Posted on 05/05/2005 6:44:59 AM PDT by A.A. Cunningham
The Crusades: The truth makes a difference
Christians obligated to keep alive the real facts of real history
Nearly 250 people showed up at the John Paul II Center last week — double the number we expected — for a history lesson. They filled the seats, lined the walls and then spilled out of Rooms 123-125 and jammed the corridor outside.
Why did they show up? They came to hear a talk about the Crusades. But why did they really show up? I think they wanted to recover something they sensed had been stolen from them: their memory.
Anyone who reads George Orwell’s dark novel of the future, “1984,” will remember the following lines: “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”
Memory is a powerful thing. It helps form who we are, how we think and what we do. By influencing our choices here and now, memory encourages a certain shape to the future — and discourages others. That’s why every new ideology and generation of social engineers seeks to rewrite the past. Whoever controls the memory of a culture also has power over its future.
That’s why today’s European Constitution makes no mention of the continent’s profoundly Christian past. By writing Christian faith out of Europe’s history, secularists hope to wipe it out of Europe’s future. The same applies in our own country. No one can read the founding documents of the United States without seeing the deeply religious — and especially Christian — spirit that informs them. People who deny that do so for a very simple reason. By scrubbing God out of America’s history, institutions and public discourse, they hope to scrub Him out of America’s future.
We have a duty to prevent that. We have the obligation to keep alive the real facts of real history. When Pope John Paul II called on us during the Great Jubilee to “purify” our memories, he asked us not to forget the hard events of the past, but rather to remember them more humbly and clearly.
Lasting reconciliation between aggrieved parties always begins with an honest, mutual examination of past sins. This requires an accurate historical record. As Christians, we need to repent of our own many sins and acknowledge the sins — sometimes, terrible sins — committed by Christians in the past. We also need to invite, by our example and by our commitment to telling the truth, the repentance of others who have sinned against Christians — sometimes, terribly — over the centuries.
Unfortunately, over the past few decades, the confession of sins has often seemed like a Christian monologue. That isn’t just. It isn’t honest. And it doesn’t serve charity, because charity is always wedded to truth.
Nearly 250 people showed up at the John Paul II Center last week to hear a lecture on the Crusades because, for most of their adult lives, they’ve heard critics distort and misrepresent Christian history in general and the Crusades in particular. They sense they’re too often being short-changed by the movies they see, the “scholarship” they read and the commentators they hear, but they don’t know why. They sense that the Crusades — despite their many failures and the grave sins committed on both sides — were nonetheless, in the context of their times, also acts of piety, deep faith, nobility, heroism and self-sacrifice with the purpose of liberating the Holy Land and ending the oppression of brothers and sisters in Christ.
Ridley Scott’s new major film on the Crusades, “Kingdom of Heaven,” opens this Friday, May 6. Whether it’s accurate or inaccurate as history makes a difference. At a minimum, the controversy surrounding it should remind us of the urgent need facing Christians to recover, understand and protect our memory as a believing people who have a decisive role in history. The past shapes the future. We can at least do our best to ensure that the past tells the truth.
A follow-up seminar on the Crusades — “Reel History and Real History: ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and the Crusades, Part 2” — will be offered on Thursday, May 12, Rooms 123-125, at the John Paul II Center, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. by Jonathan Reyes, president of the Augustine Institute, and Francis X. Maier, chancellor of the Denver Archdiocese.
I was at the lecture mentioned in this article. Frankly, the speaker was a bit too enthusiastic about the righteousness of the crusades even for one such as myself. A bit of overcorrection, I think.
I'll take overcorrection over political correctness any day.
As I have mentioned in other posts on other threads, from my ancestor's POV the crusades were literally a Godsend. Nothing, nothing gets me more ticked off than to see this rewriting of history to make the Muslim invaders look like the heroes.
You are so right! The Crusade were an overly zealous result of the Muslim hoards invading north Africa and forcing all in their path to convert or be put death by the sword. Then they moved north into SE Europe and actually reached the outskirts of Vienna before they were defeated by the Polish army led by Jan Sobieski! So much for the enlightened bigots who always belittled those "stupid Poles".
Some people never learn their history, and as the old adage says, "They will live to repeat it." Unfortunately, the rest of us will suffer alongside the idiots.
Someday someone will write a book entitled: "How the Poles Saved Civilization...Numerous Times!"
To my mind, every school child should know the name Jan Sobieski. And every school child should know the name Jozef Pilsudski. And Lech Walesa. And Karl Wojtyla. Shall I continue?
God bless Poland, the Christ of Nations.
The Real History of the Crusades - Thomas F. Madden
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1027242/posts
" As I have mentioned in other posts on other threads, from my ancestor's POV the crusades were literally a Godsend."
