Crusades response?

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Aeden

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How do I respond to somebody who brings up the crusades? I know that many objections to the crusades are based on misconceptions and misinformation, but any tips?

Also, how do I respond to things like the Spanish inquisition and the “forced conversions” in the Americas?
 
Simple. What does that have to do with Christ?

Do you blame science when a scientist create something that ends live, or takes live in the name of science? (Dr. Mengela, for example. By their example, all science is bad because of Dr. Mengela.)

Do you blame medicine when a doctor uses it to take a life?

Those things have absolutely nothing to do with Christ and his message. You cannot detract from Christ because some of his followers misinterpreted him, or worse yet completely ignored him in pursuit of their own goals.
 
Aeden said:
How do I respond to somebody who brings up the crusades? I know that many objections to the crusades are based on misconceptions and misinformation, but any tips?

Also, how do I respond to things like the Spanish inquisition and the “forced conversions” in the Americas?
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The Crusades, the Inquisition and Galileo. They are the secular world’s three biggest attempts to say “Gotcha!” with regards to Church history.

The best thing to do is to read up on what actually happened. The Catholic Education Resource Center has many great articles on these topics. Just go to their site and do a search.
 
Aeden said:
How do I respond to somebody who brings up the crusades? I know that many objections to the crusades are based on misconceptions and misinformation, but any tips?

Also, how do I respond to things like the Spanish inquisition and the “forced conversions” in the Americas?
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Read up on history. There are plenty of books that discuss the invasion of Islam into Christian Europe and the fight to stop the invasion. Same with the Inquisition and missionaries in other nations. You have to look for the truth about why things really happened.

And know when the other person is trolling - just trying to get your dander up so they can dig their finger in even deeper. People like that will never listen or hear anything else no matter what so don’t waste your time.
 
Joe_5859 said:
The Crusades, the Inquisition and Galileo. They are the secular world’s three biggest attempts to say “Gotcha!” with regards to Church history.

The best thing to do is to read up on what actually happened. The Catholic Education Resource Center has many great articles on these topics. Just go to their site and do a search.
Click to expand...
Sexual abuse has been added as the fourth leg of the table.

Anyway, pointing out that these things were generally not everything they are presented as by anti-Catholics may be a valid point, but will likely only alienate the person you are talking to. They will think you are trying to defend the indefensible, the way we (quite rightly, in this case) feel when we hear a Muslim (not all Muslims, by any means) try to excuse terrorist attacks on the basis of the suffering of Arabs and so forth. An equally valid and likely more fruitful approach would be to acknowledge that there have been sinners in the Church but point out that sin is expected by the Catholic faith and by no means disproves it.
 
Most of the Middle East used to be Christian, then there was the emergence of Islam and the Muslims conquered most of the Middle East, and then Muslim armies started to go east in to Asia, south in to Africa and north in to Europe. I think in the book ‘The Rise and fall of the Roman Empire’ by Edward Gibbon, he says if the Christians had not blocked the Muslim advance they would of been teaching Arabic in Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne. Gibbon was not a Christian. The Crusades were not a coordinated army, and some crusaders would go off and pick their own fights and it got muddled.
 
Crash Course on the Crusades

Most of the Middle East used to be Christian, then there was the emergence of Islam and the Muslims conquered most of the Middle East, and then Muslim armies started to go east in to Asia, south in to Africa and north in to Europe. I think in the book* The Rise and fall of the Roman Empire* by Edward Gibbon, he says if the Christians had not blocked the Muslim advance they would of been teaching Arabic in Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne. Gibbon was not a Christian. The Crusades were not a coordinated army, and some crusaders would go off and pick their own fights and it got muddled

Scholarly work by Henry Kamen shows the Spanish inquision killed some 2000 over 350 years
 
Joe_5859 said:
The Crusades, the Inquisition and Galileo. They are the secular world’s three biggest attempts to say “Gotcha!” with regards to Church history.

The best thing to do is to read up on what actually happened. The Catholic Education Resource Center has many great articles on these topics. Just go to their site and do a search.
Click to expand...
Wow. The info on this website is great! Way better than what I was finding on wikipedia and history books around the house! Thanks a lot!
 
Absolutely read up on your history. There was probably some justification for a limited military engagement as far as the First Crusade went. Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being slaughtered by Seljuk Turks, which was a gross violation of the informal agreements that the West had with the previous Caliphates.

The actual carrying out of the Crusade, however, was a travesty. There were massacres in Jerusalem and entire cities were razed to the ground. Christian Europe established Crusader States and they quickly became outposts for additional violence as the Muslims tried to push the Christians out. They didn’t try to push Christians out from ever VISITING, they just wanted the temporal power back over those regions.

Of course, there was an ongoing struggle on the Iberian Peninsula for centuries as well and the Reconquista did not culminate until 1492. So it’s not like it was a one-sided affair where the Christians were committing atrocities and the Muslims were innocent. It was an awful chapter where people of two faiths worshiping the same God were killing one another over land… in His name. Sick.
 
Aeden said:
How do I respond to somebody who brings up the crusades? I know that many objections to the crusades are based on misconceptions and misinformation, but any tips?

