Belloc and the civilizational influence of the Catholic Church

In 'The Crisis of Civilization', written in 1937, Belloc, the Irish-French writer, soldier, historian and politician rightly proclaims the fact, that it was the Catholic Church, and the Christian faith, which created civilization, assimilating the failed pagan cultures of both Rome and Greece, and imparting a new energy, viewpoint and philosophical world-view, which allowed Europe to accede to world supremacy:

“It was the Faith which gradually and indirectly transformed the slave into the serf, and the serf into the free peasant. It was the Faith which took the guild, inherited from the Pagan Empire, and set it up for the foundational thing it was during all the great medieval period: the guarantee of freedom. It was the Faith which by its moral atmosphere checked and curbed usury...which put competition within its bounds...We cannot build up a society synthetically, for it is an organic thing...”

Culture is King. When your secular culture preaches pond scum became human; intolerant Gay theology is now education; the state is the omniscient arbiter of 'rights', money, truth and what can be said; or that vicious atavisms such as Islam are now peace; then the end is not far nigh. The Roman and Greek empires were slave based, superstitious entities, which after a time, did not promote invention, markets, initiative, art, literature and science. They decayed from within. As their cultures succumbed to inflation, bureaucratic statism, abortion, sexual deviance and confusion, mythologies and legends, so too did their empires become static, decayed, sensual, and their currency and value systems debased, clipped, and indeed worthless.

“That the culture and civilization of Christendom – what was called for centuries in general terms 'Europe', was made by the Catholic Church gathering up the social traditions of the Graeco-Roman Empire, inspiring them and giving the whole of that great body a new life. It was the Catholic Church which made up, gave us our unity and our whole philosophy of life and formed the nature of the white world.”

The Church reformed the notion of family, the right to life, communal obligation and responsibility, economic relations, and importantly changed the philosophy of the world from might-makes-right, child-sacrifice, usurious greed; to one centered around dignity, truth, charity, forgiveness and equality. No other cultural civilization in history has even come remotely close to what the Catholic Church has given to the world.