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Yours Is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes Our World, by Mike Aquilina
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Yours Is the Church focuses on the key role the Catholic Church has played in culture, history, and science, detailing the many reasons we can be proud to be Catholic. While not skirting the issues and failures that have plagued the Church, the author’s goal is to inspire everyday Catholics to recognize the Church’s proactive role in courageously preserving spiritual freedom and nourishing culture from its inception through the present day. Yours Is the Church is a breath of fresh air, sure to renew the confidence of Catholics everywhere.
- Sales Rank: #1042874 in Books
- Published on: 2012-09-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .38" w x 5.50" l, .45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 134 pages
About the Author
MIKE AQUILINA is author or editor of more than thirty books on Catholic history, doctrine, and devotion. He has cohosted eight series for EWTN and is a frequent guest on Catholic radio. His publishing career spans almost three decades, and hundreds of his articles have appeared in periodicals in the United States and abroad. He is past editor of New Covenant magazine and The Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper. He blogs on early Christianity at FathersOfTheChurch.com
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
What has the Catholic Church done for humanity? Plenty!
By Julie D.
BOOK INTRODUCTION
"What has the Catholic Church done for humanity?
If you listen to popular culture today, you might get the impression that the Church is the universal enemy. The Church stands inthe way of progress. It exploits the poor. It oppresses women and children. It condemns everything that's good in our culture. And above all, it stands opposed to science and reason.
You've heard it all so often that, even if you're Catholic, you might half-believe it. But it's all wrong, and this book is going to show you why.
There are lots of books about great Catholics who have also been scientists, musicians, artists, or leaders--people who have done some good inthe world, even though they're Catholic. This book isn't like that. This book makes a much bigger and more startling claim: Everything about our modern world we think is good is there because of the Church.
The only reason we care about the poor is because Christianity has won. The only reason the rights of women and children are important is because the Church has made them important. The only reason we have science is because the Church taught us how to think.
This book is full of unbelievable statements like that. My hope is that, by the end of the book, you'll believe them all.
Yours is the Church that built up the best in modern culture. And yours is the church that has constantly defended the best against the horrors that rise against it. It's an exciting story, roaming up and down through two thousand years of history."
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This introduction to the book gives a better overview than I could.
Aquilina covers various ways our civilization has benefited overall, and continues to do, from Catholicism's 2,000 years of cultural influence. Topics include: respect for women, the dignity of children, art, literature, music, charity, and more. He makes the points clearly by showing what pagan culture was like before Christianity, the influence of Christians on that culture overall, and then shows how our Christianity-infused culture is still shaped by that influence.
One of the things I liked best about this book is that Aquilina comes from such a positive point of view. As our priest often says, teaching from a positive point of view gets much further than stressing the negative continually. I have read many a book that sets out to refute the myths of what "everyone knows" about the Catholic Church. They may be effective for a few but they are often negative in tone which makes them difficult to read or care about if you are not fascinated by that particular topic. Aquilina's positive stance is evenhanded and makes one interested to see just how he's going to pull off the next "fantastic" claim.
Another thing that I really liked is that Aquilina doesn't sugar coat it when there is blame to be taken by the Church. I have never really been able to swallow defenses I've read of the later Crusades. Aquilina makes sure everything is put in perspective, such as making sure the context of an "inquisition" and the court systems of the times are covered, and then point out where blame is to be had. He does not leave matters there, often putting our own times in proper context in ways that open our eyes further. One of the most surprising instances for me was this bit of insight about the sex abuse scandals.
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EXCERPT
"So our natural horror at child abuse--which by the way, is a good sign that our culture, for all its faults, may still be reasonably healthy--didn't come from the Greeks or the Romans. It came from the Christians. It was the Church that taught us to acknowledge the sacred rights of children as human beings.
The world judges Catholics by Christian standards now; the Christian victory has been so complete that it's practically invisible. When the babbling bloggers blame us for being Christians, they're really blaming us for not being Christian enough. Christian principles seem like part of the order of nature, laws as immutable as gravity and magnetism. But that's only because the Church succeeded, against all odds, in replacing what everyone thought was an immutable law of nature with a strange Christian idea--such as the notion that children are people too."
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Although author Mike Aquilina is Catholic, his claims have been echoed to me recently from an unexpected source. Helping out with RCIA (classes for those interested in converting to Catholicism), subjects arose which prompted me to speak apologetically of how the Church has handled things such as the sex scandal.
