Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 57

New: "Redeemed by Grace: A Catholic Woman's Journey to Planned Parenthood and Back"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Redeemed by Grace: A Catholic Woman's Journey to Planned Parenthood and Back

by Ramona Treviño with Roxane Salonen

At age eight, Ramona Treviño climbed to the top of a roof and begged God to let her know he was real. After receiving a sign, she made a pact with herself to follow him always. But family difficulties and growing pains made it hard for her to continue on that path.

Pregnant at 16, she dropped out of high school and entered an abusive marriage, which ended in divorce. Wanting to make a difference and to help girls in similar tough situations, she accepted a job as the manager of a Planned Parenthood facility in Sherman, Texas. Over time, however, Ramona began to grapple with whether she was doing women more harm than good, setting her on a path to seek the truth, no matter where it might lead.

Realizing she could no longer refer women for abortions or provide them with false assurances of risk-free sex, Ramona took a leap of faith and left the financial security of her job. Her ultimate conversion involved a full return to the Catholic faith of her childhood and a new role as a pro-life advocate and speaker.

This compelling story tells of Ramona’s struggle to reconcile her identity as a daughter of God with a world that sends conflicting messages concerning the source of our dignity and happiness. It is the honest and heartfelt account of a woman who, with the help of grace, strove to overcome the wounds of her own past while becoming an agent of healing for others.

Ramona Treviño, devoted wife and mother, is a lifelong resident of Trenton, TX. After her exodus from Planned Parenthood, Ramona became an international public speaker and prolife advocate, speaking for the dignity and sanctity of life. She is proud to be called prolife, pro-woman, and pro-family.

Roxane Salonen has worked in professional communications for more than twenty years, including as an award-winning columnist, reporter, children’s author, and freelance writer. The wife and mother has also been a radio host, a communications director, and an editor for the Diocese of Fargo, North Dakota. Her blog posts on faith and family appear regularly at Catholicmom.com and Peace Garden Mama.

Praise for Redeemed by Grace:

"A riveting story! Offers important insights on the fight for life in the modern age."
- Jennifer Fulwiler, Author, Something Other Than God

"An enthralling, page-turning memoir. You won't want to put this book down!"
- Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle, EWTN TV Host

"A must-read book! It shows us that no matter how far we stray from God, his mercy can always bring us back."
- Shawn Carney, National Director, 40 Days for Life

"Stark, challenging and yet filled with hope. The work can and will save lives!"
- Lisa Hendey, Founder, CatholicMom.com

Fifty Shades of Grey = Fifty Shades of Desperation

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Fifty Shades of Grey = Fifty Shades of Desperation | Teresa Tomeo | Catholic World Report

Real women should be desperate enough to tear down the shades and let in the light of the truth about femininity and sexuality

When did women become so down right desperate?

Yes, desperate. It might sound like a harsh question, but when you step back and take an honest look at the big picture involving the Fifty Shades of Grey “mommy porn” phenomenon—and I am not just talking about the release of the new Fifty Shades film version—you will hopefully see how desperate is quite an appropriate word.

How else are we to describe the millions upon millions of female fans who think the fictional character, Christian Grey, actually has something to offer them besides helping to glamorize and promote their own continued sexual exploitation and degradation?

Book sales are now breaking records in Great Britain and the U.S., with the majority of its fan base married women older than 30. The books have been published in 50 languages. But it’s not just the books and the new film that are bringing in the big bucks. Target, Vermont Teddy Bear Company, O.P.I. nail products, and countless other companies have all jumped in the filthy Fifty Shades pool, as women apparently cannot get enough of the Fifty Shades accessories. Guys: forget chocolate and roses. Sex toys and Christian Grey Teddy Bears in a business suit with a mask in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other are among the top items on many a girl’s Valentine’s Day list.

There is even a cookbook entitled, Fifty Shades of Gravy: Rude Recipes for Dirty Dinner Parties. You just can’t make this stuff up. While Fifty Shades of Grey is seemingly everywhere, it is also just one more reminder of the desperate (there is that word again) situation in which we find ourselves. It’s a situation that women, including the most hardened feminists of the bunch, are in a big way partially responsible for.

I was a product of the Seventies and the “I am woman, hear me roar” generation.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "A Time of Renewal: Daily Reflections for the Lenten Season"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

A Time of Renewal: Daily Reflections for the Lenten Season

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

Mother Mary Francis, abbess of a Poor Clare Monastery for over forty years, left an enduring legacy in her writings and in the conferences she gave to her spiritual daughters. In this work she presents beautiful meditations on the liturgical season of Lent, revealing the treasures of the liturgy to Christians in all walks of life. Her insight into Holy Scripture and her poet's heart engendered reflections that illuminate the daily Mass readings in a fresh and attractive way.

These meditations enlighten the reader to see conversion as positive and enriching, and help us to understand that the generous embrace of Lenten penance has a purpose and brings a wondrous reward: deeper union with God. She was a true daughter of Saint Francis of Assisi, who found perfect joy by turning away from self to God.

As a spiritual guide, Mother Mary Francis excels in the art of persuasion, aware that the human heart cannot be forced but only gently led to holiness. She makes this goal attractive and desirable by tirelessly explaining why striving for holiness is the happiest and wisest way to live. This book provides a wealth of material for plundering the riches of the Lenten season and for deepening one's spiritual life. Her meditations are profound and timeless, not changing from year to year, thus providing a lifetime of Lenten meditations in this one volume.

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., (1921–2006) was for more than forty years the abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. She is recognized as an authoritative voice for contemplative spirituality, prayer and the renewal of religious life. She wrote many books, including A Right to Be Merry and Come, Lord Jesus, which is a collection of her reflections for Advent.

Praise for A Time of Renewal:

"This beautiful work is a sharing of a lifetime of spiritual wisdom of an abbess, and the richness of her many years leading her community. She teaches us how to pray well. As her students we are led day by day into what was once familiar territory but now becomes new treasures of grace."
— Mother Dolores Hart, O.S.B., Author, The Ear of the Heart

A Tale of Two Bishops

A Tale of Two Bishops | Carl E. Olson | CWR Editorial

One is described as “America's Pope Francis”. One is criticized for failing to "truly walk the talk" set forth by Francis. Who is he?

It was the best of times...” One bishop was described, in a recent interview with a major network, as “America's Pope Francis”. A veteran Catholic journalist described him as “humble and open, precisely the sort of pastor who 'carries the smell of his sheep' that Francis has said he wants.”

It was the worst of times...” One bishop was strongly criticized, in a just published op-ed in a large newspaper, as “a bishop who, while professing to reflect the new direction set by Pope Francis, does not by his actions truly walk the talk.” The author insinuated that this bishop was not “in sync with the new pope, who acts and speaks with common sense and humanity guiding him.”

Fascinating, I'd say. It is even more fascinating considering that the two bishops are one and the same man: Archbishop Blase Cupich, the recently installed head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who had previously spent almost five years as bishop of the Diocese of Spokane.

On November 30, 2014, Abp. Cupich was interviewed by Norah O'Donnell, host of CBS's “Face the Nation”, who prefaced her live interview with Archbishop Cupich by saying, “Finally today, some are asking if he's America's Pope Francis.” Who those “some” are is not clear, but perhaps they included journalist John Allen, Jr., whose September 20th CRUX piece about Cupich's appointment stated, “By now, the profile of a 'Francis bishop' has come into focus: Ideologically, moderates rather than hardliners; pastorally, men who place special emphasis on concern for the poor and those at the margins; and personally, leaders who aren’t flashy personality types, with a reputation for being accessible and hands-on.” Allen then lauded Cupich as “humble and open,” the sort of pastor who “carries the smell of his sheep” referenced by Pope Francis.

On Sunday, February 2nd, The Spokesman-Review published an op-ed, “Catholic Church better off if bishops follow pope’s lead,” written by Chris Carlson, former press secretary to four-time Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus, a Democrat who is not, it seems apparent, a “conservative” Catholic. Carlson focuses on a recent story that is familiar to Catholics in Spokane but has hardly been noted—with a couple of exceptions—outside of the Inland Northwest:

The recent settlement of a malpractice lawsuit filed by the Diocese of Spokane against its longtime outside counsel should be viewed as another example of a bishop who, while professing to reflect the new direction set by Pope Francis, does not by his actions truly walk the talk.

