• "Well written, well researched, and the thesis put forth is well argued.... Woods has opened up an area of historical analysis that should invite further study."
    -Journal of American History

  • "During these times that challenge our freedoms there is no one more qualified to make U.S. history relevant to the fight against big government than Thomas Woods."
    -Barry Goldwater Jr.
    Former Member of Congress

  • "I strongly recommend Woods's work."
    -The Honorable Ron Paul,
    U.S. House of Representatives

  • "Written with great clarity and fluency, making the complex philosophical and theological concepts approachable."
    -Journal of American Studies

  • "A must-read."
    -Barron's

  • "An excellent reading source for anyone interested in financial markets, and much more so for anyone interested in learning about capitalism without all the misinterpretations being thrown about in the financial media."
    -Asia Times

  • "Provocative, well-written, and deserves to be read."
    -Catholic Historical Review

  • "An engaging and important contribution to scholarship on the history of American Catholicism."
    -Journal of the Historical Society

  • "Woods and [co-author Kevin] Gutzman appeal to both left and right in this constitutionalist jeremiad…. The authors' exegeses of the Constitution and court decisions, heavy on original intent arguments, are lucid and telling."
    -Publishers Weekly

  • "A marvelous read. Every chapter taught me something new and unexpected."
    -Tom Bethell, senior editor,
    The American Spectator

  • "The hottest book today is Meltdown, by my friend Tom Woods."
    -Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst,
    FOX News Channel

  • "Should be required reading."
    -Economic Affairs (London)

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  • "Tom Woods is one of my dearest allies in the struggle against wrong-headed and dangerous economic policy."
    -Peter Schiff

Pope Departs Vatican

Here’s the video. I was curious to see this, but not so interested in ABC’s commentary, so I watched it silently. My wife tells me that my old college classmate and longtime friend Fr. Roger Landry will cover the conclave for EWTN.

Unlearn the Propaganda!

  • John

    The Pope is Antichrist… in their own words
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW3y-o3kfVY

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    You are not seriously spreading this low-IQ propaganda on my site, are you? Or are you joking? If so, I apologize.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Natendowii Natedog Milbank

    I Don’t believe in that prophecy of the Popes nonsense either, Tom.

  • John

    Maybe you should look up the references before judging the material, but of course you would not dare to question the authority of the state of “God”.

    Well go worship Lucifer and agree with the Vatican that Jesus is his son, catholicism=blind satanists leading the blind cattle to slaughter

    Yeah open Lucifer worship in front of everybody, of course the stupid uninitiated cattle don’t get a word out of it.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjgIiUkb45Y&t=1653s

    “Flammas eius lúcifer matutínus invéniat:
    ille, inquam, Lúcifer, qui nescit occásum.
    Christus Fílius tuus,
    qui, regréssus ab ínferis, humáno géneri serénus illúxit,
    et vivit et regnat in sæcula sæculórum.”

    Which translates:
    “Flaming Lucifer finds Mankind,
    I say: Oh Lucifer who will never be defeated,
    Christ is your son
    who came back from hell, shed his peaceful light and is alive and reigns in the world without end.”

    No wonder these spiritual supremacists scum banned the reading of the
    Bible, you have to be retarded or just trust them blindly to be a
    catholic.

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    So far you are living up to all my expectations of people who believe this nonsense: bad manners, bad grammar, bad punctuation. Any other preposterous claims you’d like to make? The Church did not ban the reading of the Bible, though you could make my day by trying to cite the Council of Toulouse.

  • John

    Too bad, I’m sorry you care about how something is being said and not
    WHAT is being said, typical willfully ignorant person, but I keep that
    in mind, maybe I should’ve not learned English as my second language, I’m
    sorry I am not a Harvard snob.

    What, how ignorant, have you even researched the claim?

    Hey this is just 2 seconds of searching, but maybe Reuters was wrong.
    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2492&dat=19980123&id=VrtAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_7IMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1562,1208613

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    Your link returns a 404 error.

    Have I researched the claim? I have written five books on the Catholic Church. Where are your books?

  • John

    It works for me, google this:
    vatican archives reveal bible was once banned book

    and watch the videos and research them as well.

