An interesting report. John Stossell is a unique journalist - you just do not hear these things very often! Facts are stubborn things.
What do you think?
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Monday, May 21, 2012
Lawsuit - HHS
Here is a link to the complaint filed this morning by the University of Notre Dame, challenging the Administration's "preventive services" mandate.
This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.
Please note that the red is for my own personal quick reference.
From Washington Examiner,
May 21, 2012Read the rest.
A Message from Father John Jenkins, C.S.C.,
President, University of Notre DameToday the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana regarding a recent mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). That mandate requires Notre Dame and similar religious organizations to provide in their insurance plans abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, which are contrary to Catholic teaching. The decision to file this lawsuit came after much deliberation, discussion and efforts to find a solution acceptable to the various parties.
Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about: it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services. Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs. And we believe that, if the Government wishes to provide such services, means are available that do not compel religious organizations to serve as its agents. We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings. We have engaged in conversations to find a resolution that respects the consciences of all and we will continue to do so.
This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives. For if we concede that the Government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions. For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements. If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.
The details of the process that led to the mandate are publicly known. In an Interim Final Ruling issued August 3, 2011, the federal government required employers to provide the objectionable services. A narrow exemption was given to religious institutions that serve and employ primarily members of their own faith, but, departing from a long tradition in federal law, organizations like Notre Dame—schools, universities, hospitals and charitable organizations that serve and employ people of all faiths and none—were granted no exemption, but instead were made subject to the law to the same extent as any secular organization. On September 28, I submitted a formal comment encouraging the Administration to follow precedent and adopt a broader exemption.
Despite some positive indications, the Administration announced on January 20, 2012, that its interim rule would be adopted as final without change. After an outcry from across the political spectrum, President Obama announced on February 10 that his Administration would attempt to accommodate the concerns of religious organizations. We were encouraged by this announcement and have engaged in conversations with Administration officials to find an acceptable resolution. Although I do not question the good intentions and sincerity of all involved in these discussions, progress has not been encouraging and an announcement seeking comments on how to structure any accommodation (HHS Advanced Notification of Proposed Rule Making on preventative services policy, March 16, 2012) provides little in the way of a specific, substantive proposal or a definite timeline for resolution. Moreover, the process laid out in this announcement will last months, making it impossible for us to plan for and implement any changes to our health plans by the government-mandated deadlines. We will continue in earnest our discussions with Administration officials in an effort to find a resolution, but, after much deliberation, we have concluded that we have no option but to appeal to the courts regarding the fundamental issue of religious freedom.
It is for these reasons that we have filed this lawsuit neither lightly nor gladly, but with sober determination.
Below, a video released by the Archdiocese of Washington.
Chancellor Jane Belford of the Archdiocese of Washington explains the significance of the lawsuit filed to protect freedom to practice religion. Chancellor Belford details why the suit is necessary in light of the attempt of the government to redefine what is a religious institution. She explains that under the new definition that the work of Mother Teresa no longer would qualify as the work of a religious institution.
Quote from Mirror of Justice:
These latest lawsuits, like the many others that had already been filed, are asking the courts to enforce the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and to protect religious liberty and conscience from a regrettable and burdensome regulatory mandate. This mandate imposes a serious and unnecessary burden on many religious institutions’ commitments, witness, and mission. It purports to require many religious schools, health-care providers, and social-welfare agencies to compromise their institutional character and integrity. In a society that respects and values diversity, as our does, we should protect and accommodate our distinctively religious institutions, and welcome their contributions to the common good.
These lawsuits are not asking the courts to endorse the plaintiffs’ religious views, only to respect and accommodate them. Religious institutions are not seeking to control what their employees buy, use, or do in private; they are trying to avoid being conscripted by the government into acting in a way that would be inconsistent with their character, mission, and values. In a pluralistic society, people will often disagree about values and policies, and it will not always be possible to accommodate those who object in good faith to regulatory requirements. At the same time, a society like ours – with a Constitution and federal religious-freedom protections like ours – will regard it as often both wise and just to accommodate religious believers and institutions by exempting them from requirements that would force them to compromise their integrity. This is such a case. We Americans do not agree about what religious freedom means, but we have long agreed that it matters, and should be protected through law. True, there will sometimes be tension and conflict, and trade-offs and compromises. Given our deep-rooted commitment to religious freedom, though, our goal as a community should always be to strike the balance in a way that honors that commitment.
Here is the statement of John Garvey, the President of Catholic University.
SOURCES:
The Archdiocese of Washington
yimcatholic
The Washington Examiner
Mirror of Justice
Sunday, September 4, 2011
You Cannot Multiply Wealth by Dividing It
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
~Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Same Sex Marriage Legal in New York
There is some wonderful commentary at National Review Online. Here are some snippets:
What has been gained by the forces behind this act?
Certainly not marriage for same-sex couples.
They have gained a name, but not the thing it names. They have only destroyed a word’s meaning.
And they have harmed the thing it does name, by teaching — one of the things the law does — that marriage has no connection to children and families, but instead is just a bundle of privileges from the government, to be taken up if it is in one’s self-interest.
New York has struck a great blow, in the name of a false “right,” against real freedom. Same-sex marriage is inseparable from authoritarianism, as we will see when New York’s Christians, Jews, and Muslims lose the religious freedom to act on the truth about marriage as they know it.
Matthew J. Franck (director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey)
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Same-sex marriage comes to New York on Sunday. Whom will it impact other than the couples involved? The answer is: almost everyone.
The New York legislature did not create a category of marriage called “gay marriage,” but instead redefined marriage for everyone. That means that anyone who doesn’t go along with this new politically inspired understanding of the historic institution of marriage will be treated under the law as the equivalent of a racist.
Already, town clerks with deeply held religious beliefs about marriage have been told they will be fired if they refuse to sanction gay marriages. Some have already been forced to quit. We know from the experience in other states that professionals with strongly held moral beliefs about marriage will be threatened with loss of their professional licenses — and thus their livelihood — if they resist. Christian counselors will be put out of business unless they violate their religious principles and condone gay marriage. Wedding professionals who don’t want to be involved in gay weddings will be sanctioned.
Most troubling, children as young as kindergartners will be taught in school that gay marriage is the same as traditional marriage — and parents will be powerless to do anything about it.
In short, the consequences to society will be profound.— Brian S. Brown is president of the National Organization for Marriage.
