Should I protest?

[pira114]

The Catholic school I went to had the nickname of “The Crusaders.” Now my children are attending there. Last year, they changed the name to “The Crimson Knights.”

I was told they did this to avoid offending anyone. Personally, I’m tired of people thinking we need to appologize for something that was good and necessary. Now they’ve gone and destroyed a very long tradition that a lot of us are upset about.

Question is this. Should I go to the meetings they have and complain? Should I just start collecting signatures to ask the school to reconsider? Or am I over obsessing with it?

 

[marty1818]

I can understand that it may annoy you that they changed the mascot but you have to consider how much good will come out of it and whether this is a fight worth fighting. If you feel it is then go for it. If not, then don’t worry about it.

God Bless,
Matt

 

[pira114]

It’s hard for my to judge how much good will come of it.

In one regard, I think it would be good to educate all the people (parents and teachers) on the board who voted to change the name. Their reason was that they “didn’t want to offend anyone since the Crusades were wrong.” So their decision was based on ignorance of the facts, and they’re spreading a message that they believe all Christians and the Church should appologize for the Crusades.

On the other hand, I’ll be kicking up dust and getting people possibly annoyed at me, and I’m not sure how many people would be educated in the long run. I’m not sure how many care. I can only speak for myself and about 3 or 4 other parents I’ve talked to.

 

[BillP]

Well, it depends on whether or not you care that the Crusader mascot is deeply offensive to Muslims or not. And there are about 1.5 million Muslims in the US. Muslims regard the Crusades in much the same way that Jews regard the Holocaust.

If you don’t mind that some of your neighbors see the Crusader bumper sticker on your vehicle and think you hate Muslims then by all means protest.

On the on the other hand you might ask yourself how you would feel if a secular school opened up and featured Christian-eating Lions as a mascot? Or if a Japanese cultural school opened up with a name the celebrated Hydeoshi crucifying the 26 Christians in Nagasaki in 1596.

I guess the larger question is why do you want to keep a mascot is divisive and that some segment of the population finds patently offensive?

 

[JimmyV]

Yes, I think you should ask the school to reconsider and if that effort fails start a petition. It appears to me that someone at the school is being politically correct in changing the mascot. I live in a state with a large Muslim population and have not found them to be so easily offended. Furthermore, since the Moors basically won the wars - they have no reason to be offended. That would be like an American taking offense to our celebrating VE Day or VJ Day.

 

[mellysue]

It could be worse. Our mascot were the trojans. Yeah, if you know your history, those were the guys fooled by the horse, the ones that got slaughtered…

Plus, it gave way to alot of contraceptive jokes.

 

[mac_daddy]

Cardinals. Padres. Pirates. Metropolitans. Aggies. Yankees. Knicks. Redskins. Pistons. SuperSonics. Angels. Dodgers. Athletics. Braves. Mariners. Reds. Blues. Maple Leafs. Blackhawks. Steelers. 49ers. Nuggets. Seminoles. Illini. Irish. Hurricaines. Boilermakers. Volunteers. Minutemen. Orangemen. Tar Heels. Sooners. Longhorn. Broncos. Colts.

Spending only a moment or two, one could make a defensible argument that any of the above teams are offensive in some way to someone somewhere.

I find it laughable that any individual Muslim would be offended by the name Crusaders but would not be equally offended by the various mascots and nicknames listed above. Are we that offended by history?

 

[JKirkLVNV]

pira114:

The Catholic school I went to had the nickname of “The Crusaders.” Now my children are attending there. Last year, they changed the name to “The Crimson Knights.”

I was told they did this to avoid offending anyone. Personally, I’m tired of people thinking we need to appologize for something that was good and necessary. Now they’ve gone and destroyed a very long tradition that a lot of us are upset about.

Question is this. Should I go to the meetings they have and complain? Should I just start collecting signatures to ask the school to reconsider? Or am I over obsessing with it?

The sack of Constantinople wasn’t necessary. It was undertaken by Crusaders. HH Pope John Paul the Great thought it important to apologize for that, at least. Maybe it offends more than Moslems, perhaps it offends some of our fellow Christians.

 

[BillP]

Redskins, Braves

Are racial stereotypes and patently offensive to easily identified groups. Groups who make known the fact that they’re offended.

Blackhawks, Seminoles. Illini. and (Fighting) Irish

could be offensive, but those groups seem to have embraced the mascot. So there isn’t a problem.

