Essay On The Catholic Church Before The Enlightenment

Landon Ladanyi

Ms. Ambros

AP Language

25, April, 2023

The Catholic Church, an Advocate for Science What do you think about the Catholic Church before the Enlightenment? Most likely, the answer from most people would be along the lines of an oppressive organization using religion to suppress the arts of science, but there is an alternative point of view that steers it towards the other view. Overwhelming amounts of information points to the Catholic Church actually supporting and preserving knowledge which will advance the institutions of science and our overall understanding of the world. Multiple examples throughout history show support from the church and preservation of the works of even ancient Greeks within libraries and monasteries.

For example, a group of monks led by one Irish Saint Columbanus would create a monastery where much advancement and knowledge was stored, such as “[his] composed. . . work on geometry” and the library that held “every branch of knowledge, divine and human” (Walsh 5). To put it simply, the church was holding plenty of knowledge within the confines of one monastery, which also shows that they advanced sciences with one monk improving upon the knowledge of geometry. Not only did the church support scientific research, it was the mentality of Catholics to seek out science as many “of the cardinals who condemned [Galileo] would have gladly agreed” and how “religious factors seasoned, rather than dictated, science’s flourishing in the 17th century” (Ball 24). Essentially, this is to prove how the religion’s impact on science was not against it, and religion in some ways helped science improve with the thought of discovering God’s creations. To wrap up, the church is shown to actually support the institutions of science and not suppress

For example, Jesuits throughout history have been trying to understand the Earth and beyond as Joyce, S.J. presents that “early Jesuits and for all those who followed in their footsteps, science gave insight into knowing how the universe worked, which in turn gave us greater understanding of God’s creation” (Martin 3). To explain, Joyce states it means that the Jesuit society seeked out the art of science in order to further their understanding of God’s creation and how it works. Not only did the Jesuits support science but even members of the clergy, such as the priest Lemaître who “quietly put forth a theory he called his hypothesis of the primeval atom.” This theory was meant to combat the problems with Einstein's theory of a “static universe” which “in many cases, could be ironed out if the universe was not fixed, but rather growing” (5), thus the creation of one of the biggest theories of the universe was made known as the Big Bang. Also, the papacy caught wind of it and in the “early 1950s, Pope Pius XII. . .declared that the big bang and the catholic concept of creation were compatible” (Edgar 8). Reinforcing previous statements, this shows not only did a priest advance science but the papacy actively stated its support of the theory, which only serves to support the argument. All in all, this