But this is far from over. People all across the state are rallying to restore marriage by putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Thousands are attending marches throughout the state on Sunday, and volunteering in droves at www.letthepeoplevote.com. We are determined to let the people of New York have the final say on marriage, just as voters in 31 other states have been able to do.
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Same-sex “marriage” is not marriage; it is an exercise in frivolity. At best, a same-sex union can produce entertainment.
Because there are no children, a same-sex “marriage” protects no one. What same-sex “marriage” does is provide the government’s sanction on a peculiar sexual relationship that tends to be both mentally and physically harmful to the participants.
Citizen Tom
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SOURCES:
CAN
National Review Online
Father Sama, OP
Citizen Tom
Monday, May 9, 2011
Why Not Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?
A very interesting take . . . .
I think there are some very valid points raised within the article I have included in this post. But . . .
1) I believe that people who are on the same-sex bandwagon are deluded into thinking it is an equal rights issue. Many liberals seem infatuated with the idea of "allowing" gay people to have the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples.
AS IF the state (the government) legitimizes marriage in some way. The state does not do that. The Catholic Church legitimizes a union through the sacrament of marriage. The covenant is established.
2) The ball is rolling on legalizing same-sex marriage and I do not see it pausing to ponder the points in the article. Perhaps I am a wee bit cynical.
3) I do believe that most gay couples (that I know) are most concerned with health insurance and other benefits. I can't tell you how many people bring this up! Do you get the same feedback?
The gay people I talk to feel they should have the same legal rights to their partner's health benefits and pension and life insurance benefits in the case of a partner's death.
I get the feeling that they are trying to get at those benefits via a legal marriage contract.
4) That is not the reason for marriage! I guess I should let you read the article!
Why not legalize same-sex marriage? Who could it possibly hurt? Children and the rest of society. That’s the conclusion of David Blankenhorn, who is anything but an anti-gay “bigot.” He is a life-long, pro-gay, liberal democrat who disagrees with the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Despite this, Blankenhorn makes a powerful case against Same-Sex marriage in his book, The Future of Marriage.
That conclusion has nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with what’s best for children and society. Just ask pro-gay, liberal democrat David Blankenhorn.
I think there are some very valid points raised within the article I have included in this post. But . . .
AS IF the state (the government) legitimizes marriage in some way. The state does not do that. The Catholic Church legitimizes a union through the sacrament of marriage. The covenant is established.
2) The ball is rolling on legalizing same-sex marriage and I do not see it pausing to ponder the points in the article. Perhaps I am a wee bit cynical.
3) I do believe that most gay couples (that I know) are most concerned with health insurance and other benefits. I can't tell you how many people bring this up! Do you get the same feedback?
The gay people I talk to feel they should have the same legal rights to their partner's health benefits and pension and life insurance benefits in the case of a partner's death.
I get the feeling that they are trying to get at those benefits via a legal marriage contract.
4) That is not the reason for marriage! I guess I should let you read the article!
Gay Marriage: Even Liberals Know It's Bad
by Frank Turek @ Townhall.comWhy not legalize same-sex marriage? Who could it possibly hurt? Children and the rest of society. That’s the conclusion of David Blankenhorn, who is anything but an anti-gay “bigot.” He is a life-long, pro-gay, liberal democrat who disagrees with the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Despite this, Blankenhorn makes a powerful case against Same-Sex marriage in his book, The Future of Marriage.
He writes, “Across history and cultures . . . marriage’s single most fundamental idea is that every child needs a mother and a father. Changing marriage to accommodate same-sex couples would nullify this principle in culture and in law.”
How so?
The law is a great teacher, and same sex marriage will teach future generations that marriage is not about children but about coupling. When marriage becomes nothing more than coupling, fewer people will get married to have children.
So what?
People will still have children, of course, but many more of them out-of wedlock. That’s a disaster for everyone. Children will be hurt because illegitimate parents (there are no illegitimate children) often never form a family, and those that “shack up” break up at a rate two to three times that of married parents. Society will be hurt because illegitimacy starts a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.
Are these just the hysterical cries of an alarmist? No. We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”
But it’s not just Norway. Blankenhorn reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.
You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs tax payers $112 billion per year!).
No-fault divorce laws began in one state, California, and then spread to rest of the country. Those liberalized divorce laws helped change our attitudes and behaviors about the permanence of marriage. There’s no question that liberalized marriage laws will help change our attitudes and behaviors about the purpose of marriage. The law is a great teacher, and if same-sex marriage advocates have their way, children will be expelled from the lesson on marriage.
This leads Blankenhorn to assert, “One can believe in same-sex marriage. One can believe that every child deserves a mother and a father. One cannot believe both.”
Blankenhorn is amazed how indifferent homosexual activists are about the negative effects of same-sex marriage on children. Many of them, he documents, say that marriage isn’t about children.
Well, if marriage isn’t about children, what institution is about children? And if we’re going to redefine marriage into mere coupling, then why should the state endorse same-sex marriage at all?
Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for one another. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society. Society gets no benefit by redefining marriage to include homosexual relationships, only harm as the connection to illegitimacy shows. But the very future of children and a civilized society depends on stable marriages between men and women. That’s why, regardless of what you think about homosexuality, the two types of relationships should never be legally equated.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Four Myths about the Crusades
No copyright infringement intended. All posts are fully cited for source and author. I have provided links back to the original source whenever possible. This information is for my personal, Faith Formation, Confirmation class, OCIC and homeschool referencing.
I am so very grateful to the authors, website and blog owners for sharing this information, commentary, and knowledge.
In this particular article I have bolded in purple to indicate my own emphasis. Reviewing this information does not, in my opinion, justify killing. But it does remind us of some pretty significant history that seems to have been forgotten.
What we are often taught about the alleged one-sided wickedness of the Crusades. It simply is not the complete picture, but rather, western distortions of the crusades in the nineteenth century which subsequently were taught to, and taken up by, an "insufficiently critical" Muslim world.
I am so very grateful to the authors, website and blog owners for sharing this information, commentary, and knowledge.
In this particular article I have bolded in purple to indicate my own emphasis. Reviewing this information does not, in my opinion, justify killing. But it does remind us of some pretty significant history that seems to have been forgotten.
What we are often taught about the alleged one-sided wickedness of the Crusades. It simply is not the complete picture, but rather, western distortions of the crusades in the nineteenth century which subsequently were taught to, and taken up by, an "insufficiently critical" Muslim world.
Four Myths about the Crusades
This article appears in the Spring 2011 edition of the Intercollegiate Review. See the issue’s Table of Contents here.
