What about the Crusades People?
Knowledge of fundamental Islamic sources, for example the Koran, is useful, perhaps indispensable, as is a basic knowledge of the history of Islamic expansion. A politically correct ignorance of all this history, except for a hostile verdict on the evil Crusades, provides no basis for an adequate understanding of the crisis in which we find ourselves.
Two misleading stereotypes of religion need to be abandoned. First, that all religions are basically the same: either all good or all bad.
In fact, the great religions differ mightily one from the other in doctrine and in the societies they produce. Religions can be sources of beauty and goodness and they can be, through corruption, sources of poison and destruction. - Cardinal George Pell
That was pretty much the only sane response to appear in a newspaper. More likely, I bet you have heard about the Crusades recently. After the Pope quoted Manuel II Palaiologos' assesments of Islam, every sensible person started talking about the Crusades.
There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion. To take Islam's own favorite self-pitying example: It was the Catholic crusaders who sacked and burned Christian Byzantium on their way to Palestine—and that was only after they had methodically set about the Jews, so the Muslim world was actually only the third victim of this barbarity. (Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is the best source here.) - Christopher Hitchens
The thought crossed all our minds. What if the Pope were murdered by Islamic terrorists? A Methodist friend of mine who was against the war in Iraq said. "If that happens, f&*k the Reformation. It's on." By "it" he meant the clash of civilizations. Of course, the second thought on my mind would be what would Christopher Hitchens say about it? Could he even manage to write more than the words: Well he deserved it, didn't he? Also, what was up with the beginning of his column where he talks about all the other "popes" - when he often meant Patriarchs? He was trying to make a point that the Pope doesn't' speak for all Christians and we make too much of his importance. However, the Pope is still the head of a Church that includes about a billion people. Can we really overplay that? Also, I get the distinct feeling that Hitchens' contract for Slate is a kind of nuisance since he only seems to emerge to denounce the Catholic Church or Saddam Hussein. Do they not pay him as much as The Atlantic? Or do they just let him contribute whatever the hell he wants, when he wants?
So, here is John Meacham, who is as usual pretty shallow.
And by speaking of jihad without alluding to Christianity’s dark history of violence in the name of God—the Crusades, forced conversions, pogroms, the Inquisition—Benedict seemed to be denouncing Islam while failing to acknowledge that any religion, including his own, can be manipulated and perverted to evil ends. - Jon Meacham
Of course at the end of Mecham's piece he uses the memory of Pope John Paul II to bludgeon his successor. This is a very old media trick. Reagan and Goldwater, who at one time or another were the most evil, nuke-crazy people on the planet are now preferable alternatives to George Bush. Doesn't anyone recall that John Paul II was reviled as a reactionary who would reverse all progress in the Church, how we was a stubborn pale sexless, old Pole who wouldn't let the kids taste banana flavored condoms? I guess we don't. Now he was the great reconciler of all humanity. So, why should we put up with God's Rottweiler?
He who controls the past, controls the future. The chant is hard to get out of my ears. Islam is a religion of peace. Christianity is all about the Crusades and Inquisition.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics, Religion
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Source: George Pell: Talk while we canabbani, the Sunni leader, spoke to me for an hour, with the help of a translator. He set out to justify the practice in the Ottoman Empire whereby Christians had to walk on the other side of the road from Muslims (for their protection, he explained). Christians then were also publicly branded with signs on their clothing, but we didn't discuss this.As I was leaving, Kabbani asked me to do what I could to protect the rights of the Muslim minority in Australia to live peacefully. I gave him an e -
Source: http://www.slate.com/here are many popes within Christianity—the Coptic Church has one, and the Eastern Orthodox Church also boasts a patriarch or holy father—but we have acquired the habit of using the term to describe only the bishop of Rome (as the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church describe him), and this is a pity for many reasons. It confers a sort of supreme authority on the leader of only one Christian sect, and it therefore helps to give non-Christians the impression that the representative of Roman Catholi
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Members of the Consolata order to which Sister Sgorbita belonged to have flown her body to Nairobi, where it is to be buried at the Consolata Shrine in city on September 20. The Union of Islamic Courts, which controls Mogadishu and most of southern Somalia, is reported to have arrested two suspects in connection to the murder. Since 1991 when the Somalia's national government collapsed, the country in the horn of Africa had been broken up into patched controlled by rival warlords. In a situation
Reader Comments (12)
Archbishop Pell is spot on! Generally, a clear and reasonable assessment.
