--- product_id: 47025890 title: "Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History" price: "152.11 DT" currency: TND in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/47025890-bearing-false-witness-debunking-centuries-of-anti-catholic-history store_origin: TN region: Tunisia --- # Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History **Price:** 152.11 DT **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History - **How much does it cost?** 152.11 DT with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tn](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/47025890-bearing-false-witness-debunking-centuries-of-anti-catholic-history) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description 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 stunting the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment. 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 bestselling author of The Rise of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco 1997), argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the least favorable light are, in fact, fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so firmly 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 each myth became conventional wisdom and presents a startling picture of the real truth. For example, instead of the Spanish Inquisition being an anomaly of torture and murder of innocent people persecuted for “imaginary” crimes such as witchcraft and blasphemy, Stark argues that not only did the Spanish Inquisition spill very little blood, but it was a major force in support of moderation and justice. Stark dispels the myth of Pope Pius XII being apathetic or even helpful to the Nazi movement, such as to merit the title “Hitler’s Pope,” and instead shows that the campaign to link Pope Pius XII to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Many praised Pope Pius XIIs vigorous and devoted efforts to saving Jewish lives during the war. Instead of understanding the Dark Ages as a millennium of ignorance and backwardness inspired by the Catholic Church’s power, Stark argues that the whole notion of the “Dark Ages” was an act of pride perpetuated by anti-religious intellectuals who were determined to claim that theirs was the era of “Enlightenment.” In the end, readers of Bearing False Witness will have a more accurate history of the Catholic Church and will also understand why it became unfairly maligned for so long. Bearing False Witness is a compelling and sobering account of how egotism and ideology often work together to give us a false truth. Review: Important book - Note: the audiobook is currently free on Audible As a Protestant, I bought this book after thinking public secular education had been biased against Catholicism. A few of my Catholic friends recommended this book because I asked them for something that would give a fair side to Catholicism because of things I had been taught about Catholicism that I later learned were misrepresentations. Stark takes aim at some of the exact misrepresentations I had been taught and believed. This book is well researched, well cited, and easy to read. Stark is not one to mince his words, and he writes in a clear, direct style that borders on dry humor at times. I was shocked to learn some of the things I was taught in public school were actually anti-Catholic propaganda with no basis in truth (for instance, I was taught that Columbus sailed around the earth to prove it was round, while the Catholic Church and the rest of the world thought it was flat). This book must have been a painstaking effort to write, it cites hundreds of academic tests and books , but it pays off and supports its central argument with countless references and supporting evidence. I’ll certainly be picking up Stark’s other books after reading this. If you are a Protestant like me, you owe it to yourself to read this book in case you have gotten similar misrepresentations about Catholic history from biased sources with a hidden agenda. Atheists will also get a lot out of this book, especially after reading Hitchens. This book quickly corrected many false things I had previously believed, and I shudder to think that I held these views considering he also explains where they come from (often they are fabrications or embellishments with an anti-Catholic agenda). If you see the Catholic Church in a negative light, or think you may have been given a biased view of Catholic history, buy this book immediately. Review: Fantastic book: It lets the evidence speaks for itself - This book is fantastic. Other reviews have laid out some of the content of the book and it's structure, so I won't bore you with that here. I just want to say this book is fantastic. Not only it has amazing content, it is so well written it can easily be a bed time book. Don't get me wrong, but easily written, I don't mean it's written for a fifth grader (although I love fifth graders, I used to be one). Rather, I mean it is easy to follow, and he is a master at explain his thoughts and making complicated ideas into easy to understand simple notions. The best part of the book that stood out to me is this: you don't have to take professor Stark's word for any of his claims. He has evidences, TONS of it. I've heard this from someone important (I don't remember who), but he say, "always let the evidence speak for itself." And this saying works perfectly for this book. Please I urge you to read this book. I highly recommend it. And what's interesting professor Stark presents it as a defense of truth and accurate history, not so much an apologetics book for the catholic faith. In fact, he's a practicing Lutheran (AKA a protestant). Being a practicing Lutheran and writing a top notch, scholars book debunking historical myths about the catholic faith gives the book a special type of reliability. We are all bias, but some of us are more so than others. If Stark was a diehard Catholic crusader, then I think, prima facie, the book loses a *little* reliability (of course this could be ought weighted by other considerations). At any rate, please do read it. I promise you won't regret it. If you don't have time to read it, make friend or a family member read it. They'll love it. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #105,875 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #81 in Christian Popes #312 in Christian Church History (Books) #371 in History of Christianity (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 775 Reviews | ## Images ![Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71W32byt7ML.