Christopher Columbus - how can Catholics admire him and name organisations after him?

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I wasn’t saying it justified it, but the Europeans did bring a level of Christian civilization to a savage pagan people, similar to the christianization of Northern and eastern Europe. The parallels are striking but no one complains about the methods used to convert European barbarians
 
Atrocities did happen. We can’t deny that.
But as others have pointed out the indigenous peoples didn’t disappear… the majority of Mexicans, for example, are of both Spanish and native ancestry. So who should they honour? Grandpa the conquistador or grandpa the conquered native?
 
FiveLinden said:
But is Jesus and his Church not the same ‘yesterday, today and forever’? Can we not hold people in the past accountable for failure to love their neighbours and not treating them as they would wish themselves to be treated?
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I am not sure it is our place to hold anyone in the past “accountable for failure”. It would seem that this is between them and their Maker, the Just Judge. I would agree, however, that we are to use discernment. We cannot know their hearts, nor can we know all the factors that influenced their decisions, but we can certainly look at the outcomes and make some judgments. For example, were the atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima moral and just decisions?

We can never go wrong using love as our guide, and treating others as we would want to be treated. The European invaders had a disdainful and prejudiced attitude toward the First People’s of America. They were so ignorant, they thought they had found a back way to India, so they called them Indians! They did not respect their religion, their way of life, their customs.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Can we also teach them about what life was like for the natives before Europeans got there? The human sacrifice, the sexual enslavement of conquered tribes women, the murder of the children of a conquered tribe, etc?
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Yes, there’s a LOT of gory crimes against humanity that some indigenous tribes committed. They often had some survival or moral (under their moral code) justification for what they did. I’m no more interested in revisiting rotten things Native Americans did hundreds of years ago than I am about Columbus. But the attitude that’s developed about all of them being like Chief Joseph is simply wrong from a historical perspective.
 
brian_custer said:
columbus most likely didn’t rape anybody. he navigated 3 ships into unknown waters; and against all odds and by the grace of God “discovered” a new continent

he brought along some priests and/or monks whose intentions i am going to have to have had assumed were good

yes columbus’ crew were largely dirty, ignorant sailors whose intentions , after columbus left to resupply, were probably largely bad

they knew nothing about the microbes they were spreading to the natives
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Did you read the letters in the link I provided? He admitted to raping native girls. And he was appointed governor of Hispanola. Where he oversaw the atrocities carried out on the Natives.
 
Do you know what virtue signalling means? I can’t imagine anyone is trying to impress anyone by saying that rape, mutilation, and murder is wrong.
 
@FiveLinden

To the OPs questions:

I’m not sure if you are going to get an answer to completely satisfy you, but if you are looking for more of a historic explanation rather than so much an explanation that is morally and emotionally satisfying, I would say this:

What made Christopher Columbus famous in Europe & Europeanized America was his discovery of the Americas. That’s it. That’s why there are cities, territories, and even an entire country named after him.

If you read about Albert Einstein, he was pigheaded and cold towards his wife, writing to her (in exact terms) that if she wanted to be with him, she would give him three square meals a day, iron all of his clothes, and leave his room whenever he wanted on demand without expecting or anticipating any affection from him. But Albert Einstein isn’t famous for being a cruel husband. He is famous for his breakthroughs in physics.

The Knights of Columbus is a little more complicated. It was founded by an Irish priest in the 19th century in a time when newly-arrived Catholics were frequently persecuted by the protestant majority. At that time there was widespread questioning of their loyalty as Americans, since the Pope was paralleled to being a monarch, and Americans were not friendly towards monarchy in addition to the religious divisions between protestantism and the Church. In light of these challenges, one of the facets of the KoF is “patriotism”, and it was a form of ecumenism with mainsteam protestant society; it was a way for Americans to see Catholics as members of their society and not enemies. (And yes, ecumenism did exist and was practiced by saintly figures long prior to its more official elevation at the 2nd Vatican Council).

I would agree that these original motivations have to a large extent expired or have at least been altered in the 21st century United States. Catholics are fairly well accepted & established in the country, and Americans aren’t adversarial towards monarchy like in the past because it is a more-or-less obsolete subject. But in the 1800s, these were both still extremely hot-button issues that needed to be addressed. This is in addition to the fact that the KoF has spread beyond the eastern US and has long since been a multi-national organization.