The Spokane Catholic diocese, while under the leadership of Bishop Blase Cupich – now archbishop in Chicago – spent two-and-one-half years, and who knows how many wasted dollars, because he was, according to the deposition of former vicar general the Rev. Steven Dublinski, “throwing mud at Paine-Hamblen to see if any mud sticks.”

The difficult, perplexing background

The story of the lawsuit against Paine Hamblen, the highly respected Spokane-based law firm that represented the Diocese of Spokane for over a decade, is complicated and riveting. In fact, it has the makings of catnip for journalists angling for sensational news about the Church: an unprecedented malpractice lawsuit by the bishop against the Catholic lawyers who had spent years representing the diocese in settling close to 200 sexual abuse claims; a resulting legal battle over millions of dollars (a “money grab”) and claims of conflict of interest; clashes and a resignation within a chancery over the handling of sexual abuse cases; accusations of a bishop involved in backroom mudslinging; a letter sent to Pope Francis because of allegedly “vindictive” actions by the bishop against fellow Catholics.

And yet, oddly enough, the story barely registered with national media and Catholic media alike.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Christ's healings "announced a more radical healing"

"Jesus Heals the Blind and Lame on the Mountain" by James Tissot (1836-1902) [WikiArt.org]

A Scripture Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, February 8, 2015, the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time | Carl E. Olson

Readings:

• Jb 7:1-4, 6-7
• Ps 147:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
• 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23
• Mk 1:29-39

Fast-paced. Abrupt transitions. Constant action. Confrontations. Good vs. Evil. Death. Demons. Sickness. A decisive hero of few words. Supernatural acts.

Such words might be used to describe a movie, a comic book, or a work of fantastical fiction. But they actually describe very well the Gospel of Mark, which is punchy and fast moving, the shortest of the four Gospels. Of course, it has the significant feature of being a true account of historical events and people.

As Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch write in their commentary, “Mark paints a portrait of Jesus that is vivid and dynamic, focusing most of his attention on Jesus’ mighty works.” Aside from two discourses (Mk 4:1-32; 13;1-37), the second Gospel “depicts Jesus as an active healer and exorcist continually on the move ...” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible). The urgency of St. Mark’s style is evidenced by his repeated use of the word “immediately,” which appears over forty times in the span of just sixteen chapters.

All of these qualities are found in abundance in the readings from the first chapter of Mark, heard last week, this week, and next week. In last week’s reading (Mk 1:21-28), Jesus confronted a demon after speaking in the synagogue. In today’s reading he is described healing a variety of physical illnesses and casting out more demons. And next week’s reading depicts Jesus’ dramatic interaction with a desperate leper.

These actions demonstrated—in startling, powerful fashion—the reality of what Jesus declared in Mark 1:15: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” The kingdom is not about words only, but about the saving, healing actions of the only Word, the Son of God. By casting out demons, Jesus showed his power over the dominion of darkness and spiritual death. By healing the sick, he revealed his love and care for those who suffer, who are blind, lame, and deaf. Those physical healings, the Catechism points out, “announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world,’ of which illness is only a consequence” (par 1505).

Jesus himself made explicit this connection between physical maladies and spiritual sickness. “Those who are well do not need a physician,” he said to the scribes questioning his motives and methods, “but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mk 2:17). It is a sad and desperate fact of the Fall that once we are born, we begin to die. We need to be reborn through radical, supernatural surgery: a new heart, a transformed mind, a sanctified spirit.

“The wounded surgeon plies the steel,” wrote T.S. Eliot, in Four Quartets, of the Physician of souls. “Beneath the bleeding hands we feel/The sharp compassion of the healer’s art/Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.” The fever afflicting Simon’s mother-in-law was likely deadly; the scene is set forth with curt urgency. Upon being “raised up”—the same language used, it is worth noting, of the risen Lord after his death (Mark 16:6)—she waits upon Jesus and his disciples.

Why? St. Jerome thought the question was silly. “Can you imagine Jesus standing before your bed and you continue sleeping?” he wrote, “It is absurd that you would remain in bed in his presence.” He focused on the spiritual meaning of the physical actions involved. “See how costly is the compassion of the Savior,” he stated, “Our sins give off a terrible odor; they are rottenness.”

But the fever of sin and the stench of death flee at the touch of the Savior. The sharp compassion of the holy healer cuts us to the quick. The grace-filled paradox, as Eastern Christians sing during Easter, is that “by death He conquered death.” It is not, praise God, just a movie, or a comic book, or a work of fantastical fiction.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the February 8, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

8 Myths About the Crusades

8 Myths About the Crusades | Dr. Thomas F. Madden

[This article originally appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of Catholic Dossier.]

The Crusades are much in the news of late. President Bush made the mistake of referring to the war against terrorism as a "crusade" and was roundly criticized for uttering a word both offensive and hurtful to the world’s Muslims. If it is painful, then it is remarkable indeed how often the Arabs themselves make use of the word. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have repeatedly referred to Americans as "crusaders" and the present war as a "crusade against Islam." For decades now Americans have been routinely referred to as "crusaders" or "cowboys" among Arabs in the Middle East. Clearly the crusades are very much alive in the Muslim world.

They are not forgotten in the West either. Actually, despite the many differences between the East and West, most people in both cultures are in agreement about the Crusades. It is commonly accepted that the Crusades are a black mark on the history of Western civilization generally and the Catholic Church in particular. Anyone eager to bash Catholics will not long tarry before brandishing the Crusades and the Inquisition. The Crusades are often used as a classic example of the evil that organized religion can do. Your average man on the street in both New York and Cairo would agree that the Crusades were an insidious, cynical, and unprovoked attack by religious zealots against a peaceful, prosperous, and sophisticated Muslim world.

It was not always so. During the Middle Ages you could not find a Christian in Europe who did not believe that the Crusades were an act of highest good. Even the Muslims respected the ideals of the Crusades and the piety of the men who fought them. But that all changed with the Protestant Reformation. For Martin Luther, who had already jettisoned the Christian doctrines of papal authority and indulgences, the Crusades were nothing more than a ploy by a power-hungry papacy. Indeed, he argued that to fight the Muslims was to fight Christ himself, for it was he who had sent the Turks to punish Christendom for its faithlessness. When Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his armies began to invade Austria, Luther changed his mind about the need to fight, but he stuck to his condemnation of the Crusades. During the next two centuries people tended to view the Crusades through a confessional lens: Protestants demonized them, Catholics extolled them. As for Suleiman and his successors, they were just glad to be rid of them.

It was in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century that the current view of the Crusades was born. Most of the philosophes, like Voltaire, believed that medieval Christianity was a vile superstition. For them the Crusades were a migration of barbarians led by fanaticism, greed, and lust. Since then, the Enlightenment take on the Crusades has gone in and out of fashion. The Crusades received good press as wars of nobility (although not religion) during the Romantic period and the early twentieth century. After the Second World War, however, opinion again turned decisively against the Crusades. In the wake of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, historians found war of ideology–any ideology –distasteful. This sentiment was summed up by Sir Steven Runciman in his three-volume work, A History of the Crusades (1951-54). For Runciman, the Crusades were morally repugnant acts of intolerance in the name of God. The medieval men who took the cross and marched to the Middle East were either cynically evil, rapaciously greedy, or naively gullible. This beautifully written history soon became the standard. Almost single-handedly Runciman managed to define the modern popular view of the Crusades.

Since the 1970s the Crusades have attracted many hundreds of scholars who have meticulously poked, prodded, and examined them. As a result, much more is known about Christianity’s holy wars than ever before. Yet the fruits of decades of scholarship have been slow to enter the popular mind. In part this is the fault of professional historians, who tend to publish studies that, by necessity, are technical and therefore not easily accessible outside of the academy. But it is also due to a clear reluctance among modern elites to let go of Runciman’s vision of the Crusades. And so modern popular books on the Crusades–desiring, after all, to be popular–tend to parrot Runciman. The same is true for other media, like the multi-part television documentary, The Crusades (1995), produced by BBC/A&E and starring Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. To give the latter an air of authority the producers spliced in a number of distinguished Crusade historians who gave their views on events. The problem was that the historians would not go along with Runciman’s ideas. No matter. The producers simply edited the taped interviews cleverly enough that the historians seemed to be agreeing with Runciman. As Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith quite vehemently told me, "They made me appear to say things that I do not believe!"

