The Crusades: The truth makes a difference

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.

Blade Runner recently won a prize for the best science fiction film ever. Ditto again!

BTW, do you know the famous UCLA film festival screening of "Blade Runner"? You probably do. But here's the story as I heard it from the horse's mouth while studying at the AFI:

In the early '90s, during one of the UCLA sponsored film fests at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, they had a screening of "Blade Runner." And filmmaking history happened that night. You see, the original release of "Blade Runner" was not the director's version. The studio forced Ridley Scott to put in that god-awful voice over and that stupid ambiguous "happy ending." Needless to say, everyone hated it. The voice over was so stupid that Harrison Ford -- in an act of solidarity with the director -- read it completely emotionless and deliberately bad because he thought that when the studio idiots heard it they'd come to their senses and realize it was awful. Well, he overestimated the studio idiots' intelligence. The voice over stayed, and the film as it was originally released was dissavowed by the author of the book and by the director and actors, etc. Well, fast forward to the early '90s and the film fest at the Cinerama Dome. The Film Fest organizers contacted the studio's archive library to borrow a print of "Blade Runner". So the studio librarian goes digging in the archive for the reels of "Blade Runner," finds a bunch of reels that say "Blade Runner," and he sends it over to the folks at the UCLA film fest. And they screen it that night at the Cinerama Dome. About 15 minutes into the film, everyone realizes that this isn't the same movie they remembered seeing in the theaters in 1982. This is actually better. There are more scenes! And better scenes! And there's no annoying voice over! It turns out that the studio librarian accidentally sent them a print of the director's original cut of the film -- the version before the studio hacks started cutting scenes and demanding a voice over. The word was out, and film students went on a jihad to get the studio to release the original cut of the film & distribute it. Ridley Scott was delighted of course. And thus was born what is now known as the "Director's Cut", which allowed studios to make even more money by going through their archives and adding back the scenes that were originally cut from movies and then selling them as part of the new "Director's Cuts".

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