In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”
This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”1
The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games—drawing on supposedly more reliable sources—contain statements such as:
• “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers”;2
• “The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism”;3 and
• “Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.”4
The most famous semi-popular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”5
The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.
But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.
By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.
What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about a.d. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.
The surviving central secular authority in the Christian world at this time was the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. Having lost so much territory in the seventh and eighth centuries to sudden amputation by the Muslims, the Byzantines took a long time to gain the strength to fight back. By the mid-ninth century, they mounted a counterattack on Egypt, the first time since 645 that they had dared to come so far south. Between the 940s and the 970s, the Byzantines made great progress in recovering lost territories. Emperor John Tzimiskes retook much of Syria and part of Palestine, getting as far as Nazareth, but his armies became overextended and he had to end his campaigns by 975 without managing to retake Jerusalem itself. Sharp Muslim counterattacks followed, and the Byzantines barely managed to retain Aleppo and Antioch.
The struggle continued unabated into the eleventh century. In 1009, a mentally deranged Muslim ruler destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and mounted major persecutions of Christians and Jews. He was soon deposed, and by 1038 the Byzantines had negotiated the right to try to rebuild the structure, but other events were also making life difficult for Christians in the area, especially the displacement of Arab Muslim rulers by Seljuk Turks, who from 1055 on began to take control in the Middle East. This destabilized the territory and introduced new rulers (the Turks) who were not familiar even with the patchwork modus vivendi that had existed between most Arab Muslim rulers and their Christian subjects. Pilgrimages became increasingly difficult and dangerous, and western pilgrims began banding together and carrying weapons to protect themselves as they tried to make their way to Christianity’s holiest sites in Palestine: notable armed pilgrimages occurred in 1064–65 and 1087–91.
In the western and central Mediterranean, the balance of power was tipping toward the Christians and away from the Muslims. In 1034, the Pisans sacked a Muslim base in North Africa, finally extending their counterattacks across the Mediterranean. They also mounted counterattacks against Sicily in 1062–63. In 1087, a large-scale allied Italian force sacked Mahdia, in present-day Tunisia, in a campaign jointly sponsored by Pope Victor III and the countess of Tuscany. Clearly the Italian Christians were gaining the upper hand.
But while Christian power in the western and central Mediterranean was growing, it was in trouble in the east. The rise of the Muslim Turks had shifted the weight of military power against the Byzantines, who lost considerable ground again in the 1060s. Attempting to head off further incursions in far-eastern Asia Minor in 1071, the Byzantines suffered a devastating defeat at Turkish hands in the battle of Manzikert. As a result of the battle, the Christians lost control of almost all of Asia Minor, with its agricultural resources and military recruiting grounds, and a Muslim sultan set up a capital in Nicaea, site of the creation of the Nicene Creed in a.d. 325 and a scant 125 miles from Constantinople.
Desperate, the Byzantines sent appeals for help westward, directing these appeals primarily at the person they saw as the chief western authority: the pope, who, as we have seen, had already been directing Christian resistance to Muslim attacks. In the early 1070s, the pope was Gregory VII, and he immediately began plans to lead an expedition to the Byzantines’ aid. He became enmeshed in conflict with the German emperors, however (what historians call “the Investiture Controversy”), and was ultimately unable to offer meaningful help. Still, the Byzantines persisted in their appeals, and finally, in 1095, Pope Urban II realized Gregory VII’s desire, in what turned into the First Crusade. Whether a crusade was what either Urban or the Byzantines had in mind is a matter of some controversy. But the seamless progression of events which lead to that crusade is not.
Far from being unprovoked, then, the crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five (Rome) in Christian hands by 1500. Rome was again threatened in the sixteenth century. This is not the absence of provocation; rather, it is a deadly and persistent threat, and one which had to be answered by forceful defense if Christendom were to survive. The crusades were simply one tool in the defensive options exercised by Christians.
As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.”10 From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive. Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from west to east as a result of the crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.”11
One of the chief reasons for the foundering of the Fourth Crusade, and its diversion to Constantinople, was the fact that it ran out of money before it had gotten properly started, and was so indebted to the Venetians that it found itself unable to keep control of its own destiny. Louis IX’s Seventh Crusade in the mid-thirteenth century cost more than six times the annual revenue of the crown.
The popes resorted to ever more desperate ploys to raise money to finance crusades, from instituting the first income tax in the early thirteenth century to making a series of adjustments in the way that indulgences were handled that eventually led to the abuses condemned by Martin Luther. Even by the thirteenth century, most crusade planners assumed that it would be impossible to attract enough volunteers to make a crusade possible, and crusading became the province of kings and popes, losing its original popular character. When the Hospitaller Master Fulk of Villaret wrote a crusade memo to Pope Clement V in about 1305, he noted that “it would be a good idea if the lord pope took steps enabling him to assemble a great treasure, without which such a passage [crusade] would be impossible.”12 A few years later, Marino Sanudo estimated that it would cost five million florins over two years to effect the conquest of Egypt. Although he did not say so, and may not have realized it, the sums necessary simply made the goal impossible to achieve. By this time, most responsible officials in the West had come to the same conclusion, which explains why fewer and fewer crusades were launched from the fourteenth century on.
However, like the first two myths, this statement is generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing, the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high, and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to return. At least one military historian has estimated the casualty rate for the First Crusade at an appalling 75 percent, for example.14 The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in order to die for God in the Holy Land”15—which was quickly followed by his death in battle against overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude. It is hard to imagine a more conclusive way of proving one’s dedication to a cause than sacrificing one’s life for it, and very large numbers of crusaders did just that.
But this assertion is also revealed to be false when we consider the way in which the crusades were preached. Crusaders were not drafted. Participation was voluntary, and participants had to be persuaded to go. The primary means of persuasion was the crusade sermon, and one might expect to find these sermons representing crusading as profoundly appealing.
This is, generally speaking, not the case. In fact, the opposite is true: crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. That this was the reality of crusading was well known anyway. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.”16
So why did the preaching work? It worked because crusading was appealing precisely because it was a known and significant hardship, and because undertaking a crusade with the right motives was understood as an acceptable penance for sin. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. There is no space here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in the late antique and medieval worlds, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed as a useful way to purify one’s soul (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today). Crusading was the near-supreme example of such difficult suffering, and so was an ideal and very thorough-going penance.