For me, you're too kind to John Meacham. His shallowness is second to his insufferable demeanor. I find him unbearable to watch. His earnnestness seems contrived, and his ability to make the balantly obvious seem relevatory rivals Tom Friedman. As for Hitchens, he's a real bore, but his much more interesting when his bombed as oppose to bloviating about bombing other people who aren't as secular...
1. On the Crusades.
Christopher Hitchens, like many modern secularist liberals, likes to cherry pick his favourite Crusades to bash. So medieval Christian crusades are bad but modern democratic crusades are good.
General Eisenhower entitled his WW2 memoirs "Crusade For Europe". That democratic crusade entailed the firebombing and nuclear destruction of whole cities. Siege warfare in medieval times, including 'the crusades', was brutal but my guess is that the old Crusader knights would be disgusted with the remote brutality and wholesale destruction of civilian societies that marks modern democratic crusades.
2. On good pope, bad pope
For a counter to this argument, the apparent contrast between 'good pope John Paul' and 'bad pope Benedict' see the following text, originally published here.
http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/09/the_false_tale_.html
Who wrote the following?
"Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which is completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside."
"Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad. There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity. "
Before I identify the author of those remarks (in case you don't recognize who he is), here is another quote:
"Past experience teaches us that, unfortunately, relations between Christians and Muslims have not always been marked by mutual respect and understanding. How many pages of history record battles and wars that have been waged, with both sides invoking the Name of God, as if fighting and killing, the enemy could be pleasing to him. The recollection of these sad events should fill us with shame, for we know only too well what atrocities have been committed in the name of religion."
"The lessons of the past must help us to avoid repeating the same mistakes. We must seek paths of reconciliation and learn to live with respect for each other's identity. The defence of religious freedom, in this sense, is a permanent imperative, and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization. In this regard, it is always right to recall what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council said about relations with Muslims."
"The Church looks upon Muslims with respect. They worship the one God living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humanity and to whose decrees, even the hidden ones, they seek to submit themselves whole-heartedly, just as Abraham, to whom the Islamic faith readily relates itself, submitted to God.... Although considerable dissensions and enmities between Christians and Muslims may have arisen in the course of the centuries, the Council urges all parties that, forgetting past things, they train themselves towards sincere mutual understanding and together maintain and promote social justice and moral values as well as peace and freedom for all people" (Declaration Nostra Aetate, n. 3).
"For us, these words of the Second Vatican Council remain the Magna Carta of the dialogue with you, dear Muslim friends, and I am glad that you have spoken to us in the same spirit and have confirmed these intentions."
The first quote comes from Pope John Paul II's book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994). Of course, it also contains many positive remarks about Islam, but the quotation above is worth pondering for a moment because, if considered carefully, it may be just as — or more — offensive to Muslims, especially since John Paul II was not quoting a 600-year-old Byzantine emperor in order to provide a certain framework for a lecture that concentrated on critiquing, very strongly, philosophical currents in modern Western thought. The second quote, of course, is from Pope Benedict, taken from remarks he made to Muslim representatives when he was in Cologne last August for World Youth Day."
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06091805.html
If I were a more cynical person I might agree with Lifesite that there is a hidden, if unplanned, western agenda behind the beating up of this story.
Christophobia is something that brings the feuding pro-war and anti-war factions of the left back together. Both factions wish to draw a false equivalence between the relatively mild forms of Christian influence on western states and the totalist vision of islamism. The pope story gives them something to agree on.
Christopher Hitchens, like many neocons, has had an animus towards the church because of papal condemnation of the Iraq War.
The anti-war left on the other hand should know better. If islamist sentiment can so easily turn feral on a God fearing peacemaker, one of the west's strongest voices against the Iraq invasion, they will certainly not spare any mercy when or if the time comes for applying the islamist blow torch to secularist and leftist peace advocates.
See his recent article here.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1677/
The only quibble I'd have with Hume on this is that his knowledge of the catholic doctrine of papal infallibility is either incredibly poor, or he has dumbed it down for rhetorical effect. (P.I.only applies to official statements of church dogma, on all other issues the pope's opinions are just opinions)
I am sure it is not "managed," but I speculate that Islam is relatively easy to control by virtue of being, in many respects, predictable. This is all the more astonishing given that there is no central figurehead in Islam. Even the Popes at the height of their power in the late 19th/early 20th century never exercised such totalitarian control over strongly identifying Catholics. Extremist outrages of the sort tended to be confined to Jansenistic areas (i.e., Ireland), if they happened at all (but even there they were usually provoked by much more than words).