From my Greek ancestors pov the Crusades were a distinctly mixed blessing. The "Frankokratia" in Southern Greece was certainly better than the "Turkokratia" which a century+ followed it, but not a great deal better. Guillaume De Villhardouin and his people were not the tenderest of overlords, especially to my family (they occupied a castle right behind my aunt's house down in the village in Greece). They made matters very hard for the Greek Orthodox. Eventually there was an uprisng in the late 1200s and the Byzantine Emperor Michael, having retaken Constantinople from the Latin invaders, recovered Morea from the Franks. Thereafter, interestingly enough, many of the wonderful princesses who were the wives of the Despots and other Imperial officials of Morea were Normans. They brought a connection to Western Europe to the Peloponnesus, the effects of which are still to be seen in places like Mistras and in the many castles which dot southern Greece.
As for the rest of the Crusaders, well we all know the story of the sack of Constantinople and the desecration of Orthodox Churches across the Holy Land and the Empire in those times. There is the famous saying from the 1450s that the Orthodox prefered the sultan's turban to the Pope's mitre. The Byzantines came to that conclusion because of the way they were treated under the Crusader empire. Its a tough history, but then again, those were tough times.
I know what you mean. But look at what followed in 1453? This Christian city was destroyed and desecrated by the Muslims. It just makes me sick to think of what they did to Hagia Sophia. It makes me sick to think that the mass will never be said there again.
This is a little off-topic, but yesterday I finished reading George Weigel's latest book "The Cube and the Cathedral". Wonderful book! I highly recommend it. This passage in particular I found haunting and harrowing:
"The crisis of civilizational morale that Europe is experiencing today [could] reach its bitter end in a Europe in which the muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter's in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine -- a great Christian church become an Islamic museum."
Over my dead body. Period.
"The crisis of civilizational morale that Europe is experiencing today [could] reach its bitter end in a Europe in which the muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter's in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine -- a great Christian church become an Islamic museum."
Chilling thought, but I doubt the Western Europeans think much about it. You know, they've destroyed their own ability to resist as thoroughly as they destroyed the power of the Empire to resist in the East. One wonders if they will have even the ability to maintain The Faith under a "Turkokratia" the way our old people did. Will they suffer martyrdom, will they rebel? I doubt it.
FLASH!!! History Channel doing a History vs Hollywood show on this very movie RIGHT NOW!!!
That's what's so disturbing. They don't even care to fight. But I say the same as my tattooed friend, "Over my dead body!" You better believe I'd turn Joan of Arc on any Muslim who even tried to sound the muezzin from St. Peter's!
Check out the book "Cube and the Cathedral", K. I would love to get your opinion of it.
I believe there was a book popular in the early 1800's about Jan Sobieski. That's how our great-great uncle Thaddeus ended up with the middle name 'Sobieski'.
This hero went to the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, prayed there and then helped defeat the Muslims. An example to us all.
Triumph : The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church by H. W. Crocker III is another marvelous book. It condenses history into under 500 pages but is a joy to read. It puts many a myth to sleep. One myth concerns the Crusades which is why I won't be seeing Ridley Scott's film although I find him to be a marvelous filmmaker beginning with his amazing "Alien" and "Blade Runner" just to name two movies.
I'm sure you have heard the story that when the City was taken by the Turks, they stormed into Hagia Sophia, where the liturgy was in progress. The Turks slaughtered the faithful who had gathered there in supplication. As the Turks approached the sanctuary, the priests took the Holy Mysteries and the sacred vessels and disappeared into the South wall. It is said that when the City is again in the hands of Christians (actually I read it as: when a Christian emperor rules the City again), the priests will emerge from the wall and the liturgy will be resumed where it was when interrupted.
May it be soon.
When I was a little boy, this story was one of my favorites as a bedtime story. I had relatives who were in the government and household of the Despot of Morea who fell on the walls of The City at the side of the Emperor Constantine Paleologus XI. One of my favorite parts of the story was when the priests disappeared into the wall. My grandfather always ended the story with the promise that when a "Most Pious and Orthodox Emperor" ruled the Empire again, the priests would come out of the wall with the Holy Mysteries in their hands. You heard it right. In a couple of weeks I'll be sitting in Metropolis Square in Athens and will lift a glass to Constantine XI whose statute is there.
" Check out the book "Cube and the Cathedral", K. I would love to get your opinion of it."
I'm heading down to the old coutry in 12 days. Maybe I'll get it for the plane ride and let you know.
Gentlemen,
Your posts brought tears to my eyes. Yes, may it be soon indeed!
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