Related to the concept of penance is the concept of crusading as an act of selfless love, of “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.”17 From the very beginning, Christian charity was advanced as a reason for crusading, and this did not change throughout the period. Jonathan Riley-Smith discussed this aspect of crusading in a seminal article well-known to crusade historians but inadequately recognized in the wider scholarly world, let alone by the general public. “For Christians . . . sacred violence,” noted Riley-Smith,
Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back a puny western Christian attack. An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post–World War I negotiations between the Frenchman Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later Faisal I of Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the crusades?”19
This was generally representative of the Muslim attitude toward the crusades before about World War I—that is, when Muslims bothered to remember them at all, which was not often. Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-nineteenth century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive.20 There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.21
Nor had there been an immediate reaction to the crusades among Muslims. As Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems.”22 By the 1130s, a Muslim counter-crusade did begin, under the leadership of the ferocious Zengi of Mosul. But it had taken some decades for the Muslim world to become concerned about Jerusalem, which is usually held in higher esteem by Muslims when it is not held by them than when it is. Action against the crusaders was often subsequently pursued as a means of uniting the Muslim world behind various aspiring conquerors, until 1291, when the Christians were expelled from the Syrian mainland. And—surprisingly to Westerners—it was not Saladin who was revered by Muslims as the great anti-Christian leader. That place of honor usually went to the more bloodthirsty, and more successful, Zengi and Baibars, or to the more public-spirited Nur al-Din.
The first Muslim crusade history did not appear until 1899. By that time, the Muslim world was rediscovering the crusades—but it was rediscovering them with a twist learned from Westerners. In the modern period, there were two main European schools of thought about the crusades.
• One school, epitomized by people like Voltaire, Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, and in the twentieth century Sir Steven Runciman, saw the crusaders as crude, greedy, aggressive barbarians who attacked civilized, peace-loving Muslims to improve their own lot.
(The following bullet points are my emphasis - for my ease of differentiation)
• The other school, more romantic and epitomized by lesser-known figures such as the French writer Joseph-François Michaud, saw the crusades as a glorious episode in a long-standing struggle in which Christian chivalry had driven back Muslim hordes.
• In addition, Western imperialists began to view the crusaders as predecessors, adapting their activities in a secularized way that the original crusaders would not have recognized or found very congenial.
At the same time, nationalism began to take root in the Muslim world. Arab nationalists borrowed the idea of a long-standing European campaign against them from the former European school of thought—missing the fact that this was a serious mischaracterization of the crusades—and using this distorted understanding as a way to generate support for their own agendas. This remained the case until the mid-twentieth century, when, in Riley-Smith’s words, “a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism” applied the more narrow goals of the Arab nationalists to a worldwide revival of what was then called Islamic fundamentalism and is now sometimes referred to, a bit clumsily, as jihadism.23 This led rather seamlessly to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, offering a view of the crusades so bizarre as to allow bin Laden to consider all Jews to be crusaders and the crusades to be a permanent and continuous feature of the West’s response to Islam.
Bin Laden’s conception of history is a feverish fantasy. He is no more accurate in his view about the crusades than he is about the supposed perfect Islamic unity which he thinks Islam enjoyed before the baleful influence of Christianity intruded. But the irony is that he, and those millions of Muslims who accept his message, received that message originally from their perceived enemies: the West.
It is true that many Muslims who had surrendered and taken refuge under the banners of several of the crusader lords—an act which should have granted them quarter—were massacred by out-of-control troops. This was apparently an act of indiscipline, and the crusader lords in question are generally reported as having been extremely angry about it, since they knew it reflected badly on them.24 To imply—or plainly state—that this was an act desired by the entire crusader force, or that it was integral to crusading, is misleading at best. In any case, John France has put it well: “This notorious event should not be exaggerated. . . . However horrible the massacre . . . it was not far beyond what common practice of the day meted out to any place which resisted.”25 And given space, one could append a long and bloody list, stretching back to the seventh century, of similar actions where Muslims were the aggressors and Christians the victims. Such a list would not, however, have served Mr. Clinton’s purposes.
Mr. Clinton was probably using Raymond of Aguilers when he referred to “blood running up to [the] knees” of crusaders.26 But the physics of such a claim are impossible, as should be apparent. Raymond was plainly both bragging and also invoking the imagery of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation.27 He was not offering a factual account, and probably did not intend the statement to be taken as such.
As for whether or not we are “still paying for it,” see Myth #4, above. This is the most serious misstatement of the whole passage.
The problems with Mr. Clinton’s remarks indicate the pitfalls that await those who would attempt to explicate ancient or medieval texts without adequate historical awareness, and they illustrate very well what happens when one sets out to pick through the historical record for bits—distorted or merely selectively presented—which support one’s current political agenda. This sort of abuse of history has been distressingly familiar where the crusades are concerned.
But nothing is served by distorting the past for our own purposes. Or rather: a great many things may be served . . . but not the truth. Distortions and misrepresentations of the crusades will not help us understand the challenge posed to the West by a militant and resurgent Islam, and failure to understand that challenge could prove deadly. Indeed, it already has. It may take a very long time to set the record straight about the crusades. It is long past time to begin the task.
In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”1
The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games—drawing on supposedly more reliable sources—contain statements such as:
• “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers”;2
• “The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism”;3 and
• “Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.”4
The most famous semi-popular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”5
The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.
But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.
Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a cursory chronological review makes that clear. In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.
What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about a.d. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.
The surviving central secular authority in the Christian world at this time was the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. Having lost so much territory in the seventh and eighth centuries to sudden amputation by the Muslims, the Byzantines took a long time to gain the strength to fight back. By the mid-ninth century, they mounted a counterattack on Egypt, the first time since 645 that they had dared to come so far south. Between the 940s and the 970s, the Byzantines made great progress in recovering lost territories. Emperor John Tzimiskes retook much of Syria and part of Palestine, getting as far as Nazareth, but his armies became overextended and he had to end his campaigns by 975 without managing to retake Jerusalem itself. Sharp Muslim counterattacks followed, and the Byzantines barely managed to retain Aleppo and Antioch.
The struggle continued unabated into the eleventh century. In 1009, a mentally deranged Muslim ruler destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and mounted major persecutions of Christians and Jews. He was soon deposed, and by 1038 the Byzantines had negotiated the right to try to rebuild the structure, but other events were also making life difficult for Christians in the area, especially the displacement of Arab Muslim rulers by Seljuk Turks, who from 1055 on began to take control in the Middle East. This destabilized the territory and introduced new rulers (the Turks) who were not familiar even with the patchwork modus vivendi that had existed between most Arab Muslim rulers and their Christian subjects. Pilgrimages became increasingly difficult and dangerous, and western pilgrims began banding together and carrying weapons to protect themselves as they tried to make their way to Christianity’s holiest sites in Palestine: notable armed pilgrimages occurred in 1064–65 and 1087–91.