So, what is the real story of the Crusades? As you might imagine, it is a long story. But there are good histories, written in the last twenty years, that lay much of it out. For the moment, given the barrage of coverage that the Crusades are getting nowadays, it might be best to consider just what the Crusades were not. Here, then, are some of the most common myths and why they are wrong.

Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.

This is as wrong as wrong can be. From the time of Mohammed, Muslims had sought to conquer the Christian world. They did a pretty good job of it, too. After a few centuries of steady conquests, Muslim armies had taken all of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and most of Spain. In other words, by the end of the eleventh century the forces of Islam had captured two-thirds of the Christian world. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities: These were not the periphery of Christianity but its very core. And the Muslim empires were not finished yet. They continued to press westward toward Constantinople, ultimately passing it and entering Europe itself. As far as unprovoked aggression goes, it was all on the Muslim side. At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest. The First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to an urgent plea for help from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. Urban called the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of their eastern brethren. It was to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Christians of the East from their Muslim conquerors. In other words, the Crusades were from the beginning a defensive war. The entire history of the eastern Crusades is one of response to Muslim aggression.

Myth 2: The Crusaders wore crosses, but they were really only interested in capturing booty and land. Their pious platitudes were just a cover for rapacious greed.

Historians used to believe that a rise in Europe’s population led to a crisis of too many noble "second sons," those who were trained in chivalric warfare but who had no feudal lands to inherit. The Crusades, therefore, were seen as a safety valve, sending these belligerent men far from Europe where they could carve out lands for themselves at someone else’s expense. Modern scholarship, assisted by the advent of computer databases, has exploded this myth. We now know that it was the "first sons" of Europe that answered the pope’s call in 1095, as well as in subsequent Crusades. Crusading was an enormously expensive operation. Lords were forced to sell off or mortgage their lands to gather the necessary funds. They were also not interested in an overseas kingdom. Much like a soldier today, the medieval Crusader was proud to do his duty but longed to return home. After the spectacular successes of the First Crusade, with Jerusalem and much of Palestine in Crusader hands, virtually all of the Crusaders went home. Only a tiny handful remained behind to consolidate and govern the newly won territories. Booty was also scarce. In fact, although Crusaders no doubt dreamed of vast wealth in opulent Eastern cities, virtually none of them ever even recouped their expenses. But money and land were not the reasons that they went on Crusade in the first place. They went to atone for their sins and to win salvation by doing good works in a faraway land.

Myth 3: When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman, and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.

This is a favorite used to demonstrate the evil nature of the Crusades. Most recently, Bill Clinton in a speech at Georgetown cited this as one reason the United States is a victim of Muslim terrorism. (Although Mr. Clinton brought the blood up to knee level for effect.) It is certainly true that many people in Jerusalem were killed after the Crusaders captured the city. But this must be understood in historical context. The accepted moral standard in all pre-modern European and Asian civilizations was that a city that resisted capture and was taken by force belonged to the victorious forces. That included not just the buildings and goods, but the people as well. That is why every city or fortress had to weigh carefully whether it could hold out against besiegers. If not, it was wise to negotiate terms of surrender. In the case of Jerusalem, the defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the Crusaders at bay until a relief force in Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. By modern standards this may seem brutal. Yet a medieval knight would point out that many more innocent men, women, and children are killed in modern bombing warfare than could possibly be put to the sword in one or two days. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the Crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property, and allowed to worship freely. As for those streets of blood, no historian accepts them as anything other than a literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town. The amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many more people than lived in the region, let alone the city.

Myth 4: The Crusades were just medieval colonialism dressed up in religious finery.

It is important to remember that in the Middle Ages the West was not a powerful, dominant culture venturing into a primitive or backward region. It was the Muslim East that was powerful, wealthy, and opulent. Europe was the third world. The Crusader States, founded in the wake of the First Crusade, were not new plantations of Catholics in a Muslim world akin to the British colonization of America. Catholic presence in the Crusader States was always tiny, easily less than ten percent of the population. These were the rulers and magistrates, as well as Italian merchants and members of the military orders. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Crusader States was Muslim. They were not colonies, therefore, in the sense of plantations or even factories, as in the case of India. They were outposts. The ultimate purpose of the Crusader States was to defend the Holy Places in Palestine, especially Jerusalem, and to provide a safe environment for Christian pilgrims to visit those places. There was no mother country with which the Crusader States had an economic relationship, nor did Europeans economically benefit from them. Quite the contrary, the expense of Crusades to maintain the Latin East was a serious drain on European resources. As an outpost, the Crusader States kept a military focus. While the Muslims warred against each other the Crusader States were safe, but once united the Muslims were able to dismantle the strongholds, capture the cities, and in 1291 expel the Christians completely.

Myth 5: The Crusades were also waged against the Jews.

No pope ever called a Crusade against Jews. During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it. These misfires of the movement were an unfortunate byproduct of Crusade enthusiasm. But they were not the purpose of the Crusades. To use a modern analogy, during the Second World War some American soldiers committed crimes while overseas. They were arrested and punished for those crimes. But the purpose of the Second World War was not to commit crimes.

Myth 6: The Crusades were so corrupt and vile that they even had a Children’s Crusade.

The so-called "Children’s Crusade" of 1212 was neither a Crusade nor an army of children. It was a particularly large eruption of popular religious enthusiasm in Germany that led some young people, mostly adolescents, to proclaim themselves Crusaders and begin marching to the sea. Along the way they gathered plenty of popular support and not a few brigands, robbers, and beggars as well. The movement splintered in Italy and finally ended when the Mediterranean failed to dry up for them to cross. Pope Innocent III did not call this "Crusade." Indeed, he repeatedly urged non-combatants to stay at home, helping the war effort through fasting, prayer, and alms. In this case, he praised the zeal of the young who had marched so far, and then told them to go home.

Myth 7: Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades.

This is an odd myth, given that the pope was so roundly criticized for failing to apologize directly for the Crusades when he asked forgiveness from all those that Christians had unjustly harmed. It is true that John Paul recently apologized to the Greeks for the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204. But the pope at the time, Innocent III, expressed similar regret. That, too, was a tragic misfire that Innocent had done everything he could to avoid.

Myth 8: Muslims, who remember the Crusades vividly, have good reason to hate the West.

Actually, the Muslim world remembers the Crusades about as well as the West–in other words, incorrectly. That should not be surprising. Muslims get their information about the Crusades from the same rotten histories that the West relies on. The Muslim world used to celebrate the Crusades as a great victory for them. They did, after all, win. But western authors, fretting about the legacy of modern imperialism, have recast the Crusades as wars of aggression and the Muslims as placid sufferers. In so doing they have rescinded centuries of Muslim triumphs, offering in their stead only the consolation of victimhood.

[This article originally appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of Catholic Dossier.]

Thomas F. Madden is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is author of A Concise History of the Crusades and co-author of The Fourth Crusade.

The Crusades 101

The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin | IgnatiusInsight.com

As conventionally reckoned, the Crusades were a set of eight expeditions to the East that occurred in just under a two-century period, from 1095 to 1270. The term crusade has since expanded to be applied to a wide variety of wars--especially ones involving religion--and even to things that are not wars at all (e.g., Billy Graham's evangelistic events). Here we will focus on the eight traditional Crusades.

Historical Background

Understanding the Crusades requires an appreciation of the events that led to them. Since the legalization of Christianity in the early 300s, European Christians had been conducting pilgrimages to Palestine in order to visit the holy sites associated with the life of our Lord. These pilgrimages were major exercises of piety, for in that age travel to the Holy Land was difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and dangerous. Some pilgrimages took years to complete.

