When Bad History Happens to Good Catholics

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. (2005) Regnery

This work could be subtitled "A Very Selective History". Of course all history writing is selective, some more so than others. The historian places emphasis on certain facts and downplays others. The good historian cannot overlook the obvious objections to his contention. Thomas Woods does this, repeatedly. When important events and people either are ignored or misrepresented, it is no longer history, it is propaganda.
First, Woods cannot properly define his time frame although he does strive valiantly to concentrate on the era of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics. This leads to his next difficulty: what is his definition of the word "catholic"? Is he talking about simply the Roman Catholic Church or does he mean catholic as in universal? Certainly until at least 1054 there was just "the Church", and in the West this continued until the sixteenth century.
Next, in his discussion of the concept of "natural rights", Woods would have the reader believe that this was handed down to us from the theologians of the 12th century. There is no mention of the Common Law or Magna Charta. (139)
Perhaps the worst offense is how Woods makes certain that the reader remembers that John Calvin and Martin Luther were evil Protestants. (119, 157). Yet he speaks favorably of Murray N. Rothbard with no religious label. Because it would be embarrassing to say that he was an Atheist? Adam Smith, a Scottish Calvinist, is bad, but Jean Buridan, one of the French Roman Catholic founders of Nominalism, is good.
Lastly, we have the(Roman) Catholic church calling for the separation of church and state. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a closet Roman Catholic even though he read that bad Protestant John Locke. Cardinals Wolsey and Richielieu must not have gotten the message.
This belongs to that category of bad history. When the author must rely on name-calling as a response to dissent, the reader knows what to expect.