Each time, one potential convert has spoken up saying, "Historically speaking ..." and setting the record in a larger historical context which makes it clear that shortfalls very often are not so much due to the Catholic Church as they are due to lapses on individuals' parts or even those of particular institutions within the Church (yes, Torquemada, I'm lookin' at you).
This particular "defender of the faith" comes from no particular religious background. His conversion began after visiting many of the cathedrals throughout Europe which then led him to begin reading history and noting the Church's place in it. I have to admit it has been refreshing to hear someone with no particular agenda comment on various contentious matters from a purely historical or statistical standpoint.
Inadvertently, this person's casual remarks back up what Mike Aquilina states in this book. There is a lot of credit to be given to the Catholic Church that the world has become blind to ... and we can be proud of being part of this rich faith.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Continuing to grow and learn
By Carol Blank
Mike Aquilina introduces his latest book with some negative impressions of the Church expressed in today's culture, goes on to remind us of the positive impact Catholics have had on the growth of civilization, and then reveals that this book is about something even bigger. "Everything about our modern world we think is good is there because of the Church," he writes.
The opening chapter is a review of civilization dating to the days of the declining Roman Empire, Constantine's, establishing Christianity as the dominant religion, and the growth of literature and literacy through the rein of Charlemagne. The remaining chapters focus on the Church's accomplishments in science, the arts, human dignity, and peace.
In his final chapter, Aquilina addresses the future of the Church. He acknowledges decline in attendance and other problems the Church faces today in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, then hails rapid expansion in Africa and Asia. He acknowledges the damage done by clerical sexual abuse, then explains that priests are no more likely to be abusive than the general population, and patterns of abuse are difficult to find if they exist at all. In this area, Aquilina decries the instances where authorities covered up suspected and known abuse. In general, he states, the Church has survived severe scandals throughout her history including medieval popes who were political pawns and Renaissance popes who came from murderous families.
He closes with the assertion that the Catholic Church is present and growing throughout the world and will continue to grow and learn, "always true to itself, and always faithful to the teachings of the apostles."
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
What the Church has done for humanity
By Richard J. Grebenc
The first sentence of this book asks the question: "What has the Church done for humanity?" In fine fashion, Mike Aquilina answers that question in the first ten chapters by focusing on the Church's influence on civilization, science, charity, music, art, literature, women, children, human dignity, and world peace. The final chapter ends the book on an encouraging note despite pessimism in certain circles about reason (science tells us what is) vs. faith (religion tells us what ought to be), the damage to the Church because of the sexual abuse scandal (tragic as it is, the Church has gone through worse), and a contracting Church (it's actually expanding, especially in Asia and Africa).
By providing a broad sweep of the Christian era in these various areas, the reader comes away with a greater appreciation for a Church that is faithful to its founder, constantly going against the culture by insisting on and exemplifying the dignity of all persons while raising up culture -- and sometimes changing it forever -- in the arts and sciences. The author provides an excellent overview of all topics (his treatment of the arts, women, and children are particularly fine) but he often intersperses the tales of individuals who had a major impact (e.g., Copernicus) or whose stories are fascinating (e.g., jazz musician and composer Mary Lou Williams) to make an argument more personal and impactful.
A book of this brevity (130 pages) leaves the reader wanting more. Unfortunately a "For Further Reading" is not supplied. But there are other places to go. There are many fine books on Church history (Schreck's "The Compact History of the Catholic Church" is a good start, but there are numerous others) and the influence of the Church on society (Woods's "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" is indispensable). Also, Aquilina's earlier book, "The Resilient Church," is a wonderful complement to this one. While "Yours is the Church" acknowledges briefly from time to time where the Church fell short in certain areas, it is unabashedly positive throughout. "The Resilient Church" takes a harder look at certain critical challenges the Church has dealt with throughout its history, how some of its members failed to live up to Christ's calling, and how the Church always comes out stronger for the trials.
"Yours" is a book that should get into the hands of any Catholic who questions the Church's impact on the world in the past or present or any person who wishes to better defend the Church against attacks on it. And for those not in the Church, it will provide exposure and insight into the Church's great influence for the good throughout history. An uplifting read for you and a great gift for a skeptical friend.
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