    How childish,seriously that is your argument, you have written books…

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    That is not my argument, obviously. You were calling me ignorant. I responded by noting that I have done considerable research.

    This nonsense that would have Wycliff writing the first English translation of the Bible is not believed any longer. One can find many vernacular translations of the Catholic Bible well before the Reformation, even though such publications were prohibitively expensive in the Middle Ages.

    You have given me a link to a secondary source (a Reuters report). I’ll recommend you read Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church, by the formerly Anglican Rt. Rev. Henry G. Graham.

  • John

    I see you are unable to do unbiased research, I said I found that link in 2 seconds, do your own research I’m not going to spoon-feed someone who is willingly ignorant and thinks that the Vatican can openly worship Lucifer and everything is fine and dandy. You want a real book on Bible history read “An Understandable History of the Bible” by Samuel C. Gipp Th.D..

    Saying that we owe the catholic cult the Bible is complete lunacy, I wonder where the infallible completely preserved words of God are, which version, don’t tell me the originals.

  • Anonymous

    Tom, I want to see you break it down. You’re so amazingly good at explaining things, but whenever I see you “defend” Catholicism you’re always just superficially attacking individuals or naming religious books they should read. How about an original article or video that tells the atheists why they’re wrong and why you’re right?

  • Joseph

    May the peace of God be on His Holiness Benedict XVI and may he continue to be an instrument of Our Lord’s peace in his days of contemplation.

  • Anonymous

    The greatness of this truly humble servant (from the right part of Germany, Bavaria) will become clear in the years to follow.

    Kind regs from Amsterdam,
    Richard

  • Anonymous

    Tom “attacking”? Whom, Johnny boy, the raving anti-catholic bigot?

    Me thinks Tom has been more than courteous with this guy, who didn’t deserve an answer in the first place.

  • John

    Oh you would not want to be a bigoted, just tolerate this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLNdxBWHcyI

  • Joseph

    I imagine that in the spirit of Christian charity, Mr Woods prefers to reconcile attacks on the Faith as prompted by a lack of footing rather than willful malice. It seems to me like the process of convincing a foreign tourist that what is really meant by the English idiom “a man of few words” is not that some man has a limited vocabulary but rather “a man that speaks when needed.”

    http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+man+of+few+words

    Likewise, when you see someone singing off the wrong page of the hymnal, it is more constructive to have them to flip to the correct page rather than to sing over them.

  • Mechanized

    Tom, having been raised by two individuals who believe the Pope is the Anti-Christ (via Jack Chick, Charles Chiniquy, Alexander Hislop, Edmund Paris and so forth) I can attest to the virtual cult-like adherence believers in these types of conspiracy theories possess. Some of their primary books are the following:

    The Two Babylons
    [by: Rev. Alexander Hislop]

    50 Years in the Church of Rome
    [by: Charles Chiniquy

    The Secret History of the Jesuits
    [by: Edmund Paris]

    New Age Bible Version
    [by: Gail Riplinger]

    A Woman Rides the Beast
    [by: Dave Hunt]

    If you desire humor or perhaps are even willing to publish some material debunking some of the above misinformation the top 3 books on the list are available in PDF format for free on the internet.

    Why create the above post? Keep in mind that whenever an individual posts information related to the Pope or The Catholic Church that the aforementioned conspiracy theorists will come out of the woodwork promoting their anti-Catholic cult. Typically, the above referenced books are their primary, but unfortunately not their only, sources for their false assertions.

  • Mechanized

    John appears to be a Baptist Fundamentalist or perhaps something similar as opposed to an atheist.

  • Luke Sunderland

    “How about an original article or video that tells the atheists why they’re wrong and why you’re right?”

    Here you go….

    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL57857981F3CC5D78

  • Travis Province

    Axios! Axios! Axios! May The Lord bless him with many years! As an Orthodox Christian, I am thankful for this servant of God’s work – especially regarding his efforts to strengthen the ties between the East and West. I pray that his successor will continue these efforts so that the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” can be whole again in our lifetimes.

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    Because I have never seen a religious argument on the Internet that did any good. I have written five books on the Church; presumably someone else can do the heavy lifting for a while.

