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CRUSADES
July 15, 1999, was the nine-hundredth anniversary of the reconquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. If anything notably marks this anniversary, it is the now rather popular custom among some Christians of making hyperbolic gestures of repentance on behalf of the Church for the misdeeds of crusaders. Standing in stark contrast to this, at this very moment Christians are suffering the most abject atrocities at the hands of Islamic tyrants from whom, presumably, we are asking forgiveness. The Islamic regime in the Sudan has long been pursuing a policy of enslavement and extermination of the Christians in that country. The situation in many other Islamic states is almost as bad. Even in more moderate Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Christians are subject to severe restrictions. Recall that the Allied troops during the Gulf War -- fighting in part for the interests of Islamic nations - were forbidden to use any Christian symbols. Catholic chaplians could not display crosses either on their uniforms or on their quarters. The Crusades were inspired by the revulsion Christians felt at exactly the sort of "ethnic cleansing" now being perpetrated against Catholics in southern Sudan and by supreme indignation at the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre. At the same time, the Christian world was weakened by petty quarrels and divided by schism, Pope Blessed Urban II realized that a crusade was the only hope for Christendom. His call was answered enthusiastically the the nobility of Europe. In time of war there will always be accidents and misdeeds. That is the nature of war. When war is long and protracted and conducted in primitive and uncontrolled circumstances, this is more so, but our modern methods are not without their "collateral damage" either. The world of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries existed in a state of turmoil. Nowhere could the luxury of peace be preserved without constant readiness for war and for military stuggle itself. Little or no attention is paid in these modern "confessions" to the historical situations that brought about the Crusades or to the reasons why so many Catholic knights gave up riches and comforts at home for danger and death in the desert. The fact that the Holy Land had been invaded and that Christian pilgrims, who had been going there peacefully for generations, were then being robbed and slaughtered receives scant attention. Focus is only on the mistakes and failings and the "mission creep" that befell many of the crusading elements. No consideration of the defensive nature of the Crusades or the diversity of the different wars that go by the name "crusade" is considered. It is forgotten that had it not been for the Crusades, there is a high probability that Europe would be a patchwork of Islamic regimes instead of the center of Christianity. (Thomas Becket) |