Christians also went to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in order to live ascetic lives. This was the age in which Christian monasticism blossomed, and numerous Christians were anxious to go to the Holy Land and Egypt in order to lead lives consecrated to God by asceticism. They also undertook the hardships of the journey. For both pilgrims and ascetics there was one factor ameliorating the journey: the path to Palestine went through Christian lands.

In A.D. 612, the Arabian Muhammad, son of Abdallah, reported receiving a prophetic call from God through the angel Gabriel. At first, he made few converts. However, after being driven from his native Mecca in 622, he found refuge in the city of Medina, where his followers increased. Mounting a military campaign, Muhammad conquered several pagan, Jewish, and Christian tribes and was able to seize control of his native Mecca, as well as all of Arabia. He died in 632.

Following his death, Muhammad's successors--the caliphs--continued an aggressive campaign of expansion. In less than a century they had seized control--among other lands--of Syria, Palestine, and North Africa. Though today we are used to thinking of these lands as Muslim, at the time they were Christian. It has been said that the expanding Muslim empire consumed half of Christian civilization. Even Europe itself was threatened. Muslims seized control of southern Spain, invaded France, and were threatening to invade Rome itself when their advance was defeated by Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers in 732.

It had been a hard century.

After Muslim expansion in Western Europe had been checked for the moment, their attention for a time turned elsewhere, and within two more centuries they had conquered Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India. They also later advanced against Christian nations, conquering the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and encroaching as far as Vienna, Austria in 1683.

The Crusades occurred in the middle of this struggle. The immediate preparation for them took place in the eleventh century, with increases in long-standing tensions between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

Palestine had been under Muslim control for some time, though with concessions to the Christians who visited and lived in it. However, in 1009 the Fatimite caliph of Egypt ordered the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre--the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem--which was a principal focus of Christian pilgrimages. It was later rebuilt.

The heightened danger to Christians making pilgrimages to the Holy Land only served to increase enthusiasm for such journeys, as they were now more difficult and thus greater acts of piety. During the eleventh century, thousands of Christians braved the dangers, often traveling with armed Christian escorts, who sometimes protected as many as twelve thousand pilgrims at a time.

The Seljuq Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century, began conquering parts of the Muslim world, which made pilgrimages more dangerous, if not impossible. The Seljuqs took Jerusalem in 1070 and began threatening the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was captured by the Seljuqs at the battle of Manzikert in 1071. His successor, Michael VII Ducas, sought the aid of Pope Gregory VII, who considered leading a military expedition to drive back the Turks, recover the Holy Sepulchre, and restore Christian unity following the de facto breach that had occurred with Eastern Christendom in 1054. However, the Investiture Controversy frustrated these plans.

The Seljuqs continued to expand, in 1084 capturing the city of Antioch and in 1092 the city of Nicaea, where two famous ecumenical councils had been held centuries before. By the 1090s, the historic metropolitan sees of Asia were in the hands of Muslims, who were now dangerously close to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The emperor, Alexius I Comnenus, appealed to Pope Urban II for aid.

The First Crusade (1095-1101)

Unlike Gregory VII, Urban II was in a position to respond to the Eastern pleas for help. In November 1095, he convened the Council of Clermont in southern France, where he exhorted the attendees--who included not only bishops and abbots but also nobility, knights, and common men--concerning the plight of Eastern Christendom.

There had been much in-fighting among Europeans, and at the outdoor assembly the Pope urged them to make peace with each other and to turn their military efforts toward a constructive cause--defending Christendom against Muslim advances, assisting the Eastern Christians, and reclaiming the Holy Sepulchre. He also stressed the need for penance and spiritual motives in undertaking the campaign, offering a plenary indulgence for those vowing to undertake it in this spirit. The response was extremely enthusiastic, with attendees crying Deus vult!--"God wills it!"

It was also decided at the Council of Clermont that those undertaking the campaign would wear a red cross (Latin, crux), leading later to the name crusade.

Preparations began across Europe. These were not always well-organized, nor did they always live up to the spiritual mandate of the pope. Some would-be crusaders were so ill-equipped that as they journeyed toward the Holy Land they turned to looting to find sustenance. Some Germans massacred Jewish individuals. Some never made it as far as Constantinople. Other participants in the disorganized "People's Crusade," after arriving there, were so unruly that in August 1096 the Emperor sent them across the Bosphorus ahead of the main crusade force in order to protect the peace of the city. The Turks quickly annihilated this poorly organized group.

The main crusading force consisted of four armies, composed of French, Germans, and Normans, under the leadership of Godfrey of Boullion, the Normans Bohemond and Tancred, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Robert of Flanders. The Byzantine Emperor, Alexius, however, did not want so large a force of crusaders massed around Constantinople and so sent them over to Asia Minor in the order of their arrival. He also required the heads of the armies to swear that they would restore to him any lands they recovered from the Muslims that had previously been under Byzantine overlordship.

In June 1097 Nicaea was surrendered to the Byzantines accompanying the crusaders, and the next month the crusaders and Byzantines won a major victory against the Turks when they were attacked at Dorylaeum. Further progress was hard going, however, and some became dispirited. Among them was Alexius, who had promised to assist in the siege of Antioch. When the Emperor balked at this, the crusaders considered themselves relieved of any obligation to turn the city over to him since he could not be counted upon to fight for it. Thus when it was taken in June 1099, it passed into Norman hands.

The following month the Fatimid Muslims of Egypt retook Jerusalem from the Seljuqs, so it was in non-Turkish hands when the crusaders mounted their assault. This took place in July 1099. For a month the crusader force, which had been reduced to about half its original size, had encamped around Jerusalem while the Fatimid governor of the city awaited relief troops from Egypt. The crusaders, however, received supplies from the port of Jaffa and made their move.

On July 8 they fasted and processed barefoot around the city to the Mount of Olives, then on the 13th they besieged the walls. On the 15th, some men got over the wall and opened one of the city gates, allowing the main force inside. In the Tower of David, the Fatimid governor surrendered and was escorted from the city. In the al-Aqsa Mosque by the Temple Mount, Tacred promised protection to the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, but despite his efforts a general slaughter started.

The following month the crusaders surprised and repelled the Egyptian relief troops that the Fatimid governor had been counting on, securing Christian control of Jerusalem, though many of the coastal cities remained under Muslim control. Most crusaders departed for home, the objectives of the crusade having been achieved and their vows having been fulfilled.

In the wake of the First Crusade there developed four Christian states from the territory the crusaders had recovered: the later Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the Countship of Edessa, and the Countship of Tripoli. These states, which applied the feudal system in a context detached from the vivid local rivalries that applied in Europe, have been considered models of Medieval administration. Still, relations between them, the Byzantine Empire, and the surrounding Muslim domains were often complex.

To defend the new states, a new kind of fighting force developed--the religious orders of knighthood, such as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars. These were groups of knights who took religious vows and accepted a religious rule.

For a time the crusader states flourished. Over time they expanded to include coastal cities originally left unreclaimed. However, the states remained vulnerable, and in 1144 the northern state of Edessa was captured by Muslim forces.

The Second Crusade (1146-48)

In response, Pope Eugenius III called a new crusade, which was preached both in France and Germany by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The French King, Louis VII, and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, promptly responded, though the German Emperor, Conrad III, took more persuading. The current Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, was also favorably disposed toward the crusaders, though he did not contribute troops to the cause.

Though at one point it involved the largest crusader army to date, the Second Crusade was met with less enthusiasm than the First, no doubt in part because Jerusalem was still in Christian hands. The course of the campaign was marred by competing interests of the parties involved, hampering progress. The hardships of the journey had also taken their toll. Unable to reach Edessa, the crusaders concentrated on taking Damascus, but inner turmoil and treachery forced them to retreat.

The failure of the Second Crusade was severely discouraging, and many in Europe became convinced that the Byzantine Empire was an obstacle to the success of the venture. The failure was also a significant morale boost for Muslim forces, who had partially redeemed the defeats they had suffered in the First Crusade.

The position of the crusader states was weakened, and in the coming years they became virtually encircled by a consolidated Muslim power, following the collapse of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt.