In the western and central Mediterranean, the balance of power was tipping toward the Christians and away from the Muslims. In 1034, the Pisans sacked a Muslim base in North Africa, finally extending their counterattacks across the Mediterranean. They also mounted counterattacks against Sicily in 1062–63. In 1087, a large-scale allied Italian force sacked Mahdia, in present-day Tunisia, in a campaign jointly sponsored by Pope Victor III and the countess of Tuscany. Clearly the Italian Christians were gaining the upper hand.
But while Christian power in the western and central Mediterranean was growing, it was in trouble in the east. The rise of the Muslim Turks had shifted the weight of military power against the Byzantines, who lost considerable ground again in the 1060s. Attempting to head off further incursions in far-eastern Asia Minor in 1071, the Byzantines suffered a devastating defeat at Turkish hands in the battle of Manzikert. As a result of the battle, the Christians lost control of almost all of Asia Minor, with its agricultural resources and military recruiting grounds, and a Muslim sultan set up a capital in Nicaea, site of the creation of the Nicene Creed in a.d. 325 and a scant 125 miles from Constantinople.
Desperate, the Byzantines sent appeals for help westward, directing these appeals primarily at the person they saw as the chief western authority: the pope, who, as we have seen, had already been directing Christian resistance to Muslim attacks. In the early 1070s, the pope was Gregory VII, and he immediately began plans to lead an expedition to the Byzantines’ aid. He became enmeshed in conflict with the German emperors, however (what historians call “the Investiture Controversy”), and was ultimately unable to offer meaningful help. Still, the Byzantines persisted in their appeals, and finally, in 1095, Pope Urban II realized Gregory VII’s desire, in what turned into the First Crusade. Whether a crusade was what either Urban or the Byzantines had in mind is a matter of some controversy. But the seamless progression of events which lead to that crusade is not.
To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never.7
Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.
Again, not true. One version of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont in 1095 urging French warriors to embark on what would become known as the First Crusade does note that they might “make spoil of [the enemy’s] treasures,”8 but this was no more than an observation on the usual way of financing war in ancient and medieval society. And Fulcher of Chartres did write in the early twelfth century that those who had been poor in the West had become rich in the East as a result of their efforts on the First Crusade, obviously suggesting that others might do likewise.9 But Fulcher’s statement has to be read in its context, which was a chronic and eventually fatal shortage of manpower for the defense of the crusader states. Fulcher was not being entirely deceitful when he pointed out that one might become rich as a result of crusading. But he was not being entirely straightforward either, because for most participants, crusading was ruinously expensive.As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.”10 From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive. Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from west to east as a result of the crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.”11
One of the chief reasons for the foundering of the Fourth Crusade, and its diversion to Constantinople, was the fact that it ran out of money before it had gotten properly started, and was so indebted to the Venetians that it found itself unable to keep control of its own destiny. Louis IX’s Seventh Crusade in the mid-thirteenth century cost more than six times the annual revenue of the crown.
The popes resorted to ever more desperate ploys to raise money to finance crusades, from instituting the first income tax in the early thirteenth century to making a series of adjustments in the way that indulgences were handled that eventually led to the abuses condemned by Martin Luther. Even by the thirteenth century, most crusade planners assumed that it would be impossible to attract enough volunteers to make a crusade possible, and crusading became the province of kings and popes, losing its original popular character. When the Hospitaller Master Fulk of Villaret wrote a crusade memo to Pope Clement V in about 1305, he noted that “it would be a good idea if the lord pope took steps enabling him to assemble a great treasure, without which such a passage [crusade] would be impossible.”12 A few years later, Marino Sanudo estimated that it would cost five million florins over two years to effect the conquest of Egypt. Although he did not say so, and may not have realized it, the sums necessary simply made the goal impossible to achieve. By this time, most responsible officials in the West had come to the same conclusion, which explains why fewer and fewer crusades were launched from the fourteenth century on.
In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted. Most medieval people were quite well aware of this, and did not consider crusading a way to improve their financial situations.13
Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.
This has been a very popular argument, at least from Voltaire on. It seems credible and even compelling to modern people, steeped as they are in materialist worldviews. And certainly there were cynics and hypocrites in the Middle Ages—beneath the obvious differences of technology and material culture, medieval people were just as human as we are, and subject to the same failings.However, like the first two myths, this statement is generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing, the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high, and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to return. At least one military historian has estimated the casualty rate for the First Crusade at an appalling 75 percent, for example.14 The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in order to die for God in the Holy Land”15—which was quickly followed by his death in battle against overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude. It is hard to imagine a more conclusive way of proving one’s dedication to a cause than sacrificing one’s life for it, and very large numbers of crusaders did just that.
But this assertion is also revealed to be false when we consider the way in which the crusades were preached. Crusaders were not drafted. Participation was voluntary, and participants had to be persuaded to go. The primary means of persuasion was the crusade sermon, and one might expect to find these sermons representing crusading as profoundly appealing.
This is, generally speaking, not the case. In fact, the opposite is true: crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. That this was the reality of crusading was well known anyway. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.”16
So why did the preaching work? It worked because crusading was appealing precisely because it was a known and significant hardship, and because undertaking a crusade with the right motives was understood as an acceptable penance for sin. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. There is no space here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in the late antique and medieval worlds, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed as a useful way to purify one’s soul (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today). Crusading was the near-supreme example of such difficult suffering, and so was an ideal and very thorough-going penance.
Related to the concept of penance is the concept of crusading as an act of selfless love, of “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.”17 From the very beginning, Christian charity was advanced as a reason for crusading, and this did not change throughout the period. Jonathan Riley-Smith discussed this aspect of crusading in a seminal article well-known to crusade historians but inadequately recognized in the wider scholarly world, let alone by the general public. “For Christians . . . sacred violence,” noted Riley-Smith,
cannot be proposed on any grounds save that of love, . . . [and] in an age dominated by the theology of merit this explains why participation in crusades was believed to be meritorious, why the expeditions were seen as penitential acts that could gain indulgences, and why death in battle was regarded as martyrdom. . . . As manifestations of Christian love, the crusades were as much the products of the renewed spirituality of the central Middle Ages, with its concern for living the vita apostolica and expressing Christian ideals in active works of charity, as were the new hospitals, the pastoral work of the Augustinians and Premonstratensians and the service of the friars. The charity of St. Francis may now appeal to us more than that of the crusaders, but both sprang from the same roots.18As difficult as it may be for modern people to believe, the evidence strongly suggests that most crusaders were motivated by a desire to please God, expiate their sins, and put their lives at the service of their “neighbors,” understood in the Christian sense.
Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.
Part of the answer to this myth may be found above, under Myth #1. Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450 years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade. They needed no incentive to continue doing so. But there is a more complicated answer here, as well.This was generally representative of the Muslim attitude toward the crusades before about World War I—that is, when Muslims bothered to remember them at all, which was not often. Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-nineteenth century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive.20 There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.21
Nor had there been an immediate reaction to the crusades among Muslims. As Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems.”22 By the 1130s, a Muslim counter-crusade did begin, under the leadership of the ferocious Zengi of Mosul. But it had taken some decades for the Muslim world to become concerned about Jerusalem, which is usually held in higher esteem by Muslims when it is not held by them than when it is. Action against the crusaders was often subsequently pursued as a means of uniting the Muslim world behind various aspiring conquerors, until 1291, when the Christians were expelled from the Syrian mainland. And—surprisingly to Westerners—it was not Saladin who was revered by Muslims as the great anti-Christian leader. That place of honor usually went to the more bloodthirsty, and more successful, Zengi and Baibars, or to the more public-spirited Nur al-Din.
• One school, epitomized by people like Voltaire, Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, and in the twentieth century Sir Steven Runciman, saw the crusaders as crude, greedy, aggressive barbarians who attacked civilized, peace-loving Muslims to improve their own lot.
(The following bullet points are my emphasis - for my ease of differentiation)
• The other school, more romantic and epitomized by lesser-known figures such as the French writer Joseph-François Michaud, saw the crusades as a glorious episode in a long-standing struggle in which Christian chivalry had driven back Muslim hordes.
• In addition, Western imperialists began to view the crusaders as predecessors, adapting their activities in a secularized way that the original crusaders would not have recognized or found very congenial.
At the same time, nationalism began to take root in the Muslim world. Arab nationalists borrowed the idea of a long-standing European campaign against them from the former European school of thought—missing the fact that this was a serious mischaracterization of the crusades—and using this distorted understanding as a way to generate support for their own agendas. This remained the case until the mid-twentieth century, when, in Riley-Smith’s words, “a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism” applied the more narrow goals of the Arab nationalists to a worldwide revival of what was then called Islamic fundamentalism and is now sometimes referred to, a bit clumsily, as jihadism.23 This led rather seamlessly to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, offering a view of the crusades so bizarre as to allow bin Laden to consider all Jews to be crusaders and the crusades to be a permanent and continuous feature of the West’s response to Islam.
So it was not the crusades that taught Islam to attack and hate Christians. Far from it. Those activities had preceded the crusades by a very long time, and stretch back to the inception of Islam. Rather, it was the West which taught Islam to hate the crusades. The irony is rich.
Back to the Present
Let us return to President Clinton’s Georgetown speech. How much of his reference to the First Crusade was accurate?It is true that many Muslims who had surrendered and taken refuge under the banners of several of the crusader lords—an act which should have granted them quarter—were massacred by out-of-control troops. This was apparently an act of indiscipline, and the crusader lords in question are generally reported as having been extremely angry about it, since they knew it reflected badly on them.24 To imply—or plainly state—that this was an act desired by the entire crusader force, or that it was integral to crusading, is misleading at best. In any case, John France has put it well: “This notorious event should not be exaggerated. . . . However horrible the massacre . . . it was not far beyond what common practice of the day meted out to any place which resisted.”25 And given space, one could append a long and bloody list, stretching back to the seventh century, of similar actions where Muslims were the aggressors and Christians the victims. Such a list would not, however, have served Mr. Clinton’s purposes.
Mr. Clinton was probably using Raymond of Aguilers when he referred to “blood running up to [the] knees” of crusaders.26 But the physics of such a claim are impossible, as should be apparent. Raymond was plainly both bragging and also invoking the imagery of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation.27 He was not offering a factual account, and probably did not intend the statement to be taken as such.
As for whether or not we are “still paying for it,” see Myth #4, above. This is the most serious misstatement of the whole passage.
What we are paying for is not the First Crusade, but western distortions of the crusades in the nineteenth century which were taught to, and taken up by, an insufficiently critical Muslim world.
The problems with Mr. Clinton’s remarks indicate the pitfalls that await those who would attempt to explicate ancient or medieval texts without adequate historical awareness, and they illustrate very well what happens when one sets out to pick through the historical record for bits—distorted or merely selectively presented—which support one’s current political agenda. This sort of abuse of history has been distressingly familiar where the crusades are concerned.
But nothing is served by distorting the past for our own purposes. Or rather: a great many things may be served . . . but not the truth. Distortions and misrepresentations of the crusades will not help us understand the challenge posed to the West by a militant and resurgent Islam, and failure to understand that challenge could prove deadly. Indeed, it already has. It may take a very long time to set the record straight about the crusades. It is long past time to begin the task.
Notes
- Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, The West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.
- R. Scott Peoples, Crusade of Kings (Rockville, MD: Wildside, 2009), 7.
- Ibid.
- The Crusades: Campaign Sourcebook, ed. Allen Varney (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1994), 2.
- Sir Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Vol. III, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 480.
- Francesco Gabrieli, The Arabs: A Compact History, trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963), 47.
- Reynald of Châtillon’s abortive expedition into the Red Sea, in 1182–83, cannot be counted, as it was plainly a geopolitical move designed to threaten Saladin’s claim to be the protector of all Islam, and just as plainly had no hope of reaching either city.
- “The Version of Baldric of Dol,” in The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other source materials, 2nd ed., ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 32.
- Ibid., 220–21.
- Fred Cazel, “Financing the Crusades,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth Setton, vol. 6 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 117.
- John Porteous, “Crusade Coinage with Greek or Latin Inscriptions,” in A History of the Crusades, 354.
- “A memorandum by Fulk of Villaret, master of the Hospitallers, on the crusade to regain the Holy Land, c. 1305,” in Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1580, ed. and trans. Norman Housley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 42.
- Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in The Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.
- John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 142. Not all historians agree; Jonathan Riley-Smith thinks it was probably lower, though he does not indicate just how much lower. See Riley-Smith, “Casualties and Knights on the First Crusade,” Crusades 1 (2002), 17–19, suggesting casualties of perhaps 34 percent, higher than those of the Wehrmacht in World War II, which were themselves very high at about 30 percent. By comparison, American losses in World War II in the three major service branches ranged between about 1.5 percent and 3.66 percent.
