Ask a Catholic

[Metis]

Me? Oh Good grief no I wouldn't be elidgeable to be a Freemason anyway, you have to be a monotheist, preferably Christian or Deist to be considered.

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.

A nice conclusion..."Oh, someone would have done it...eventually."

The fact is, the Catholic Church DID build all those things.

Only after it demolished the "pagan" ones the natives had set up. It wasn't like Mexico Randy, the Catholic Church didn't just hop off the boat and walk into the stone age; the work of creating a shared culture had already been done by the Romans. Many of the natives already had public baths, libraries, amphitheaters...Until the dark ages where they were forcibly taken away by both the barbarian invasions and the sensibilities of the Catholic Church.