From Arnold Lunn’s autobiography, NOW I SEE (1945):

Many forces have combined to produce the modern world.  Palestine, Rome, Greece, and Communist Russia have all helped to form that strange complex which, in our more sanguine moods, we describe as civilisation.  Of all the influences which have moulded European thought, the greatest is the Catholic Church.  The Church saved from destruction the learning of the classical world.  It was the Church which tamed and civilised the barbarians who swept down from the north.  It was the Church which founded our seats of learning.  It is to the Church we owe the inspiration which expressed itself in the greatest art and the noblest architecture which the world has ever seen.  There is no aspect of our modern life, law, education, art or architecture which has not passed at some period through the mould of the Catholic Church. (pg. 125)