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Important book *by D***F on April 23, 2023* Note: the audiobook is currently free on Audible As a Protestant, I bought this book after thinking public secular education had been biased against Catholicism. A few of my Catholic friends recommended this book because I asked them for something that would give a fair side to Catholicism because of things I had been taught about Catholicism that I later learned were misrepresentations. Stark takes aim at some of the exact misrepresentations I had been taught and believed. This book is well researched, well cited, and easy to read. Stark is not one to mince his words, and he writes in a clear, direct style that borders on dry humor at times. I was shocked to learn some of the things I was taught in public school were actually anti-Catholic propaganda with no basis in truth (for instance, I was taught that Columbus sailed around the earth to prove it was round, while the Catholic Church and the rest of the world thought it was flat). This book must have been a painstaking effort to write, it cites hundreds of academic tests and books , but it pays off and supports its central argument with countless references and supporting evidence. I’ll certainly be picking up Stark’s other books after reading this. If you are a Protestant like me, you owe it to yourself to read this book in case you have gotten similar misrepresentations about Catholic history from biased sources with a hidden agenda. Atheists will also get a lot out of this book, especially after reading Hitchens. This book quickly corrected many false things I had previously believed, and I shudder to think that I held these views considering he also explains where they come from (often they are fabrications or embellishments with an anti-Catholic agenda). If you see the Catholic Church in a negative light, or think you may have been given a biased view of Catholic history, buy this book immediately. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Fantastic book: It lets the evidence speaks for itself *by A***R on December 29, 2016* This book is fantastic. Other reviews have laid out some of the content of the book and it's structure, so I won't bore you with that here. I just want to say this book is fantastic. Not only it has amazing content, it is so well written it can easily be a bed time book. Don't get me wrong, but easily written, I don't mean it's written for a fifth grader (although I love fifth graders, I used to be one). Rather, I mean it is easy to follow, and he is a master at explain his thoughts and making complicated ideas into easy to understand simple notions. The best part of the book that stood out to me is this: you don't have to take professor Stark's word for any of his claims. He has evidences, TONS of it. I've heard this from someone important (I don't remember who), but he say, "always let the evidence speak for itself." And this saying works perfectly for this book. Please I urge you to read this book. I highly recommend it. And what's interesting professor Stark presents it as a defense of truth and accurate history, not so much an apologetics book for the catholic faith. In fact, he's a practicing Lutheran (AKA a protestant). Being a practicing Lutheran and writing a top notch, scholars book debunking historical myths about the catholic faith gives the book a special type of reliability. We are all bias, but some of us are more so than others. If Stark was a diehard Catholic crusader, then I think, prima facie, the book loses a *little* reliability (of course this could be ought weighted by other considerations). At any rate, please do read it. I promise you won't regret it. If you don't have time to read it, make friend or a family member read it. They'll love it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Readable, very logical and a valuable *by D***S on May 25, 2016* After reading the solid logic and historical facts of this book, I don't understand how the prejudices against Catholics that are discussed could have survived this long. Just by examining numbers and dates, Stark completely decapitates some widely held assumptions about the place of the Catholic Church in European history. There is a gaping chasm between laymen's understanding of, for example, Galileo, and the actual facts. The prose is immensely readable and to-the-point. What was less positive was the obvious underlying assumption that Western society is more advanced, has succeeded more, than anyone else. The blind equating of science and technology with advancement and even virtue is something that belongs decidedly in the first half of last century. Also Indian and Eastern cultures are generally assumed by Stark to be inferior, which is regrettable. Moreover, Stark wants to give Christianity all the credit for advances in European culture, for example the irradication of slavery following the fall of the Roman Empire. But he is less interested in examining Catholic culpability in the European class system, despite often mentioning how monastic orders were almost always populated with children of nobility, and dispite how capitalism arose most clearly under the management of monastics and clergy. Protestants get some fair but stinging critism, while the question of how Catholicism's shortcomings gave birth to Protestants' shortcomings goes unexamined. A small but telling episode in the book celebrates how Jesuits "invented" an "advanced" Indian society in South America, complete with paved roads and philharmonic orchestras, but that this culture just disappeared once the Jesuit-built regime was overthrown. This short account is telling because Stark attributes none of the successes of that society to Indians themselves but only to the Western Jesuits. Nor does he question the assumption that Western culture is superior to Indian cultures. Are orchestras and cobblestones the best harbingers of social virtue - better even than the approach to the sanctity of land, family, the environment? Were the only admirable qualities of that society the imported accidents? Once the white European Jesuits were no longer able to manage the natives, says Stark, the culture vanished into thin air, which has to be nonesense because hundreds of thousands of people did not suddenly vanish. Stark is not always critical of White European sources, and assumes too much about how representative church fathers and theologians are of their culture. Augustine is taken as a representative voice of the church's thoughts while the impotence of the papacy is later used to excuse the church of involvement in slavery. What exactly is the relationship of church leaders and laymen, and how much do each group represent the actions and thoughts of "the Church"? This remains to be examined systematically. This book is an important contribution towards the task of soberly analyzing the influence of Christianity in Europe and the world, specifically Catholic Christianity. Orthodox Christians and the East are neglected entirely, but to be fair that was outside of the scope of the book. The next scholar to write on the subject should question the underlying assumptions, and be willing to take non-white peoples more seriously. But I feel I have learned a great deal from this book, and recommend reading it. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.tn/products/47025890-bearing-false-witness-debunking-centuries-of-anti-catholic-history](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/47025890-bearing-false-witness-debunking-centuries-of-anti-catholic-history) --- *Product available on Desertcart Tunisia* *Store origin: TN* *Last updated: 2026-09-17*