![]() ![]() Because of our limitations as individuals and to help us multiply the effectiveness of our good works, the Holy Spirit inspires us to institutionalize the works of mercy. God applies His grace to our responsive souls and, through us, to our institutions. Praying for the living and the dead should be as routine as the sunrise and sunset. ![]() Bearing with the faults of others, forgiving offenses, and comforting the afflicted requires generosity and call for uncommon graces. Instructing the ignorant, admonishing sinners, and counseling the doubtful are the obligations of parents, priests, and all leaders, great or small. So are visiting the sick and the imprisoned and burying the dead. Providing food, clothing, and shelter for the needy-beginning with our families-is a social obligation. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy summarize the duties of faith. ![]() The poet Auden summed up the result of all these numbers for the West: We live in societies "to which the study of that which can be weighed and measured is a consuming love." Not to me: Tomorrow my alarm clock will screech and command me to divide my day into bits and pieces, but when I rise, especially with one less hour of sleep, I probably won't feel like following my Western heritage and conquering the world.Shop: Roman Catholic "RC" Brand Original Black Logo Collection MugĪ living faith is inseparable from mercy: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:14-26) Bookkeeping was an essential tool, or quantification, that allowed Western Europe to rule the world. Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't sound like a world-changing innovation, yet it allowed a merchant to "picture" the reality of the business. These merchants and bureaucrats used double-entry bookkeeping to control commerce, industry and government. These number-laden maps guided sailors across the seas to conquer new worlds.īookkeepers and bean counters, armed with numbers, followed the sailors. The maps overflowed with compass bearings, depth measurements, tide tables and even the times pirates might be expected. And from these geometrically accurate paintings evolved maps filled with gridlines, lines that divided space into numbers. Artists could now create realistic pictures. It was the use of numbers that gave artists the power to put perspective into their paintings. Paintings from the ninth century look odd to our eye they seem flat and lifeless. The political philosopher Machiavelli noted that just as a dancing man "keeps time with the music, cannot make a false step so an army that properly observes the beat of the drums cannot easily be disordered." The free-form Gregorian chants of the ninth century gave way to music with a rich meter controlled by a clock. And it was a short step from regimented music to regiments and powerful armies. Numbers affected music, armies, art and navigation. Such quantification spread to all aspects of life. This was a sharp contrast with days marked only by dawn and sunset. The chime of the town clock chopped the day into numbered segments, calling out the time to start or stop trading, or go to church. And this brings us to clocks.Ĭlocks were the first way Europeans quantified the world. The West brought together mathematics and measurement to record reality, and thus the power to control it. Or better put: quantifying the world by numbers. The obvious answer is "science and technology," but there is a more specific answer - one that warms my engineer's heart - and that is numbers. How did these backward ninth-century Europeans accomplish all this? Portugal had expanded west to Brazil and east to the Indian ocean, Spain claimed the Americas, and the Netherlands had developed an Asian empire. And by the 19th century Western Europe's domination reached its apex in Queen Victoria's empire, over which truly the sun never set. Yet by the 15th century Western Europeans ruled the world. The Muslims, for example, already excelled in mathematics and mechanical innovation, and China had already pioneered steel making and gunpowder. The power to measure time helped turn the backward ninth-century tribes of Europe into the powerhouses of the world 600 years later. Europe trailed, in the ninth century, far behind other regions. Western Europe's domination began with clocks. This Sunday as you set your clock ahead for daylight-saving time note that you're holding the tool Western Europeans used to conquer the world. ![]()
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