Ask a Catholic

[Metis]

I'm glad you have read it.

What did you think the book got right? The universities? The hospitals? The judicial system? Anything?

One other question: Are you REALLY a mason...or was that just humor?

Me? Oh Good grief no I wouldn't be accepted as Freemason anyway since you have to be a monotheist, preferably Christian or Deist to be considered. Really, why would I want to prance around the town hall in a goofy looking apron?

As for the others...The Catholic Church did set up hospitals, it did set up schools of learning...But here's the problem.

Roman State Religions set up plenty of hospitals, shrines of Acelpius or Sullis can be found all across the former Roman Empire of which all functioned as hospitals.

Roman's set up schools of their own. They didn't use the word but they were for the higher learning of their citizens.

The Judicial system? The western judicial system is based upon the Codex Justinianus, which is an Eastern Roman work (and therefore originates from Greek Orthodoxy, more specifically the caeseropapist era not Catholicism).

The Catholic Church did build many things, but nothing individual states wouldn't have done by themselves had they had control of the wealth and power they fed to the Church.