Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History

As
we all know, and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued
for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody
chapters in Western history, Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and
rightfully called "Hitler's Pope", the Dark Ages were a stunting of the
progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the
Enlightenment, and the religious Crusades were an early example of the
rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these
long-held beliefs were all wrong?

In this stunning,
powerful, and ultimately persuasive book, Rodney Stark, one of the most
highly regarded sociologists of religion and the best-selling author ofThe Rise of Christianity,
argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas
that paint the Catholic Church in the least positive light, are in fact
fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so strongly and for so
long? And if our beliefs are wrong, what is the truth? In each chapter
Stark takes on a well-established anti-Catholic myth, gives a
fascinating history of how it became the conventional wisdom, and
presents a startling picture of the real truth.