Also, how do I respond to things like the Spanish inquisition and the “forced conversions” in the Americas?
Click to expand...
Bill Donahue’s Book Why Catholicism Matters goes over the Crusades as well as other claims that Catholics are currently being blamed for like the Pope helped Hitler and Galileo.
 
Reading more history is everything! We live in a society whose history for the most part has been written by Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Or secular, with an anti-religious bias.

Regarding the Crusades, ask them if they know what Islam did for the three hundred years before, they conquered the know world for Allah, by the sword. Only in Indonesia did Moslem missionaries spread Islam. They invaded & conquered Spain, and were on their way to the rest of Europa when the French defeated them at Tours in 732 ?] If not we’d all be Moslem.

Again ask them if they know how many the Inquisition killed ~5000 in 300 years], whereas the witchcraft trials of the Reformation killed 100,000s in the 1600s. Evoke Salem for a start. Our faith was involved in these as well, but not with the fervor of “others”

Regarding the Catholic [read that Spanish] treatment of Indians, and even the word does not mean Columbus making a mistake in locale, it is complex beyond one simple clever statement. Why is Mexico’s founding father a Catholic priest? or Mexico has had pure blooded Indians as their president. There are endless stories of Catholicism standing up for native rights.

Read Read Read I have to run off to teach, history
 
Plenty of good responses. First, you have to not lump the crusades into one bag. There were many crusades. Each was different, done for different reasons in different places, or not even completed at all! The first crusades were in fact a response to Muslim Jihad taking over and subjugating christian lands. Some of the others were purely political in nature. So I would respond with, “which crusade?” and then look up the facts.

The Spanish Inquisition was just what it sounds like…Spanish. The church said Spain could have jurisdiction over any christians in their new world colonies, so the corrupt government twisted those words and said “Great! Lets force all the natives to convert and we’ll have church-sponsored jurisdiction of them too!” So mainly the actions of a corrupt state (probably with the cooperation of some corrupt priests) that caused that, not the church at large.
 
Garyjohn2 said:
Plenty of good responses. First, you have to not lump the crusades into one bag. There were many crusades. Each was different, done for different reasons in different places, or not even completed at all! The first crusades were in fact a response to Muslim Jihad taking over and subjugating christian lands.

The Spanish Inquisition was just what it sounds like…Spanish. The church said Spain could have jurisdiction over any christians in their new world colonies, so the corrupt government twisted those words and said “Great! Lets force all the natives to convert and we’ll have church-sponsored jurisdiction of them too!” So mainly the actions of a corrupt state (probably with the cooperation of some corrupt priests) that caused that, not the church at large.
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Just to be clear, the Spanish Inquisition and Spanish colonial policies to towards native people are two separate issues.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
Just to be clear, the Spanish Inquisition and Spanish colonial policies to towards native people are two separate issues.
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Yes, I think I confused myself for a moment. I was speaking mainly of the forced conversions in the americas. At the same time, I understand that the Spanish Inquisition was state-sponsored and not church-sponsored.

Thanks for clarifying!
 
The Spanish inquisition was not authorized by the Catholic Church. The Spanish inquisition was state-sponsored.

The Crusades were authorized by the Church.

The following link from Catholic Answers Forums further discusses this:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=174696

You must understand that war is never pretty, and during the Crusades there were unjust people on all sides who committed horrible acts. When such a vast war is fought, it is impossible to “police” everyone. There were also very brave and noble knights who fought and defended Christendom too. The Holy Crusades were a just war. They were a justified defensive / counterattack war. They were a response to muslim aggression on Christendom.
 
_Abyssinia said:
Crash Course on the Crusades

Most of the Middle East used to be Christian, then there was the emergence of Islam and the Muslims conquered most of the Middle East, and then Muslim armies started to go east in to Asia, south in to Africa and north in to Europe. I think in the book* The Rise and fall of the Roman Empire* by Edward Gibbon, he says if the Christians had not blocked the Muslim advance they would of been teaching Arabic in Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne. Gibbon was not a Christian. The Crusades were not a coordinated army, and some crusaders would go off and pick their own fights and it got muddled

Scholarly work by Henry Kamen shows the Spanish inquision killed some 2000 over 350 years
Click to expand...
Tell me the names of all the great Muslim advances throughout the ages, such as what was accomplished by the Catholic Church in the areas of healthcare, education, sciences. If Muslims had not been beaten back we would all still be living a life like those in Afganistan,and there would be no education, no healthcare, no scientific discoveries and people would still be stoned to death or have body parts cut off in punishment for perceived offenses.
 
Executions during the Inquisition were done by the government, not the Church.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
Simple. What does that have to do with Christ?

Do you blame science when a scientist create something that ends live, or takes live in the name of science? (Dr. Mengela, for example. By their example, all science is bad because of Dr. Mengela.)

Do you blame medicine when a doctor uses it to take a life?

Those things have absolutely nothing to do with Christ and his message. You cannot detract from Christ because some of his followers misinterpreted him, or worse yet completely ignored him in pursuit of their own goals.
Click to expand...
👍
I like that. It’s short, to the point, and easy to remember. And it avoids the arguments about which history book is the more credible.
 
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