  • http://www.facebook.com/chuck.finley.5686 Chuck Finley

    Wow John, I see a lot of anger and pride in your
    posts. If you were truly “Christian”, you would not be behaving in such an aggressive
    and judgmental manner. You certainly are
    not acting like a light on a hill, or salt for the Earth. Picking a fight like
    this – on a devote Catholic’s website – is not an example of meekness,
    humility, or love.

  • Amfortas

    Dr. Woods, as a Catholic myself, I can appreciate the arguments you make in the “Builder of Civilization” video series defending the church from ludicrous claims like them believing the earth is flat. However, you seem to gloss over things like the Inquisition, Witch hunts, and opposition to scientific theories like the Sun being the center of the Solar System and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Surely you don’t deny these things and that the church does indeed have dishonor in it’s history?

  • http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

    I don’t gloss over them; I haven’t written about them. No, the way the Albigensians were dealt with seems pretty harsh to us today, but it is not clear what people were supposed to do when presented with a Manichaean suicide cult that viewed the created world as evil and pregnant women as among the worst evils of all. Compared with a single one of the enormities of the twentieth century, the Inquisition is barely a blip on the screen. Modern scholars know this. Fundamentalist propagandists do not; they continue to peddle death totals larger than the entire population of Europe at the time. But in my book on the Church and Western civilization I make reference to the current scholarly consensus.

    On science, it isn’t fair to say I don’t discuss these issues. I devote quite a few pages of my book to the Gailieo affair, but it of course is not correct to say that the heliocentric model per se raised the Church’s ire, given that the heliocentric theory was consistently taught in Jesuit universities and Copernicus dedicated his book to Pope Paul III. On Darwin, presumably one can dissent from orthodox Darwinism without being a crackpot, but in any case Pope Pius XII did not say Catholics were forbidden to entertain Darwin’s ideas.

  • Mechanized

    “Fundamentalist propagandists do not; they continue to peddle death
    totals larger than the entire population of Europe at the time.”

    Indeed. Sadly family members who believe that the Inquisition[s] managed to exterminate approximately 64 million human beings (perhaps unsurprisingly their source was a Jack Chick tract). How this can be reconciled with the actual population of the entire continent of Europe at the time is a mystery. It should also be noted that the Inquisition[s] were not enforced throughout the continent either, further shrinking the affected population.

    Tom, your book “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization” as well as the EWTN program you hosted was quite interesting regarding the Church and science. It was quite a contrast to what I was raised to believe.

    And Tom, as for the popes, are their any particular individuals that you would like to see as pope?

  • FatherAugustine Fetter

    Maybe it will not help, as Dr. Woods as said about religious arguments, but I will say something anyway. The last few lines of the Exultet, which is being referred to, are merely misunderstood for the following reasons: The term “Lucifer” as everyone knows means “morning star” or “light bringer”. Although in IS. 14 the passage is understood to refer to Satan, there are many other passages in the SCriptures where the word in the LAtin Bibles clearly means CHrist, or is eve uses in connection to God the FAther’s ETernal Begetting of the Son. I.e., 2 Pet. 1:19 see this foe more examples
    http://www.acts17-11.com/dialogs_morningstar.html

    If Christ can be called the “Morning Star” (which translates to”LUcifer” in Latin) without anyone think that He is the Devil, than it would stand to reason that calling Him so in the Exultetgoogle is fine. Secondly, I’m no LAtin genius but I think the translation in the video is very linked by John is wrong. It doesn’t say that the Father of Christ is lucifer, or the morning star, but that Christ Himself is.

  • Amfortas

    Wow, I had no idea Jesuit scholars taught heliocentric theory at the time. I also had no idea the inquisition resulted in much fewer deaths than I was led to believe. I just researched it after seeing you type that, and it really is true. Color me shocked. Thanks, Dr. Woods. I should have read your book before making those claims.

  • Mechanized

    It would be most informative to know what sources you consulted. It might prove a fascinating read.

  • Michael Mills

    Hey Tom. As a Christian of the Orthodox Denomination. I wonder what your views are on the Orthodox/Catholic Schism? I know thats a rather broad question so to narrow it down a bit. Specifically what your views are on its general cause and any chance of a future resolution?

  • Mark

    It’s Latin for light-bearer, dumbass.