Tag: Christopher Dawson
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Christian Hellenism — The Foundation of Western Culture
From the chapter on “Liturgy and Theology and Byzantine Culture” in The Formation of Christendom by Christopher Dawson (Sheed & Ward, 1967): The essential achievement of the patristic age was the synthesis of Eastern religion and Western culture, or, to be more precise, the uniting of the spiritual traditions of Hellenism and the political and…
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Thoughts from a great historian
A quote from Catholic historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) in “Religion and the Modern State” (1936): Religion gradually retreated into man’s inner life, and left social and economic life to the State and to a civilization which grew steadily more secularized. A man’s debt to religion was paid by an hour or two in church on…