A Letter From Villanova Prep's President
In his book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas Woods, a New York Times best-selling author and historian, credits Catholicism with theorizing the possibility of flight and establishing the university system and modern hospital. He enumerates the Church’s contributions to music, art, architecture and astronomy.
Woods claims that 15th-century Catholic theologians – not Adam Smith three centuries later – founded modern economics, and that the exaltation of human reason and the Church’s commitment to rigorous and rational debate gave rise to the scientific revolution.
He asserts that the idea of international law, often attributed to enlightenment thinkers, came from 16th-century theologians, that all of Western law derived from canon law, and that Catholic clergy pioneered rational trial procedures and sophisticated legal concepts. Woods states that the idea of universal human rights, codified in a 1948 declaration of the United Nations, is rooted in canon law; that following the fall of the Roman Empire it was the Church that rebuilt the West, preserving what was best from classical antiquity.
Thousands of contemporary historians credit Pope Saint John Paul II with the fall of the Soviet Union, but few people know that the founders of geology, modern atomic theory, genetics and seismology were members of Catholic religious orders, or that 35 craters on the moon are named for priests who were leading mathematicians and scientists.
Woods concludes that the Catholic Church is the greatest force for good the world has ever known. I agree, and trust you’ll find Villanova to be a school that draws on this rich intellectual tradition to prepare students who think clearly, act justly, and help build a society based on the principles of our school’s founders – members of the Order of Saint Augustine – by embracing and advancing the core values of truth, unity and love.
May God continue to bless our faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents and benefactors.
Gratefully,
James C. Linkjlink@villanovaprep.org805-646-1464, ext. 121