Though for a time there was a truce with the Muslim commander, Saladin, the truce was broken in 1187. During a succession crisis in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Muslim caravan was attacked, and Saladin responded by declaring a jihad.







The Latin forces suffered a humiliating defeat at the Horns of Hattin (a geological formation resembling two horns on the crest of a ridge), and Saladin then proceeded to take Tiberias and the port city of Acre before turning to Jerusalem, which fell on October 2. By 1189, few cities in the crusader states were left in Christian hands.

The Third Crusade (1188-92)

Following the fall of Jerusalem, Pope Gregory VIII called for the Third Crusade. It was unfortunately beset by the untimely deaths of the kings who first stepped forward to lead it.

The first king to respond, William II of Sicily, sent a fleet East but died in late 1189. Henry II of England agreed to participate, but also died in that year. The German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, having reconciled with the Church, also participated and led a large army that defeated a Seljuq force in May 1190, but the next month the elderly Emperor drowned trying to swim across a stream while scouting.

The two kings who finally led the crusade were the valiant but flamboyant Richard I ("the Lion-Hearted") of England--Henry II's son and successor--and the calculating Philip II Augustus of France.

En route to the Holy Land, Richard I stopped on the island of Cyprus, where he was attacked by the Byzantine prince Isaac Comnenus. Richard defeated the prince and took control of the island before sailing for the port city of Acre, which was under attack by crusader forces.

Reinforced by the arriving crusaders, Acre held out and the Muslim forces finally surrendered. Philip II then considered his cursader vow fulfilled and departed for France.

Saladin agreed to an exchange of prisoners and the return of the relic of the True Cross. This arrangement fell apart when Richard disputed the selection of returning prisoners and eventually ordered the execution of the Muslim captives and their families.

Richard was desirous of pressing forward to Jerusalem and was able to reclaim several cities, including Jaffa, but ultimately was unable to reach the Holy City. His relations with Saladin were unusually friendly, and the two seemed to enjoy a high degree of mutual respect. In late 1192 they signed a five-year peace treaty that allowed Christians to have continued access to the holy places. The Christian holdings in the Holy Land now were reduced to a small kingdom composed largely of port cities.

The Fourth Crusade (1204)

The Fourth Crusade was an unmitigated disaster. It was an appalling fiasco that did nothing but cause internal damage to Christendom.

In 1198, Pope Innocent III proposed a new crusade. As usual, the French responded to the call. The new target was to be Egypt, a formerly Christian land that was now a Muslim stronghold.

The crusaders turned to the Venetians for transportation, but when they proved to have insufficient funds to pay, the Venetians suggested that they instead attack and capture Zara, a Hungarian and Christian city. Many objected strenuously--including the Pope, but his orders were ignored and the crusaders took Zara at the behest of the Venetians.

Matters went from bad to worse when Alexius, the son of deposed Byzantine Emperor Isaac Angelus, sought the aid of the crusaders in recovering his father's throne. Promising rewards, Alexius convinced them to try. The Pope's letter forbidding the expedition arrived too late, and the crusaders took Constantinople, reinstalled Isaac as Emperor, and proclaimed his son co-Emperor.

Innocent III reprimanded the leaders and ordered them to proceed to the Holy Land, but only a few did so. Most awaited the rewards that Alexius had promised.

Displeased by these promises to the Latin forces, the Byzantines promptly assassinated Alexius, following which the Venetians and the crusaders took control of the city and the empire. Constantinople fell to them on April 13, 1204, initiating a three-day chaos of looting and murder. Afterwards, a Latin Emperor of Constantinople was elected by a council composed of Venetians and crusaders. The Byzantine government relocated to Nicaea, where it remained, ruling only a portion of its previous territory until 1261, when Constantinople was reconquered by Michael VIII Paleologous.

This crusade was a fool's journey. Not only did it fail to even engage the Muslim forces occupying the Holy Land, it further divided Eastern and Western Christendom, as well as permanently damaged the Byzantine empire, which had served as a buffer between Muslim aggression and the Christian heartland.

In the years following the Fourth Crusade, there were a number of minor crusades--wars whose participants took a vow--against heretics and others. Of particular interest was the so-called "Children's Crusade" (1212), in which thousands of children set forth to conquer the Muslims forces with love instead of arms. A visionary child in France led one arm of the movement, while a German child led the other. Many children made it to Italy. However, the movement never reached the Holy Land, and the overwhelming majority of the children either died of hunger or exhaustion or were sold by unscrupulous Italians into Muslim slavery. The movement did, however, serve to incite feeling for the coming Fifth Crusade.

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221)

The final crusade in which the Church played a major role was the fifth. It was called for by the pope of the previous crusade, Innocent III, as well as by the 12th ecumenical council, Lateran IV. As in the prior effort, the target was not Palestine itself, but Egypt, the basis of Muslim power, which the crusaders hoped to use as a bargaining piece to secure the release of Jerusalem.

Unlike the prior effort, which spun out of control in the hands of laymen, this effort was placed under the authority of a particularly forceful papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius. He had a regal disposition and regularly meddled in military decisions.

The effort met with initial success, and alarmed Muslim forces offered generous terms of peace, including the surrender of Jerusalem. However, the crusaders, spurred by Cardinal Pelagius, refused these. A military blunder cost the crusaders Damietta, which they had captured in the early stages of the campaign. In 1221, the Christian forces accepted a truce far less favorable than what had been offered initially. Many blamed Pelagius. Others blamed the pope. Some blamed the German emperor, Frederick II, who failed to show up for this crusade but who was to play a prominent role in the next.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-29)

Innocent III had granted Frederick II several delays in the fulfillment of his crusade vow so that he could take care of matters in Germany. Innocent's successor, Gregory IX, tired of Frederick's dallying and insisted that he fulfill his vow. When the emperor stalled again, citing illness, the pope had had enough and excommunicated him. When Frederick finally embarked, he was crusading as an excommunicate.

This odd situation led to an odd crusade. In part because of Frederick's excommunication, few were willing to support him and he was unable to mount a major military campaign. As a result, he turned to diplomacy and, taking advantage of divisions among Muslims, worked out a treaty in 1229 with Sultan al-Kamil of Egypt, according to the terms of which Jerusalem (less the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque), Bethlehem, Nazareth, and additional territory were returned to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Frederick II, still excommunicated, was then crowned king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in a non-religious ceremony (since Jerusalem had been placed under interdict as a result of Frederick's presence). The following year he was reconciled to the Church. He was unable, however, to successfully rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem from a distance, for the local barons refused to cooperate with his representatives.

The years 1239 and 1241 saw two minor crusades, respectively by Count Thibaud IV of Champagne and Roger of Cornwall. These two efforts, in Syria and against Ascalon, were unsuccessful and minor enough that they are not numbered among the standard eight crusades.

The Seventh Crusade (1249-52)

The initiative for the penultimate crusade was taken by Louis IX of France. Again, the strategy was pursued of attacking Egypt to gain concessions in Palestine. The crusaders quickly captured Damietta again but had to pay a heavy price in taking Cairo. A Muslim counter-attack succeeded in taking Louis prisoner. He was later released after agreeing to turn over Damietta and to pay a ransom. Afterward, he remained in the East for several years to negotiate the release of prisoners and fortify the Christian foothold in the region.

The Eighth Crusade (1270)

The last of the eight crusades was also led by Louis IX. In the ensuing years, changes in the Muslim world led to a renewed series of attacks on Christian territory in the Holy Land. The locals made appeals to the West for military aid, but few Europeans were interested in mounting a major campaign. One who was willing to again take the crusader's cross was Louis IX, who wished to make good his previous failure. However, the campaign he now mounted achieved less for the Kingdom of Jerusalem than had the former.

It is not certain why, but Tunis in North Africa was picked for an initial target. Once there, plague claimed the lives of many, including the pious Louis. His brother, Charles of Anjou, arrived with Sicilian ships and was able to evacuate the remainder of the army.

Though this was the last of the eight enumerated crusades, it was not the last military expedition to be considered a crusade. Campaigns continued to be waged, against a variety of targets, not just Muslim ones, by crusaders--men who had taken a vow to undertake the fight.

