You may be forgetting that Christianity led to the "Dark Ages" which lasted for about 1,000 years. They wanted to consolidate power in the church, so they denied access to education so they would be the soel authorities. They also suppressed, or outright destroyed, virtually most of the knowledge (scientific and technological) gained from Greece and Rime. They also suppressed knowledge of democracy as a form of government originated by the Greeks. So we lost higher mathematics, the steam engine (although it had not ben applied to manufacturing in ancient times they did have it), accurate navigational tools that would have enabled global navigation, the beginnings of medicine and runnign water systems. None of which ws recovered until the Renaissance, and some things had to be reinvented or rediscovered.

I don't think the church did civilization any favors. They simply took advantage fo the falll of Rome to consolidate their own power using very draconian methods.

@snytiger6 you are plainly wrong.

1. low middle ages or dark ages is a 500 years period, it was triggered by the dissolution of the western roman empire, the church could be considered a survival entity of the empire.
2. roman ang greek cultures survived on the eastern empire. Even tought they don't develop that well.
3. the Muslims don't get into the crazy religion for sometime and they also keep greek and timsm culture.
4. st Augustin (catholic "phylosopher" ) is basucally greek+Bible.
5. there were lots of technological advances on middleages, mostly based on the waterwheel.
   Better steel, mils, agriculture etc. A lot of it financed by church money.
6. the roman technology was never lidt, just the money to build a lit of stuff disappeared. And as soon as the borders stabilised minimally, the commerce restarted and money appeared.
   7)the church had a say on this border stabilization, having the same religion as the neighbours stop makes you need more excuses to go to war.
   The church is not good at all, but without it would take a lot of more time to recover, as borders would not stabilize, cultures would not have anything in common etc.
   The church is not the cause, but an element of middleages, the cause is the political chaos with the end of All powerful Ronan empire.
   And the democracy had already went to hell when the pagans turned Rome into empire.
   The Germans, slavs and celts that built on the ruibs weren't democratic also. And well even the HRE was somehow democratic (the electors).

Hind sight is 20/20, so if the Christian church did not supress most of the knowledge gained from teh Greeks and Romans and plummet us into the Dark Ages for about 1,000 years it is hard to say whether or nto we'd actually be better off or if something even worse might have happened. However, Christian history seems to almost always go against progress and education for the masses, while limiting it to a select few.