Lessons for the times ...
NEARLY every English speaking kid - whether Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish or Moslem - has been programmed by official text-books
to understand World history from the perspective of the Protestant/Atheist
belief system (there is a Catholic/Atheist mind-set also); not unnaturally.
But education MUST always be factual and objective. Sadly it is rarely balanced
or even honest!
No single work better encapsulates - almost in
its entirety - the Protestant misconception of that cataclysmic break from
the Church and from the political system illuminated by Her moral laws than
does H. G. Wells's Outline of History. But it does more; expressing
within its covers practically the entire range of present-day Protestant
prejudices against Catholicism, against the Middle Ages, against Philosophy,
against the Sciences of the race, our Catholic practices, education and culture,
it describes the Protestant mind set which underlies the secularism which
remains after the dissolution of the actual heresy as raised by Luther and
Calvin. (What remains of actual religion in modern Protestantism was Catholic
in the first place, G. K. Chesterton always insisted) The fascination for
disinterested, professional historians is that anything so inaccurate as
this world history should have survived so long, and, worse, survived
to be taught in our schools to this day, albeit indirectly.
Hilaire Belloc was the first and most deadly
critic of Wells's history. His "Companion to Mr. Wells's Outline of History"
published in 1926 by Sheed and Ward contended more than once that such a
badly flawed book must "have a short life". Belloc, correct in every other
respect, has been proved utterly wrong in this particular prediction.
But the fact that he was proved wrong indicates
that the English speaking world had moved into the ambience of 1984 style
NewSpeak earlier than even George Orwell could have imagined. Distortions
justified to defend sectarian theologies may only be called propaganda.
They ought never ever be presented to the young as Objective facts or as
Science. But, of course, neither should Darwinism - also refuted so long
ago (See Debunking Darwin).
Click on Contents titles: q Reformation
q Disruption q Summary
Click blue
line to Return