For their part, the Christians of Palestine were left without further aid. Despite continuing losses, the Kingdom of Jerusalem managed to hang on in some form until 1291, when it finally ceased to exist. Christians continued to live in the area even after its fall.

An Appraisal
Many today in the self-reflective West view the Crusades as acts of unjustified aggression toward the peaceful inhabitants of the East and the Holy Land. However, even a cursory familiarity with the centuries in question makes this assessment difficult to sustain.

This may be seen clearly, for example, by transposing the roles of the forces. If the Crusades had occurred in the middle of a multi-century campaign in which Christians consumed half of what historically had been Muslim territory, few would regard Muslims as completely unjustified in striking back, in an attempt to reclaim lands lost to Christians, especially if these lands contained many of their co-religionists.

Few would expect Muslims to sit idly by if Christians seized control of and denied Muslims access to the Kaaba in Mecca and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It would be fully expected that Muslims would retaliate and seek to reclaim control of or access to their holy sites.

Common sense makes it difficult not to see among the chief lessons of the Crusades "Don't conquer half of another group's civilization without expecting reprisals" and "Don't touch a people's holy sites without expecting retaliation."

Far from being embarrassed by what the crusaders did, contemporary Christians should be proud that--despite their own internecine struggles in the Middle Ages--prior generations of Christians found the wherewithal to do precisely what Muslims would do in the same situation.

Christians today certainly should deplore evil acts committed during the Crusades, such as the massacres of innocent Muslims and Jews that periodically occurred, as well as the entire debacle of the Fourth Crusade. However, the enterprise of the Crusades themselves had two important goals at its core: the defense of Christian civilization against outside aggression (making the Crusades as a whole wars of self-defense) and securing access to the holy sites that commemorate to the most important events in world history.

It is also difficult to review the Crusades without thinking of them in light of recent events. In particular, one wonders whether future generations of Muslims will look back on the present time. Will they see the recent Islamic terrorist campaigns as what they were: attacks on innocent, non-combatants that, like all such attacks, are intrinsically unjustifiable? Will they regard the turn-of-the-millennium jihads as unrighteous "crusades"? And will the Muslim world ever gain the degree of self-reflection needed to recognize the Crusades as the entirely predictable responses to medieval Muslim aggression?

This article was originally published in the January/February 2002 issue of Catholic Dossier.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:

• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden
• Urban II: The Pope of the First Crusade | Régine Pernoud
• Mistakes, Yes. Conspiracies, No. | The Fourth Crusade | Vince Ryan
• Is Dialogue with Islam Possible? Some Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI's Address at the University of Regensburg | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• The Regensburg Lecture: Thinking Rightly About God and Man | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Benedict Takes the Next Step with Islam | Mark Brumley
• 9/11 Revisited | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Molochs of Modernity | Dr. Jose Yulo
• Spartans, Traitors, and Terrorists | Dr. Jose Yulo
• Plato's Ring in the Sudan: How Freedom Begets Isolation of the Soul | Dr. Jose Yulo
• The Echo of Melos: How Ancient Honor Unmasks Islamic Terror | Dr. Jose Yulo
• Martyrs and Suicide Bombers | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The One War, The Real War | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Wars Without Violence? | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.

Jimmy Akin is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization at Catholic Answers in San Diego. He is the author of Mass Confusion and The Salvation Controversy (Catholic Answers), and the booklet, Islam: A Catholic Perspective. Get a daily dose of Jimmy at his weblog, JimmyAkin.org.

The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction

The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction | Marvin R. O'Connell

"Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapor of heated iron. A suffocating odor pervaded the prison. A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies. A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors. Oh, most unrelenting! Oh, most demoniac of men! 'Death,' I said, 'any death but that of the pit.'"

And so on for twenty pages reads the most familiar literary indictment of the wickedness of the Spanish Inquisition. Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum," is, to be sure, a piece of fiction, its author a specialist in creating scenes of horror and dread, as the titles of some of his other works suggest: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Haunted Palace," "The Conqueror Worm." Yet Poe's hideous image of the red-hot poker being prepared as an instrument of torture by grinning Spanish sadists–the "most demoniac of men"–did not strain the credulity of his readers a century and a half ago, nor does it today. We may indeed express our abhorrence a little more light-heartedly - when Professor Higgins, in My Fair Lady, wishes to evoke the most frightful of possible alternatives, he sings, "I'd prefer a new edition/Of the Spanish Inquisition," and, with the shivers running up and down the spine, we know exactly what he means.

At a rather more sophisticated level was the picture drawn by Dostoyevsky who, in The Brothers Karamazov, imagines the Grand Inquisitor, with "his withered face and sunken eyes," in confrontation with Jesus on the streets of Seville, where the Savior has just restored life to a dead child. "The Inquisitor sees everything; he sees them set the coffin down at Jesus' feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick grey brows, and his eyes gleam with a sinister light. He holds out his finger and bids the guards arrest Jesus. And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of a deathlike silence they lay hands on Jesus and take him to the Inquisitor who says: 'Tomorrow I shall condemn thee and burn thee at the stake as the worst of heretics.'"

Once more, suspension of disbelief is not so difficult, because it is a given that the officers of the Spanish Inquisition were so glutted with pride and blood-lust that they would not have stopped at deicide to gain their ends. Does not the very name of Torquemada summon up visions of ruthlessness and cruelty?

And then of course there is the cinematic conception of the era of the Inquisition, brought to the silver screen in dozens of swashbuckling melodramas, in which the upright, truthful, intelligent, compassionate, handsome, brave Anglo, with his light complexion and buff-colored hair –this last constituent sends a strong ethnic message–crosses swords with the cruel, devious, lustful, foppish, superstitious, cowardly Spaniard with–please notice –his swarthy skin and greasy black hair and mustache. Needless to say, North Atlantic virtue always triumphs over Mediterranean depravity in these contests, Protestant blue-eyed heroism over intrinsically inferior Catholic dark-eyed perfidy, and the audience goes home contented, having seen the Spanish galleon, all afire, sink beneath the waves, while the gallant Erroll Flynn (or someone like him) stands coolly self-possessed on the main deck of his ship, his protective arm around the waist of the beautiful blonde lady he has just rescued from the clutches of villainous Latins.

These pulp-fiction romances seldom advert directly to the Inquisition; movie moguls make it a rule to keep their plots uncomplicated. But they do trade in a deep-seated prejudice that has been so carefully cultivated over so long a time that it has become an integral part of our culture. It was not only Poe and Dostoyevsky and even Professor Higgins who assumed that the Spanish Inquisition was wicked because it was Spanish; the rest of us, the hoi polloi, concluded the same. To assert that conclusion was enough to establish its truth; no evidence was required and no rebuttal allowed. In one of the most enduring public relations victories ever accomplished, the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spain's Golden Age, was consciously and methodically distorted by what scholars now candidly call "the Black Legend." This collection of bitter fables, with their overtones of bigotry and racism, proves once more–if proof were necessary–that a lie told often enough and convincingly enough will in the end be accepted as gospel. "One of the great conditions of anger and hatred," the wryly cynical Thackeray observed, "is that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object in order to be consistent." The lies in this instance about the Spanish character and about the Catholicism practiced in the Spain of Queen Isabella, St. Teresa of Avila and Cervantes, were told in order to promote a Protestant and particularly an English Protestant ascendancy, which in due course crossed the Atlantic with the colonists who eventually founded the United States; the sad irony is that though any serious commitment to that cause has long since vanished from the old world and the new, the racist and bigoted distortions put on the record in its behalf by the concoctors of the Black Legend have proved to have a life of their own.

But perhaps the Spanish Inquisition was indeed a wicked institution. If so, that judgment should be made on the basis of those discernible facts an honest examination is able to reveal, and not upon the fevered testimony of self-interested politicians, biased preachers, witless pamphleteers, or–deriving from one or more of these–naive writers of fiction. And, as is the case with any historical reconstruction of a phenomenon now passed away, to understand the contextual framework is a condition for understanding the phenomenon itself. An organization as consequential as the Spanish Inquisition could not have taken shape in a vacuum, nor could its activities have been divorced from the circumstances of its time and place. The same principle therefore holds good in its regard as it does in analyzing other events contemporaneous with the early years of the Inquisition. Thus, for example, we need to know what political and social as well as theological concerns persuaded Queen Elizabeth I of England to treat her Catholic subjects with such barbarity; similarly, we need to recognize that the fanaticism that drove Dutch Calvinists to hang all the priests and vandalize all the churches that fell under their control was not unrelated to a primitive nationalism and even to a primitive capitalism.

