Obama's day: National Prayer Breakfast

[sps49]

Clearly the opinion the the Crusades were a blot on the history of Christian people is open to debate, even by faithful Catholics. The question not resolved by the Catechism or the Code of Cannon Law or any other binding Church teaching. Therefore affirming that statement is not necessarily attacking anyone’s religion.

No offense to your good self, LeafByNiggle, but that is a magnificently narrow view that stands in contrast to the hundreds of years that the Crusades were used as a prominent vehicle for Catholic bashing and general persecution. I am not saying your perception is incorrect, just phenomenally narrow. The Catechism or Code of Canon Law do not comment about this because it is not their task to comment about it. The study of history is one of the many lights to shine on this.

 

[St_Francis]

So… if Obama brings up stuff that happened a thousand years ago, does that mean that even if the Moslems do something about all this that they too will be blamed for 1000 years?

I mean, maybe what Obama said would have made more sense if along with apoortioning blame, he had also showed how things have changed. Instead of saying Christians once justified slavery, but Chrstians were also those who saw that it was wrong and the. did something about it it would make more sense. And if he had said *some *Christians justified slavery… but others fought against them and so in the Christian world, slavery was wiped out.

That woukd have shown an example of what worked, instead of saying we can still run down Christianity based on things some of them did hundreds if years ago… which is worse than what he is trying to prevent, which is people’s blaming all Moslems for the current actions of a few.

 

[Jeanne_S]

So… if Obama brings up stuff that happened a thousand years ago, does that mean that even if the Moslems do something about all this that they too will be blamed for 1000 years?

I mean, maybe what Obama said would have made more sense if along with apoortioning blame, he had also showed how things have changed. Instead of saying Christians once ju stified slavery, but Chrstians were also those who saw that it was wrong and the. did something about it it would make more sense. And if he had said *some *Christians justified slavery… but others fought against them and so in the Christian world, slavery was wiped out.

That woukd have shown an example of what worked, instead of saying we can still run down Christianity based on things some of them did hundreds if years ago… which is worse than what he is trying to prevent, which is people’s blaming all Moslems for the current actions of a few.

This would have been the objective and reasonable approach…
However,Obama is neither of these,he has an agenda,that is abundantly clear.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Sums it up well, it was excellent speech.

Why invite people to a prayer breakfast and then insult them?
Obama just proved his ignorance and arrogance in that speech.

 

[JimG]

I don’t defend atrocities either. But it appears that the President may think the Crusades occurred in a vacuum, as he did not acknowledge the aggression of the Muslims which had been going on practically from the time of Mohammed.

Maybe someone should give the president a copy of this book.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

No offense to your good self, LeafByNiggle, but that is a magnificently narrow view that stands in contrast to the hundreds of years that the Crusades were used as a prominent vehicle for Catholic bashing and general persecution. I am not saying your perception is incorrect, just phenomenally narrow. The Catechism or Code of Canon Law do not comment about this because it is not their task to comment about it. The study of history is one of the many lights to shine on this.

I did not express the view that the Crusades were a blot on Christianity. I only pointed out that even some some Catholics have that view. And they don’t think they are attacking their own religion by saying this.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Maybe someone should give the president a copy of this book.

Good idea! I would like to read that book myself!

 

[pepipop]

In effect, his speech could be seen as tarring all religions as ‘warmongers’ - the atheists must be having a field day.

 

[qui_est_ce]

Actually the Crusades was more a defensive war. It was certainty a lot more than just protecting pilgrims. Lets not forget Islam had taken over half of Europe by the time of the first crusade. Christians should learn more about history.
Obama is joke
He should just come out of the religious closet already.

He’s just repeating the revisionist version that has pervaded our modern understanding of history. I don’t think he delves deeply enough into any subject to really have a good understanding of what he’s talking about. I don’t think he reads his speeches thoroughly before delivering them, as evidenced by his pronunciation and other gaffes.

