schooling, scientific and economic advancements, and provider of social services in many countries throughout the world.

Church doctrine and science

Historians of science, including non-Catholics such as J.L. Heilbron, [] and of course, the patronage of the Renaissance popes for the great works of Catholic artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, Borromini and Leonardo da Vinci. In addition, we must take into account the enormous body of religious music composed for the Catholic Church, a body which is profoundly tied to the emergence and development of the European tradition of classical music, and indeed, all music that has been influenced by it.

Church and economic development

Francisco de Vitoria, a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives, is recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law, and now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light for the West's democracy and rapid economic development. [cite web |title=A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of Modern Democracy, Equality, and Freedom Under the Influence of Christianity |url=http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0010.html |last=de Torre |first=Fr. Joseph M. |year=1997 |publisher=Catholic Education Resource Center]

Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, referring to the scholastics, wrote, "it is they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the ‘founders’ of scientific economics." [cite book |title=History of Economic Analysis |last=Schumpeter |first=Joseph |year=1954 |publisher=Allen & Unwin |location=London] Other economists and historians, such as Raymond de Roover, Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, and Alejandro Chafuen, have also made similar statements. Historian Paul Legutko of Stanford University said the Catholic Church is "at the center of the development of the values, ideas, science, laws, and institutions which constitute what we call Western civilization." [cite web |title=Review of "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by Thomas Woods, Jr. |url=http://www.nrbookservice.com/products/bookpage.asp?prod_cd=c6664 |work=National Review Book Service |accessdate=2006-09-16]

ocial justice, care-giving, and the hospital system

The Catholic Church has contributed to society through its social doctrine which has guided leaders to promote social justice and by setting up the hospital system in Medieval Europe, a system which was different from the merely reciprocal hospitality of the Greeks and family-based obligations of the Romans. These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age," according to historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse. [cite book |title=Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals |last=Risse |first=Guenter B |year=1999 |month=April |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=59 |id=ISBN 0-19-505523-3]

On November 14 2006, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also issued the document Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination to provide "guidelines for the pastoral care of people with a homosexual inclination".

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