The American Spectator

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Re: Brooks, Catholics, and Capitalism

By J. Peter Freire on 12.15.05 @ 11:51AM

I'm at a loss -- if the Catholic Church was behind the Industrial Revolution, did England lead the way because of what were essentially copyright violations? I'm willing to accept that Catholicism played a large part in preparing people intellectually for great achievements -- repudiating the charge that it was a burden is important -- but the spread of literacy and the cultural implications of memorizing psalms as Weber describes is valid enough to consider. Brooks starts to head down the road of the argument that "the Catholics really did it, not the Protestants."

topics:
Catholicism