 

[Jeanne_S]

He’s just repeating the revisionist version that has pervaded our modern understanding of history. I don’t think he delves deeply enough into any subject to really have a good understanding of what he’s talking about. I don’t think he reads his speeches thoroughly before delivering them, as evidenced by his pronunciation and other gaffes.

More than anything,I think what we are seeing now is the real Obama,all pretenses set aside.
I just heard an interesting sound byte,Obama,thinking he is off the mike.This was during his 08 run.He was stating that in order for him to win,the Christians had to be separated from their faith.So the opinion of this Catholic Conservative talk show host is that is exactly what he was implying in his statement yesterday re we should have some doubt about our faith,etc…
I do think he is pretty clueless in many ways,I also think he is driven by a specific agenda,that being divide and conquer.How many times does he reference “new world order”?

 

[GaryTaylor]

Yup, revisionist version, and ironically most non Catholic reformationists also uphold the version yet are critical of Obama.

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called Obama’s comments about Christianity “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison.”

I don’t see where anyone condemned Pope Urban II and his authority to re-gain sacred shrines being destroyed in the Holy Land. Fact I don’t see where Obama did that. I do see where he points to

people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.

“TRUE” And St John Paul II apologized for Constantinople.

Further Bush is the first to compare radical islam to a US crusade and was critiqued for it, its no surprise a good deal of the world calls the US the Crusaders.

 

[Beautiful]

Bill Warner PhD has this excellent video - Jihad vs. Crusades

youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo

President Obama doesn’t know the matter.

youtube.com/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo

 

[Ridgerunner]

Clearly the opinion the the Crusades were a blot on the history of Christian people is open to debate, even by faithful Catholics. The question not resolved by the Catechism or the Code of Cannon Law or any other binding Church teaching. Therefore affirming that statement is not necessarily attacking anyone’s religion.

But stating the crusades as a shameful fact, comparable to the acts of ISIS certainly is.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

But stating the crusades as a shameful fact, comparable to the acts of ISIS certainly is.

Debating this question comes down to a matter of degrees. We don’t have comparable detailed data from the Crusades like we do for contemporary acts, so the question of degrees is at least up for speculation - not a settled question.

 

[qui_est_ce]

Debating this question comes down to a matter of degrees. We don’t have comparable detailed data from the Crusades like we do for contemporary acts, so the question of degrees is at least up for speculation - not a settled question.

That isn’t the point of this discussion. Obama assumes the modern narrative, “Crusades all bad, Inquisition all bad.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
gardner50:

I don’t defend atrocities either. But it appears that the President may think the Crusades occurred in a vacuum, as he did not acknowledge the aggression of the Muslims which had been going on practically from the time of Mohammed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Debating this question comes down to a matter of degrees. We don’t have comparable detailed data from the Crusades like we do for contemporary acts, so the question of degrees is at least up for speculation - not a settled question.

Undoubtedly there is room for debate concerning the Crusades. But it’s hardly appropriate to compare a rather limited and varied action of 1,000 years ago to a widespread and unifromly murderous action of today in a way that suggests equivalency.

And for what? Obama’s judgment as expressed, of two events that were mixed at worst, as being equivalent to the acts of ISIS not only “waters down” the actions of ISIS, but feeds into the false narrative in the Islamic world about the Crusades. It is particularly false in the Arabic world (though believed there) because virtually the whole enterprise of the Crusades was against Turkic groups from Central Asia that ultimately destroyed Arab civilization.

Is Obama so ignorant of history that he really thinks the Crusades comparable to the actions of ISIS and other terrorist organizations, or does he actually favor the false narrative of the anti-Catholics in the west and the anti-Christians in the east, knowing how false it is?