- The ‘Templar of Tyre’: Part III of the ‘Deeds of the Cypriots,’ trans. Paul F. Crawford (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), §351, 54.
- Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 36.
- John 15:13.
- Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Crusading as an Act of Love,” History 65 (1980), 191–92.
- Letter from T. E. Lawrence to Robert Graves, 28 June 1927, in Robert Graves and B. H. Liddell-Hart, T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1938), 52, note.
- Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, 71.
- Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Islam and the Crusades in History,” Crusades 2 (2003), 161.
- Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 20.
- Riley-Smith, Crusading, Christianity, and Islam, 73.
- There is some disagreement in the primary sources on the question of who was responsible for the deaths of these refugees; the crusaders knew that a large Egyptian army was on its way to attack them, and there does seem to have been a military decision a day or two later that they simply could not risk leaving potential enemies alive. On the question of the massacre, see Benjamin Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 3 (2004), 15–75.
- France, Victory in the East, 355–56.
- Raymond of Aguilers, in August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-witnesses and Participants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921), 262.
- Revelation 14:20.
Four Myths about the Crusades
Paul F. Crawford (from IR 46:1) - 03/16/11
Paul F. Crawford (from IR 46:1) - 03/16/11
Cross posted at C.A.N. (Tuesday, April 12, 2011 )
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Chicago Tribune 1934
This cartoon was in the Chicago Tribune in 1934.
Look carefully at the plan of action in the lower left corner. Sound familiar?
H/T: Arthur R Garcia
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Pro-Love Anti-Prejudice Generation
A huge H/T to LarryD over @ Acts of the Apostacy Note that bolding is my emphasis.
First, let's more accurately name this group. They call themselves "The Pro-Love Anti-Prejudice Generation." I do believe that The Pro-Victimized Anti-Straight Generation is a much better description. Yep, I think that is much clearer! You tell me.
This group has submitted their latest screed, entitled "The Pro-Love Anti-Prejudice Generation", against the bishops and the Church in the National Catholic Distorter.
Here's the opening paragraph:The most valuable demographic to the marketing mavens of Madison Avenue is the 18-35 group of Gen. X-ers and Millennials. Now, the leadership of the church is targeting these generations with a marketing blitz to win them to the cause of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.Now there's an opening to lay the foundation for common ground and conversation.
Except such folks don't want conversation. They want to treat those who disagree with them in the exact same fashion they have been treated - with shame, scorn and bigotry. Not so "pro-love". It is so important to clarify here that not all those who disagree have treated LGBT people with shame, scorn and/or bigotry. This used to be a simple truth that most people understood and accepted But in today's society if you do not condone you are pegged intolerant. In today's society those who disagree have been stereotyped as bigoted, prejudiced.
When (and I have asked this many times) did tolerance become synonymous with tacit approval?
This group seeks to trade sin for sin.
I am not discounting those who have been and are prejudiced and bigoted against homosexuals. Plenty of Catholics, non-Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics and atheists have been - and continue to be - discriminatory against homosexuals. I'm not making excuses for anyone's sins against their fellow man, gay or straight. Since we belong to the mystical body of Christ, since we are all members of one Body, one person's sin afflicts the entire body. That's a metaphysical theological truth.
And another truth, one that has been taught since the beginning, is that homosexual acts are immoral, and depending on the individual's disposition, they are mortal sins. The Church, in upholding that teaching, is not being discriminatory or prejudiced. It is an act of love to teach the truth - not an act of bigotry. The Church is acting like a loving parent, maintaining safe boundaries for all Her wayward children.
And, of course, not everyone sees it that way. There are plenty who see the boundaries as unfair and unjust.
The pro-gay crowd believes they are seeking justice, but given the rhetoric on display from coast to coast, and in articles such as this, what they really seek is reparation.
It would not surprise me if some privately agree with the SLPC's recent list of anti-gay groups, and want to have them identified as 'hate groups'. It would not surprise me if the more militant members among them desire an eye for an eye - maybe even two eyes, an ear and a few fingers for an eye. Again - not so "pro-love".
So they enlist focus groups and polls in order to make their case, and they use the data to (hopefully) wear down the bishops and win support for their cause. They might win support, but as for the Church changing Her teaching? Not gonna happen. Marriage will be taught as one man + one woman, and homosexual acts will still be intrinsically evil. That's just the way it will be.
When faith is reduced to politics and marketing, you end up with ideology and preferences. You end up with consensus. But you rarely, if ever, end up with Truth. And you ultimately end up with zero faith.
Such folks are unwilling to rise out of the muck and mire of sin - rather, they want everyone else down there with them. But Christ came to save us from our sin, not tell us it was okay to wallow there in misery. And that's the ironic thing - even if they get their way on the issue of so-called gay marriage, they'll still be in misery.
Larry's blog, Acts of the Apostasy, is well worth the visit. I have quoted his post (w/ slight editing) here - in full - because it needed no adjustment in my opinion.
No copyright infringement intended. All posts are fully cited for source and author. I have provided links back to the original source whenever possible. This information is for my personal, Faith Formation, Confirmation class, OCIC and homeschool referencing.
I am so very grateful to the authors, website and blog owners for sharing this information, commentary, and knowledge.
I think these two sentences Larry wrote are worth repeating . . .
________________________________________________________________________________(Some) folks are unwilling to rise out of the muck and mire of sin - rather, they want everyone else down there with them. But Christ came to save us from our sin, not tell us it was okay to wallow there in misery.
Check this out - WARNING! you will be shaking your head in disgust at the way this "Reverend" warps Word of God:
Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ talks with Rev. John Makokha, senior pastor of Riruta United Methodist Church in Nairobi, Kenya. He is the African correspondent for Reconciling Ministries Network and the Country Coordinator of Other Sheep Kenya Trust, a faith-based LGBTI organization. John is the Africa Author of Reconciling Ministries Network. He passionately runs educational awareness seminars on human sexuality and gender identity programs to address religious homophobia and transphobia in Kenya with his wife Anne.
You can click on the link (OUTTAKE VOICES™) to hear this interview. This is part of it.
You can click on the link (OUTTAKE VOICES™) to hear this interview. This is part of it.