However - (this just a guess) But the objection to the Pope's comments (esp in Turkey) has far less to do with the specific words the Pope used (Paleologus means old word, no?) - More likely, they saw his reference - in passing - to "the seige of Constantinople," as connected to his earlier comments about the nature of Europe.
Had some liberal churchamn made a similar type of speech - right after the fatwa against Rushdie, and Islamists were alligned with Reagan, you can imagine Hitchens embracing it - liking it. But times change and Hitchens is very moody.
I wrote something along these lines on my blog a while back about the vulgar cult of the Greatest Generation, "The astonishing thing about the post-war Baby Boomer sentimentalism about the Greatest Generation is how morally bankrupt and unstrenuous it is in comparison. WWII era encroachments that today would considered creeping totalitarianism are casually dismissed, while a haggiographic concept of military service is elevated, serving the function of eclipsing the pampered Baby Boomer's own widespread resistance to service and sacrifice during the Vietnam War. I think this sentimentalized pseudo-history also functions to create a kind of faux patriotism focused on past, already settled events, which were hardly uncontroversial at the time. Left-wing Boomers and other pacifists can tell themselves that they would support a 'good war' like WWII against fascism, but they can't bring themselves to summon the necessary grit, resolve, and moral sense needed to encourage our troops during the current war against terrorism being fought on many fronts, one of which undoubtedly is in Iraq." Say what you will about Iraq, but the Left's embrace even of various restraints in the war against al Qaeda definitely prove the broader point that these people suck.
Most people are conformist to an extreme degree. So, when something is controversial they run away. When it later becomes accepted, they embrace it piling on against those that dare to question the new status quo. It's like the old description in France of <em> le maquis d'apres-guerre </em> ("resistance fighter, postwar"). We'll have quite a few of these <em> maquis </em> after the war against al Qaeda, many of them now whinging about GITMO or the fact that Khalid Sheik Mohammad was forced to shave.
(Chiesa quotes starts here...)
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It was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Barthlomew I, who invited the pope in mid-2005. Benedict XVI immediately accepted the invitation, without waiting for it to be confirmed by a similar invitation from the Turkish authorities. And this alone was enough to irritate the Ankara government, which does not recognize Bartholomew I’s role as a patriarch, but treats him as an ordinary citizen. In today’s Turkey, there are a few tens of thousands of Christians, mostly belonging to the Armenian Church. The faithful of the patriarchate of Constantinople are 3-4 thousand. And there are also a few thousand Catholics.
The Turkish government formally invited the pope last February. But shortly before this, on the 5th of the same month, there was the killing of an Italian priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, in a church in Trabzon, on the Black Sea. After this, other priests were the targets of threats and attacks. For a few months, a number of the representatives of the Catholic Church in Turkey have been living under the protection of unarmed, plainclothes police officials. Their telephone conversations are monitored, and their mail is often already open when it is delivered. More than being protected, they have the feeling of being watched.
Last June, another important Church leader, the “Catholicos” of the Armenians, Karekin II, visited Turkey. A reference that he made to the massacre of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire during its final phase earned him a penal trial for offenses against Turkey, brought against him by the magistrate of Istanbul.
Religious liberty is largely lacking in Turkey: this is also true for the non-Sunni Muslims, the Alevi. The president of the office that oversees Turkish Islam on behalf of the government, Ali Bardakoglu, is inflexible in rejecting the request of the Alevi to be recognized as a distinct Muslim community. Their places of worship are still downgraded as “cultural centers.”
And Ali Bardakoglu was the first among the Turkish authorities to react to the lecture by Benedict XVI in Regensburg. Here is what he said:
“His was a very provocative, hostile, and prejudicial address. I hope that it does not reflect an indwelling hostility in the pope’s interior world that reveals the presumptuous, indulgent, and arrogant attitude of those who know they have the economic power of the West behind them. If a man of religion or a scientist criticizes the history of a religion or the members of that religion, we can talk about it. But when one speaks about holy things, about the holy Book and its Prophet, it is a sign of arrogance, of hostility, and gives way to slander that incites religious fighting. The Muslim world must look with concern at Benedict XVI’s upcoming trip to Turkey. We are waiting for him to take back his words and to apologize to the world of Islam.”
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[Quote ends]
Another factor, perhaps relevant, would seem to be that the heads of the Vatican's diplomatic departments are relatively new to their jobs.