In modern times, since the fall of the Western Empire, European history
has centred, whether for love or for hatred, round the Church; and it is
thus that Catholic education comes to its own in this study, and the
Catholic mind is more at home among the phenomena and problems of
history than other minds for whom the ages of faith are only vaults of
superstition, or periods of mental servitude, or at best, ages of high
romance. Without the Church what are the ideals of the Crusades, of the
Holy Roman Empire, of the religious spirit of chivalry, or the struggle
concerning Investitures, the temporal power of the Popes and their
temporal sovereignty, the misery of the "Babylonian Captivity," the
development of the religious orders--in contemporary history--the Italian
question during the last fifty years, or the present position of the
Church in France? These are incomprehensible phenomena without the
Church to give the key to the controversies and meaning to the ideals.
Without knowing the Catholic Church from within, it is impossible to
conceive of all these things as realities affecting conscience and the
purpose and direction of life; their significance is lost if they have
to be explained as the mere human struggle for supremacy of persons or
classes, mere ecclesiastical disputes, or dreams of imperialism in
Church matters.
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