For what it’s worth I entirely agree that it isn’t an ideal name, but I wouldn’t expect it to change, at least not in the near future, if for no other reason than because it is already such a well-recognized brand.

If you were to become a Catholic, you would of course have the latitude to disagree on the issue of Columbus. As a body of over 1 billion, there is a considerable amount of variation based on people’s national origins, backgrounds, etc.
 
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Saint Paul didn’t believe that women should be allowed to speak in church. Saint Peter chose not to eat with gentiles (us) because he was afraid of being judged by his Jewish peers. Should we cancel their joint feast day and rename all of the churches named for them?

Obviously we don’t honor people because of the bad things they’ve done. We honor them based on the good that they did. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was accused by the FBI of having sexual relations outside of his marriage- if this were true, would this be grounds for removing all landmarks concerning him and renaming all roads and highways named in his honor?

Yes, there’s a yuge difference between killing people, and either refusing to dine with them, having sex outside of marriage, or telling women not to speak- but these are all bad things, aren’t they? I’m not suggesting we go out and name an art gallery after Hitler, but hopefully my point is clear.
 
Rhubarb said:
Do you know what virtue signalling means? I can’t imagine anyone is trying to impress anyone by saying that rape, mutilation, and murder is wrong.
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No one in their right mind thinks Knights of Columbus (or Columbus, Ohio) is endorsing rape. It’s virtue signaling to make a big fuss about changing a name 500 years down the road when the organization, city etc has evolved into something far removed from the original guy with the name.
 
@ fivelinden To answer your question “where do you get on purpose?” If you are accusing someone of a crime, there is a legal level of intent required. For genocide, here is the legal standard. “Genocide is a crime with a double mental element, i.e. a general intent as to the underlying acts, and an ulterior intent with regard to the ultimate aim of the destruction of the group.”
A person cannot be guilty of ‘accidentally’ or ‘negligently’ committing genocide. “On purpose” comes from the laws governing the laws prohibiting genocide. There must be intent, that is, it must be done on purpose - intentionally, not accidentally or unintentionally.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/Articles_What_does_intent_to_destroy_in_genocide_mean.pdf
 
You’re right. Nobody thinks the Knights of Columbus endorses rape. That’s also not the point. I have never heard anyone complain about the Knights of Columbus. Though Bartolomé de las Casas - Wikipedia would be a much better person to have named the organization after.

But that’s not what virtue signalling means. Virtue signalling is complaining or fighting about some social issue because and only because you think other people will be impressed. Like they’ll say “oh look at Steve, he’s so progressive and cares about people. He’s so good.” That’s the signalling part - you are trying to increase your status by impressing others with your “virtue”. See Virtue signalling - Wikipedia a legitimate concern about a subject is by definition not virtue signalling.
 
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All that was being suggested is that Natives did not live in some kind of paradise that was messed up by white people.

This topic is clearly nothing more than an excuse to virtue-signal in the PC West. Someone once tried to tell me how bad Isreal was and pick out some tribe in the Torah that the Israelites defeated as though it was their family or something.

It’s ridiculous, stupid and no one buys it.

And I’m not saying you do any of this, but it’s painfully obvious what goes on in these situations.
 
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I read your link. The rape is attributed not to Columbus, but “his aristocratic shipmate Michele de Cuneo.” The quotes from Columbus himself don’t seem to support your position either. Do you have another source?
 
And my point is that I’m baffled as to why anyone would start this sort of a discussion unless they were either looking for reasons to dislike the Church, or virtue signaling. Unless the person is very young and has just read some historian’s dubious negative take on Columbus.
 
An Native American elder was complaining about the white man taking their land recently. She was asked where did you get the land? She answered we took it from other Native Americans.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
And my point is that I’m baffled as to why anyone would start this sort of a discussion unless they were either looking for reasons to dislike the Church, or virtue signaling. Unless the person is very young and has just read some historian’s dubious negative take on Columbus
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I’m happy to explain. I am fascinated by belief and especially by beliefs held which contradict other beliefs. How a Church strongly focussed on the value of human life can have members who celebrate someone responsible for the things Columbus did is a mystery to me and I sought explanation. Some of the responses have given me a better understanding. I’ve also noticed how quickly the topic brings emotion to the surface. I regret that I am not young and have been reading about colonisation and its terrible impact on peoples around the world for about 50 years.
 
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