Perhaps it would have been the 25th instead of the 20th. The Western European civilization has been a miraculous and unprecedented thing, and the Church was one

Perhaps it would have been the 25th instead of the 20th. The Western European civilization has been a miraculous and unprecedented thing, and the Church was one of the main ingredients. It's impossible to say how things would have turned out without it, but the average historical outcome for a people of collapsed civilization seems to have been rather grim.