When asked what he thought about American religious leaders' influence on Africa, Makokha stated,
“I’m really concerned about the American Fundamental Christian leaders who are very, very homophobic. I think what America needs to do is focus on what the bible says about human sexuality and gender identity and maybe try to reach out in Christian awareness and maybe have conferences with Fundamental Christian Religious leaders so they can tone down their red flags on homosexuality. I’m sorry to say it is a big concern in Africa that we respect each other's opinions but the Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian leaders from America have been transporting homophobia to Africa. The best example is the bill in Uganda and even in Kenya and other parts of Africa have been receiving big chunks of money to propagate heterosexuality and propagate homophobia.”
Friday, October 15, 2010
Truce? We Cannot Agree to Disagree on Life!
"Sorry, but this is a proposal we in the pro-life movement can't accept. There can be no truce," Pavone writes in a new column at the Washington Times.
"It is dismaying to hear some pro-life politicians calling for a 'truce' on social issues like abortion - possible White House contenders Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour among them. Their suggestion is that it's more important to do whatever is necessary to get elected than to worry about issues that appear to be intractable," he says.
Pavone says asking pro-life advocates to "agree to disagree" on abortion is akin to asking them to change their position on the killing of unborn children. He says,
"Why do we disagree in the first place? When we oppose abortion, we disagree with the notion that it is even negotiable. We do not only claim that we cannot practice abortion, but that nobody can practice it, precisely because it violates the most fundamental human right, the right to life."
"To "agree to disagree" means that we no longer see abortion for what it is - a violation of a right so fundamental that disagreement cannot be allowed to tamper with it," the Priests for Life leader continues.
- No issue is less settled than abortion.
- More importantly, America's courts and legislatures have a history of changing "settled law," he argues, and cited the eventual overturning of the Dred Scott case and Plessy v. Ferguson .
"We are now witnessing the same trend regarding children in the womb. Evidence that has been around for quite some time demonstrating their humanity, and their inalienable right to life, is finding its way into legislatures and courts," Pavone continued. "With hundreds of embryological studies, and massive evidence of the harm abortion does to women, such evidence, combined with new legal concepts, can challenge Roe v. Wade in the same way its erroneous ancestral decisions were challenged."
Pavone noted that the day after Roe v. Wade was decided, the New York Times headline read, "Supreme Court settles abortion."
"It has remained the most unsettled issue on our national landscape," he concluded.
The truce has come under fire from Rep. Mike Pence, Congressman Paul Ryan, and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, among others.
Also, several pro-life gorups, including LifeNews.com, released a joint statement condemning the truce.
You can read the entire article HERE.
SOURCE: LifeNews.com
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Mandatory Opposing Viewpoint is Bad Enough (& WHO gets to choose that?)
H/T: Creative Minority Report
Everything Obama's regulatory czar says in this interview is pretty crazy. Everything. But the lowlight is when he says "The word 'voluntary' is a little complicated."
Buckle up, folks, we may be hitting some fascism ahead.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Healthcare Bill - USCCB's Response
By 1 Sarah Rozman
As President Obama signed the healthcare bill into law, the USCCB released a 2 statement from Cardinal Francis George, president of the USCCB. A few highlights:
And Creative Minority Report posted 4 a list of the Catholic representatives who voted “Yes” on the bill. The list went on and on…84 Catholic congressmen voted “yes” on this healthcare legislation.
SOURCES: date of original post: March 24, 2010
1 http://www.cufblog.org/?p=
2 http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2010/10-054.shtml
3 http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1001219.htm
4 The List http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2010/03/love-obamacare-thank-catholic.html
As President Obama signed the healthcare bill into law, the USCCB released a 2 statement from Cardinal Francis George, president of the USCCB. A few highlights:
- Why the bishops support reform of our healthcare system: “so that all may have access to the care that recognizes and affirms their human dignity.”
- Why the Catholic bishops have opposed this bill’s passage: “There is compelling evidence that it would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion. The statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions. Its failure to preserve the legal status quo that has regulated the government’s relation to abortion…could undermine what has been the law of our land for decades and threatens the consensus of the majority of Americans: that federal funds not be used for abortions or plans that cover abortions.”
- What the need for an Executive Order signifies: “deficiencies in the statute itself.” The Cardinal continues, “We do not understand how an Executive Order, no matter how well intentioned, can substitute for statutory provisions.”
- Why the bill is “profoundly flawed,” part 2: “It has failed to include necessary language to provide essential conscience protections.” Cardinal George also notes why the bill could leave many immigrant workers and their families “worse off.”
- Why pro-life Members of Congress should be recognized: for their “principled actions…[working] courageously to create legislation that respects the principles outlined above. They have often been vilified and have worked against great odds.”
- What role the bishops play: “As bishops of the Catholic Church, we speak in the name of the Church and for the Catholic faith itself.”
And Creative Minority Report posted 4 a list of the Catholic representatives who voted “Yes” on the bill. The list went on and on…84 Catholic congressmen voted “yes” on this healthcare legislation.
SOURCES: date of original post: March 24, 2010
1 http://www.cufblog.org/?p=
2 http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2010/10-054.shtml
3 http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1001219.htm
4 The List http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2010/03/love-obamacare-thank-catholic.html
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Health Care Reform - I would like to congratulate Barack Obama in his victory over the American people
All I have to say right now is
John 11:35
Jesus wept.
Out of sympathy with those who were in tears all around him, as well as from a deep sense of the misery sin had brought upon human nature.
and Matthew 15:13-14
- He said in reply, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
- Let them alone; they are blind guides (of the blind). If a blind person leads a blind person, both will fall into a pit."
- Footnote from USCCB: [13-14] Jesus leads his disciples away from the teaching authority of the Pharisees.
- and Galatians 6:7-8
- Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will reap only what he sows,
- because the one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.
See who voted yes and no here.
And is this just a political ploy or is this for real?
I asked a person much more knowledgeable than I and here was the answer.
The Congress that enacted the bill is unlikely to vote to repeal it and even if that miracle happened, the President would veto and there certainly is no super majority to override.
THE REAL ARITHMETIC OF HEALTH CARE REFORM NYTimes.com
Curt Jester Says it in a Nutshell
Stupak has now done his Lucy impression to Charlie Brown pro-lifers. Come on I will hold the football.
A Stupak is born every minute.
Rep Stupak was asked who is his favorite Bible personality - he replied "Esau of course, he was a man who knew how to trade for pottage"
I bet Sen. Ben Nelson is happy right not that pro-lifers have somebody else to turn their ire towards.
Every story about Pro-Life Democratic Politicians should begin "Once upon a time ...."
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