Padres, Pirates, Mariners, Metropolitans, Aggies, Yankees, Knicks(erbockers), Angels, (Trolley) Dodgers, Athletics, Maple Leafs, Boilermakers, Volunteers, Minutemen, Tar Heels, Sooners, Steelers, 49ers

These are non-pejoritive nicknames either geogrpahical or occupational that I’ve never heard anyone take offense to. I’d be interested in you making the case that any of these are offensive to someone. (Other than a Braves fan like myself whois offended by the very existence of the perfidious Mets).

Pistons, SuperSonics, Reds, Blues, Nuggets, Hurricaines, Longhorns, Broncos, Colts

Since these are either inanimate objects or animals. If they were to take offense it would be difficult for us to know. I’d pay cash money to see you make a case that one of these groups is offended by such as mascot.

I find it laughable that any individual Muslim would be offended by the name Crusaders but would not be equally offended by the various mascots and nicknames listed above. Are we that offended by history?

I think you’re being a bit disingenuous here. Surely, you are aware that many Muslims are offended by “Crusader”?

So are you saying you find them hypocritical by being offended?

The way I think about these things is that we (especially as Catholics who follow the God of Love) are obliged to treat people the way they want to be treated. If they find “Crusader” as a team mascot offensive, I think we should either change it or say up front that we don’t care if we offend them.To tell them they shouldn’t be offended is hypocritical.

 

[Della]

pira114:

The Catholic school I went to had the nickname of “The Crusaders.” Now my children are attending there. Last year, they changed the name to “The Crimson Knights.”

I was told they did this to avoid offending anyone. Personally, I’m tired of people thinking we need to appologize for something that was good and necessary. Now they’ve gone and destroyed a very long tradition that a lot of us are upset about.

Question is this. Should I go to the meetings they have and complain? Should I just start collecting signatures to ask the school to reconsider? Or am I over obsessing with it?

While I wouldn’t make waves over changing the name of the team, I would want to correct the idea that the whole of the Crusades, on the Christian side were “wrong.” If I were you I’d gather reliable information on the Crusades, just a few salient paragraphs of no more than on page and distribute it to everyone at the meeting. Say you don’t care what the school names the team, but everyone ought to be aware of what the Crusades actually were and the Catholic Church’s place in it. After all, it’s the idea that the Crusades, in and of themselves were in all cases “wrong” that is really what has to be corrected here. And I agree that some people may be offended by the title Crusaders, so in the interest of ecumenical understanding and goodwill, without accepting stereotypes about the Crusades or the Church’s part in them, that the name of the team be changed, but only for that reason and not because the Crusades were “wrong.”

 

[fix]

JKirkLVNV:

The sack of Constantinople wasn’t necessary. It was undertaken by Crusaders. HH Pope John Paul the Great thought it important to apologize for that, at least. Maybe it offends more than Moslems, perhaps it offends some of our fellow Christians.

**

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.
catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/2002-02/article.html
**
There were excesses, but they were just wars. **

** 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.

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.**

**

**

 

[JKirkLVNV]

****

---

There were excesses, but they were just wars. ****

---

---

---

I would never argue with that. I was simply pointing out that it may be more than our Moslem neighbors who are offended. Looking through these threads, when the sack of Constantinople comes up, some of our brothers and sisters from the East express less than salutory feelings about it. And war is rarely “good,” to use the OP’s words, though they are sometimes just.

 

[pira114]

Well, I might just let it go. No one seems to be offended at us calling ourselves the Crimson Knights, which was another name for Crusaders of a particular sect. My history escapes me and I forget which one.

To answer the “offending Muslims” question. No, I don’t care if they’re offended by my schools nickname. They are offended at my simple existence. Of course the Muslims remember it different, but the whole of the Crusades were defensive to their attacks and war against Christians. I don’t really hold it against them, that’s what they’re supposed to do. But, I’m not going to worry about their feelings.

The sack of Constantinople was not part of the Crusades. It was kind of a side bar war due their not being able to pay what they had promised. It’s a whole other debate on whether it was necessary, but it wasn’t part of the Crusades.

Anyway, I’ll probably not say a word since it seems that it might just start an arguement.

By the way, any Christian who would be offended by the Crusades (or ashamed of them) probably just doesn’t understand the history correctly. Which is totally understandable since the Crusades are almost completely left out of World History classes until you get to College. Even then, it has the usually anit-Christian slant to it.

If you want to read a fairly good, but lengthy, essay on it, go to crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm