How the Tithe Saved Western Civilization

Dear Friends,

Over 500 years ago an Italian Friar named Luca Pacioli wrote a book on accounting titled, “Everything about Arithmetic, Geometry, and Proportions”. In it he recorded and further developed the dual accounting system used in Venice during the Italian Renaissance. To this day Luca Pacioli’s work is what accountants everywhere use to balance the world’s books. We can never underestimate the impact the Catholic Church continues to have on Western culture because of how they spent their money during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. The reason you can use QuickBooks and it works is because some local Italian parishioners gave their tithe dutifully a few hundred years ago.

Whether or not the money the Catholic Church collected throughout much of Western history has been given freely or through compulsion can be argued ad infinitum. What did Europe experience as a result of the massive amounts of tithe money the Catholic Church accumulated since the establishment of Parishes around the 9th century? Advances in the arts and sciences that changed the world. As Thomas E. Woods puts it in his book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization , "One can scarcely find a significant endeavor in the advancement of civilization during the Middle Ages in which monks did not play a major role". Does the tithe still have this kind of impact on civilization?

The commonly accepted idea that there is some sort of division between secular and sacred pursuits has helped drive the tithe dollar away from the arts and sciences in the last two hundred years. Accepting this dualistic concept results in one of two approaches on the part of most churches, they either try to insulate themselves from secular culture or just go head to head by offering an alternative sub-culture. The Church does not have to participate in culture, or even combat culture, because when people of faith decide to give their hard earned money to artists and scientists once again the Church will be the one creating culture.

P.S.

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