As far as the Spanish Inquisition is concerned, one must look for context to chronology and geography. Chronology first. The Holy Office, as it was popularly called, was founded in 1478 on the strength of a papal rescript requested by the sovereigns of a newly united Spain, the wife and husband, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. For precedent they cited the functioning of the Roman Inquisition during the thirteenth century when, under this rubric, the popes established special circuit courts to investigate and, when possible, to root up various heterodox movements, especially in southern France and northern Italy. These movements–lumped together under the rather sinister-sounding label "Cathari"–had alarmed the lords temporal of the time no less than the lords spiritual, because the Manichaean doctrines and life-style proposed by the Cathari were deemed as subversive of civil well being as of ecclesiastical. Over the course of a hundred years or so the Cathari were pretty well stamped out or driven underground through the cooperative efforts of Church and State. The inquisitors' job had been to establish the juridical facts in each case, and if, as a result, an individual were judged to be an unyielding heretic, the government's job had been to exact punishment from that person, up to and including death.

Yet in many respects–and here is a truth extremely difficult for us at the end of the twentieth century to comprehend–to speak of "Church and State" during the Middle Ages, and indeed much later, is to draw a distinction without a difference. That the civil and ecclesiastical entities represented essentially separate spheres, that religion should be a strictly private matter left to the choice of each individual, that persons of conflicting religious views or with no religious views at all could live in fruitful harmony–these ideas were unknown during the time the Roman inquisitors were harassing the Albigensians in the south of France, and unknown also when, two centuries later, Ferdinand and Isabella asked for the establishment of an Inquisition unique to Spain. Pope Sixtus IV, in granting their request, explicitly testified to the principle that it was the first duty of kings to nurture and defend the faith of their people, and implicitly he professed what was for him and his contemporaries a truism, that no society could exist without religious uniformity, that–to appropriate a celebrated statement of another era–"a house divided against itself cannot stand." Here was a conviction fully appreciated, incidentally, by the likes of Elizabeth I and the Dutch Calvinists, who gave it full rein in their own persecution-policies.

The organization of the Spanish Inquisition differed markedly from its Roman predecessor. The former, with its emphasis upon centralization and royal control, reflected the emergence of the nation-state and the responsibility the monarchy now assumed to guarantee religious orthodoxy. Thus the Grand Inquisitor was appointed by the king and answerable to him, with only the nominal approval of the pope. The Inquisitor in turn appointed the five members of the High Council over which he presided; this body, with its swarm of consultants and clerical staff, exercised ultimate power within the Inquisition's competence. It decided all disputed questions and heard all appeals from the lower inquisitorial courts, which by the middle of the sixteenth century numbered nineteen scattered across Spain and several more in Spanish-occupied territories in Italy and America. Without the permission of the High Council no priest or nobleman could be imprisoned. An auto-de-fe, the religious ceremony which included the punishment of convicted heretics and the reconciliation of those who recanted, could not be held anywhere without the sanction of the High Council. Control was also enhanced by the requirement that the lower courts submit to the Council yearly general reports and monthly financial ones.

As far as procedure was concerned, the Spanish Inquisition pretty much followed the precedent established in the thirteenth century and the models provided by secular tribunals. The legal machinery was put into motion by sworn denunciation of an individual or, on occasion, of a particular village or region. In the latter instance, prior to the formal inquiry a "term of grace" of thirty to forty days was routinely issued, during which period suspected dissidents could recant or prepare their defense. Once accused, a defendant was provided the services of a lawyer, and he could not be examined by the officers of the court without the presence of two disinterested priests. The identity of the witnesses of his alleged crime, however, was not revealed to him, and so he could not confront them. This was a severe disadvantage, even though harsh punishment was meted out to those revealed to have been false accusers. Judges, not juries, decided questions of fact as well as of law, and in effect the Spanish Inquisition combined the functions of investigation, prosecution, and judgment. Indeed, anyone arrested by the Inquisition was presumed guilty until proven innocent, a circumstance very unsettling to us who have enjoyed the blessings of the English common law tradition. Torture, a commonplace with secular jurisdictions, had been forbidden at first in the old Roman Inquisition, but then it had gradually come into use, with the provisos that it be applied only once and that it not threaten life or limb. In Spain these rules were adopted from the start, but early on Sixtus IV, deluged with complaints, protested to the Spanish government that the Inquisition was employing torture too freely. Unhappily the pope's remonstrances fell on deaf ears.

But to return to the chronological consideration, with a bit of geography thrown in for good measure. In 1478, at the moment the Inquisition was set up, the Christians of the Iberian peninsula had been engaged in a crusade for nearly seven hundred years. The fighting had not been constant, to be sure–it took our enlightened epoch to develop the fine art of total war–but ever since the eighth century, when the Arab Muslims had stormed across the straits of Gibraltar from Africa and with fire and sword had subjugated the peninsula as far north as the Ebro River, the native resistance to their occupation had been constant. And, by fits and starts, with frequent intervals of inactivity, resistance had gradually evolved into counter-attack, into a growing determination to win back what had been lost to the alien invaders. Little by little this relentless process of reconquest–la reconquista–drove the descendants of those invaders, the Moors, ever farther into the south until, in 1478, they had left to them only a small enclave around the city of Granada. The end of the crusade was in sight.

It would be difficult to exaggerate how profound an impact this extraordinarily long and all-consuming cruzado had upon the formation of Spanish public policy. Comparisons are impossible to draw, because no other Christian people had experienced anything even remotely similar. As suggested above, a Europe-wide consensus had indeed developed during the Middle Ages that religious dissidents could not be tolerated if true religion and harmonious society were to endure. Add to this the universal conviction that heretics adhered to their objectionable opinions not out of conscience but out of bad will, and it comes as no surprise that increasingly stringent laws were enacted throughout Christendom against those who refused to conform. Since such a refusal was judged the worst possible crime, the ultimate penalty for it everywhere was the worst form of capital punishment imaginable, burning at the stake. Though this ferocious sentence was carried out relatively rarely, the prospect of it did act as a deterrent and did induce all except the most stout-hearted to disavow their heterodoxies once brought to light by a judicial process. Still, the troublesome possibility remained that those who had formally recanted might have done so out of fear rather than conversion of mind, and that they continued to practice their subversive heresies in secret, waiting for a more propitious day.

In the Iberia of the reconquista a scenario of this kind presented a danger profoundly more serious than elsewhere. As the Christians slowly reestablished their hegemony over the peninsula–expressed in the two distinct political entities, Portugal and Spain–the potential antagonists of religious uniformity they were determined to impose were not indigenous eccentrics, as was the case in other European countries (bear in mind that the Protestant Reformation was at this moment still forty years in the future), but a conquered population linked by ties of race and religion to the Muslims living in the principalities of North Africa, which at Gibraltar lay only sixteen watery miles away. Even more ominous from the Spanish point of view was the fact that these so-called barbary states–the modern nations of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia–formed part of a vast imperial system established by the Muslim Turks, a system as powerful and menacing to western Europe as the Soviet bloc was conceived to be in our day. As the reconquista proceeded, therefore, and especially after Granada and the last remnant of Spanish Islam fell to the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, policy-makers had to decide how to treat the Moors and the relatively small but influential Jewish community which, in marked contrast to what our century has witnessed, had flourished within a larger Islamic society. The Christian victors, fearful of Muslim sympathizers in their midst, offered no compromise: Moors and Jews had to accept baptism or face expulsion from the country now defined as entirely Catholic.