As anti-Catholic as Obama is, one is tempted to believe the latter. His statement was a “twofer” for him; excusing serious flaws in Islamic society while smacking down the Catholic Church and Christians generally in the process.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Yes, but don’t forget he has convinced himself how smart he is and how unsophisticated we are so he has to enlighten us.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Undoubtedly there is room for debate concerning the Crusades. But it’s hardly appropriate to compare a rather limited and varied action of 1,000 years ago to a widespread and unifromly murderous action of today in a way that suggests equivalency.

How do you mean “limited”? Limited in time? Or geographically? Or in intensity? There were seven major Crusades over 195 years. ISIS has exists as ISIS only since 2013, although it did evolve from other terrorist groups going back to 1999, so time-wise ISIS in some form has existed for maybe 16 years. As for geographically, the Crusades took place in just as wide a space as ISIS. About the only other way the Crusades might be considered limited is in intensity. But this is very hard to judge, since modern day terrorism benefits from instant news coverage, in which a single beheading has an instant and wide-spread impact. Also they did not have access to the kind of weaponry that ISIS has today. But even still, I think it would be hard to make a case that there was not as much killing during the Crusades as ISIS has done.

 

[GaryTaylor]

excusing serious flaws in Islamic society while smacking down the Catholic Church and Christians generally in the process.

Ok so, sticking with Obama post reformation he still brings in the crusades thus…

The First Crusade began in 1095
460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies.
457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies.
453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies.
443 years after Muslims first plundered Italy.
427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople.
380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies.
363 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies.
249 years after the capital of the Christian world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army.

Centuries of church burning, killings, enslavement, and forced conversions of Christians.

By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world. Vox Cantoris

So by Obama thinking of comparing the Crusades to Isis, without mention he also compared them to Islam and the rise of Mohammed. Far as I can tell. Whats the reform plan on this faith, in humility as Obama said, we don’t want to blame faith. But, Isis is raising generations of this chaos as documented in the propaganda media circus that we can’t shut down.

 

[Ridgerunner]

How do you mean “limited”? Limited in time? Or geographically? Or in intensity? There were seven major Crusades over 195 years. ISIS has exists as ISIS only since 2013, although it did evolve from other terrorist groups going back to 1999, so time-wise ISIS in some form has existed for maybe 16 years. As for geographically, the Crusades took place in just as wide a space as ISIS. About the only other way the Crusades might be considered limited is in intensity. But this is very hard to judge, since modern day terrorism benefits from instant news coverage, in which a single beheading has an instant and wide-spread impact. Also they did not have access to the kind of weaponry that ISIS has today. But even still, I think it would be hard to make a case that there was not as much killing during the Crusades as ISIS has done.

The Crusades proper involved a very limited area; basically the coastal area of what is now Syria and part of what is now Israel. Granted, in the First Crusade and, I believe in the Fifth, the Crusaders went through Asia Minor on the way, recovering some of the Byzantine lands for the Byzantines along the way. There was a brief foray near Alexandria in Egypt. Christian Armenia also recovered some of its territory.

But always, the “Holy Land” was the ultimate objective, particularly Jerusalem, and most of the actual fighting was in a very small area. There were times when Crusaders were actually allied with local Muslim rulers against other Muslim rulers.

There were truces and treaties; sometimes kept and sometimes not kept.

It is said that the First Crusade was likely the bloodiest of them, but no accounts of it are universally agreed upon. But for the most part, Crusaders did not kill or even dispossess the inhabitants who did not resist. It was just as feudal in the Levant at the time as it was in Europe, and the local lords, whether European, Arab or Turk, depended on the peasantry. Some historians maintain that it was a matter of indifference to the peasants who the rulers were, because the obligations to the rulers were the same, no matter who they were.

No small number of Crusaders, we are informed by historians, intermarried with the Levantines.

The Crusades very much resembled the war and peace of the time, both in Europe and in the Middle East, until the very end, when large Turkic “nation states” made short work of both Crusaders and Arab rulers. The Arabs, of course, got the worst of that because they had no place to go. The Europeans could take to their ships and leave…and did.