Our Family History
Given the importance of learning Church history, and the method by which it should be learned, we can ask another question: “How should we view Church history?” This book seeks to tell the story of the Catholic Church through the actions of the men and women who came before us in faith. Christ revealed God to be a loving Father, and we are adopted sons and daughters in Christ and heirs to the kingdom of heaven. We all live in the family of God, the Church. When we study the actions and events of our brothers and sisters in the Faith, we are studying our spiritual genealogy. Many people spend hours and resources tracing their earthly lineage, but, more importantly, because we hope to live with them in eternity, we should study the history of our spiritual family. Viewing Church history in this manner helps us understand that history is the subject by which we grow in our Catholic identity.
Part of our Catholic identity involves using the proper terms when learning Church history. As an example, the term “Christianity” is an unhistorical, post-Reformation term that “connotes an opinion or a theory; a point of view; an idea.”7 The Catholic faith is none of those things, as Catholics are not attached to an idea or a philosophy but to a Person (Christ) and to a thing (the Church). Additionally, “Christianity” implies a multiplicity of ways of living the Faith — that is, “Catholic Christianity,” “Protestant Christianity” — but there is only one Church that contains the fullness of Christ’s revelation, authority, and grace. Therefore, the term “Christianity” is not used in this book; rather, “the Faith” is utilized in accordance with the historical understanding of the Church.
The Importance of Learning Church History
Now that we understand the definitions of the Church and history, we must ask and answer another question: Why study Church history?
Learning Church history is vital for the modern-day Catholic for the four following reasons:
1. To make sense of our world
2. To know Christ better
3. To defend the Faith and the Church
4. To know who we are
The knowledge of our Catholic story gives meaning to the present age, which allows us to view modern-day problems with a deeper and more accurate perspective. Additionally, knowing the past can help shape our future decisions so that we can benefit the Church and the world. This worldview is not common thinking in our current culture, but is essential for the modern-day Catholic. Today’s society condenses complex issues and policy decisions into thirty-second sound bites. But focusing on the present is ultimately detrimental, since it makes humanity “lose their sense of the past, of history; but by doing so it also deprives them of the ability to understand themselves, to perceive problems and to build the future.”8
Since “Christ is the foundation and center of human history, [and] he is its meaning and ultimate goal,” studying Church history leads to greater knowledge of Jesus, which is the consummate goal of any Christian study.9 It can be difficult to see Christ in every event and human activity in the Church’s history, especially when those actions are not in conformity with Jesus’ example and teachings, but he is always present in his Mystical Body. Learning Church history allows us to grow deeper in love with the Lord and his Church.
Most Catholics in the United States learned non-Catholic history in school (unless they went to a Catholic school that taught them authentic Catholic history) because history as a whole is taught in the American educational system from an English Protestant perspective. As an example, I remember learning in secondary school about the cruelty and barbarism of the reign of “Bloody Mary” Tudor and the cultured, civilized court of her half-sister Elizabeth I. The standard Protestant (false) historical narrative paints “Good Queen Bess” as one of England’s greatest monarchs: a strong, intelligent woman with excellent judgment who led England into an era of prosperity and who was beloved by her people because she exhibited their strong Protestant convictions. This narrative is a “monstrous scaffolding of poisonous nonsense [that] has … been foisted on posterity.”10 In reality, the “Virgin Queen” was a figurehead, used and controlled by powerful men behind the scenes. Under her reign, the first state-sponsored persecution of the Catholic Church in Europe since the Roman Empire was undertaken. Elizabeth and her thugs killed, tortured, and imprisoned thousands of English subjects simply because they were Catholic (although Elizabeth’s Catholic half-sister Mary was inappropriately given the nickname “bloody”). Unfortunately, that historical truth is rarely presented in today’s history class. It is vital for us as Catholics to be able to defend the Church when she is maligned or misrepresented, and when myths are presented as historical fact. Catholics have an obligation to embrace the truths, both good and bad, about our past, and retake the historical narrative from the dominant Protestant (and increasingly secular) view.
The Church is called to continue Christ’s salvific mission, and each Catholic is given a role to play in that important drama. Before we can play our part, though, we need to know who we are — we must have a sense of Catholic identity, which we can find in Church history. The modern Western world exhibits cultural and historical amnesia on a national level. Nations that separate themselves from their Christian origins are apt to embrace immoral and totalitarian political systems, which erode individual rights and place the individual at the service of the state. In order to regain its identity, the Western world must relearn its Catholic history and hold in high esteem the supernatural and transcendent character of history — the recognition that God acts throughout human history. We must embrace what Hilaire Belloc termed “the Catholic Conscience of History,” wherein the Catholic understands the history of Western civilization from within precisely because it is the story of the Catholic Church and her influence on that civilization. Belloc believed that a rightly formed Catholic should have “an intimate knowledge [of history] through identity.”11 Learning Church history from an authentic Catholic perspective should produce a deeper personal identity with the Church and lead to a “new, forceful consciousness of being Catholic.”12
The Best Method of Learning Church History
In any form of catechesis, the method of teaching should be established in the example of the Master Catechist, Christ. The Gospels provide numerous examples of Jesus’ teaching methods, which usually varied depending on his audience. To his apostles Jesus was very direct, so that they would have complete understanding of what he was trying to convey (though they still did not seem to grasp it at times). To the larger crowds of people who gathered to see and hear him, he spoke in a simpler manner — he told stories. People remember stories because we are relational beings, who build relationships with others through shared experiences that are recounted as stories. For example, a photo of siblings at a hockey game, viewed years later, will produce stories from that shared experience (“Remember when Dad took us to that game?”). History is best taught and learned as story. Indeed, for most of human existence, history was conveyed through oral tradition (stories) and, when written down, continued to be told in a narrative format.
Until the late eighteenth century, history was seen as a form of literature and taught under that genre. In the nineteenth century, German nationalist and Lutheran author Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) changed history to a form of science, where textual criticism and primary source material dominated the field.13 Ranke taught at the University of Berlin, which had been opened in 1810, a few years after the Prussian Army was defeated by Napoleon. The purpose of the Berlin institution was to train and educate citizens and civil servants to staff the Prussian state bureaucracy. This university instituted a change in the role of higher education. Previously, universities “served the common good by passing on a shared intellectual heritage,”14 a cultural identity. The new university was less concerned with handing on the cultural identity of a civilization, instead focusing on the “development of new knowledge through original scientific research.”15 This scientific focus moved the study and teaching