What this decision amounted to, of course, was a policy of forced conversion, something quite incompatible with traditional Catholic teaching. This fact was pointed out by several popes and numerous Spanish theologians over a long period, but the sentiment expressed by one of Ferdinand of Aragon's royal predecessors was the one that prevailed: "The enemies of the cross of Christ and violators of the Christian law are likewise our enemies and the enemies of our kingdom, and ought therefore to be dealt with as such."

Predictably, however, the stark choice between conformity and exile invited pretense and hypocrisy on the part of those dragooned into a faith not of their own choosing. The Jews and Moors who conformed rather than depart the land in which they and their ancestors had lived for hundreds of years did so with varying measures of reluctance, merging often into downright dissimulation. And this is precisely why the Inquisition was created by the Spanish monarchs: as the etymology of the word implies, the first task of this new judicial body was inquiry, specifically inquiry into the authenticity of the conversion of the Moors and Jews who had come under the sway of those monarchs.

But once again we must stress the chronological track, because the bloody reputation of the Spanish Inquisition–though it formally existed for more than three centuries–was earned during its first decade and a half, even before, that is, the capture of Granada. During this unhappy period perhaps as many as 2000 persons were burnt as heretics. Though this number is only a small fraction of what the Black Legend routinely alleged, it is nevertheless sobering enough. Almost all those executed were conversos or New Christians, converts, that is, from Judaism who were convicted of secretly practicing their former religion. It should be borne in mind that the Inquisition, as a church-court, had no jurisdiction over Moors and Jews as such. But, ironically, once such persons accepted baptism they became capable of heresy in the technical sense of the word. Thus the early savagery of the Spanish Inquisition contributes another chapter to the sad history of anti-Semitism, motivated on this occasion, however, more by politico-religious expediency than by racial hatred. It was in any event an enormous and unforgivable miscalculation. Far from constituting a danger to the nation, the Jewish conversos of previous decades had already been admirably blended into the larger community. As Professor William Monter has pointed out, the New Christians "represent the first known large-scale and long-term assimilation of Jews into any Christian society. Although the process included many painful adaptations, some severe backlash and even a decade of brutal persecution under the Inquisition, it ended with their general integration into Spanish society. Their descendants quietly flouted racist codes and contributed to the vibrant Catholicism of Golden Age Spain; St. Teresa of Avila was the granddaughter of a New Christian penanced by the Inquisition."

It seems as though the violence with which the Spanish Inquisition began its tenure exhausted or perhaps shamed it into a moderation which the purveyors of the Black Legend stonily ignore. But the facts cannot be gainsaid. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Spanish sovereignty extended from Italy to most of Latin America, on average less than three persons a year were executed by the Inquisition, which was formally constituted in all those places as well as at home. Or, to give the Spaniards the benefit of the doubt, perhaps as the bitter struggle of the reconquista gradually faded from their collective memory, even as the Muslim threat itself receded, they exercised a restraint consistent with their principles. However that may be, for my part I am glad there is no longer in existence an Inquisition that might have me arrested on the basis of charges lodged by persons unknown to me, as happened to St. Ignatius Loyola. Yet as one who has lived through most of a century in which cruelty and atrocity and oppression have reached a pitch, quantitatively and qualitatively, inconceivable to our ancestors–inconceivable even to Torquemada–I think a measure of discretion would be appropriate when bemoaning the wickedness of the Spanish Inquisition, more discretion anyway than that exercised by Poe and Dostoyevsky.

•This article originally appeared in the November/December 1996 issue of Catholic Dossier.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:

• The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin
• Were the Crusades Anti-Semitic? | Vince Ryan
• Crusade Myths | Thomas F. Madden
• Urban II: The Pope of the First Crusade | Régine Pernoud
• Mistakes, Yes. Conspiracies, No. | The Fourth Crusade | Vince Ryan

Marvin R. O'Connell is professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul.

He is the author of John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul, 1988), a prize-winning biography of the redoubtable John Ireland, and several other books, including Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (Eerdmans, 1997).

Grey is the Devil’s Favorite Color

Grey is the Devil’s Favorite Color | Teresa Tomeo | CWR

Even many Catholics dismiss Fifty Shades of Grey as harmless entertainment. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Editor's Note: This feature originally appeared on the CWR site on August 2, 2012. It is reposted here in advance of the February 13th release of the film based on the novel, 50 Shades of Grey 

“Grey is the devil’s favorite color.” How I wish I could take credit for that powerful quote. However, it actually belongs to none other than philosopher, Catholic convert, author, and esteemed professor Dr. Peter Kreeft. A wise listener of mine sent me the Kreeft quote to help summarize the current obsession, and not just among the general public, with the Fifty Shades of Grey book trilogy. The fictional series written by E.L. James focuses on the sado-masochistic relationship between a young woman, Anastasia Steele, and her billionaire boyfriend, Christian Grey. It is so terribly raunchy it’s been dubbed “mommy porn” by secular critics and so graphic it’s described as yet one more example of “violence against women” by Dr. Drew Pinsky, TV host and popular relationship expert.

Kreeft’s clever quip was not referring to Fifty Shades of Grey in particular, of course, but to moral relativism in general. You know the “We can do whatever we want with whom, whatever makes us happy or feel good” approach that in many ways has taken over our way of thinking, if you can even call that thinking. Book sales have reached the 30 million-plus mark. The movie rights have been sold for $5 million. The owners of a hotel in Great Britain have also decided that, out of the goodness of their hearts, they are replacing Gideon Bibles with Fifty Shades of Grey, because, well, some of their guests may be too shy to purchase the books or feel a little strange about reading them at home around family. So that’s just the type of thoughtful hotel proprietors they are. And in June E.L James signed the dotted line on a deal with an agency responsible for licensing and building the Fifty Shades brand, a brand that is expected to include lingerie, perfume, and even bedroom furniture and linens mostly targeted at adult women. Here’s another quote that comes to mind, and this one is from P.T Barnum: “There is a sucker born every minute.”

So what does all of this have to do with Christianity, or, more specifically, Catholic Christians?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Liturgy in Bede’s World

The Venerable Bede Translates John, by J.D. Penrose (ca. 1902).

Liturgy in Bede’s World | Daniel J. Heisey, OSB | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

Time-honored ritual; a space often ornate, if not opulent, used almost exclusively for this purpose; seating by hierarchy; candles; a prayer, perhaps in Latin, perhaps in English; ceremonial robes; a bevy of trained servers; wine; elegant, and often antique, silver and crystal; an oration, at times stilted or soporific: a recurring event all solemnly choreographed and brought to a formulaic close. By the end of the hour or two, a few may be bored, and some wonder again, “All this archaic rigmarole, so pompous and contrived and expensive, while people are starving and living in rags and hovels: would this money not be best spent on the poor?” I refer, of course, to the phenomenon known as Formal Hall.

It is an anthropological fact: Humans need ritual and ceremony. Whether a formal dinner at an Oxbridge college, a wedding, a funeral, a graduation exercise, a sporting event, an inauguration, a coronation, or people regularly gathered for worship in a church or chapel—human public life requires ritual. Likewise, human private life also has its rituals, from one’s daily morning ablutions, to how one weekly goes about cleaning the house or tidying up the garden. It is in the nature of ritual, just as it is in human nature, which never changes, to draw upon established practice and precedent, and to change slowly and with rare innovation. Within a religious context, that human instinct for ritual is called liturgy.

For that anthropological need, as well as for abiding human religiosity, one finds archaeological evidence, ranging from Neanderthal burials to the Staffordshire Hoard.1 Within the latter, seventh-century Anglo-Saxon treasures discovered in 2009, one finds a pectoral cross and what is either part of a processional cross or a cross for on top of an altar. The pectoral cross could have been worn either by a bishop or an abbot or an abbess, and the other cross, if a processional cross, would have been used during major liturgical events, carried usually by a boy from a parish or by a novice monk or nun at the front of a liturgical procession. That sort of procession was led by the most junior person present, here symbolized by a boy or a novice, and from there the church hierarchy was represented in ascending scale, so that, at the end came an abbot, an abbess, or a bishop.

To turn from archaeological finds to literary texts, one encounters just such a procession in Section 17 of Bede’s Historia abbatum, his account of the abbots of his monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow.

Read the entire essay at www.HPRweb.com.