“All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion!”
Ok, so the Pope hasn’t called for a new armed Crusade. That would probably be bigger news. However, somewhere after the Ninth Crusade Popes calling for Christians to take up armed struggle fell out of fashion. But - suppose a contemporary Pontiff were to call for a Tenth Crusade - he calls for all the faithful to take up armed struggle to take Jerusalem from the Jews and Moslems who currently administer that august city.
How many people actually turn up to answer the Pope’s call? How does the world react, and what happens to our hypothetical Vicar of Christ on Earth?
Most likely, the Curia would move to have him declared insane, (using his own statements as evidence), and he would retire to a quiet monastery, somewhere.
There would probably be a few dozen members of The Blue Army and associated groups who would want to enlist, but there would be no grand movement to follow such a call.
(During WWII, a number of Right leaning bishops proposed that Pius XII call for a crusade against “godless communism,” enlisting the aid of the Nazis, (or joining their forces with the Nazis, depending on perspective), to smack down the communists once and for all. Their call got no traction with Pius XII, who rebuked them, and there was never any groundswell of opinion to get him to change his mind.)
The relationship between the Pope and Catholicism, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and the rest of the world is pretty significantly different than it was during the middle ages, and no Pope who did that would be listened to.
If a sane pope (or one generally regarded so) made such a call, it could only be in response to a rising wave of crusading sentiment throughout the Church, clergy and laity, and everybody would see it coming a long way off. At present it is not visible on the horizon.
For the record, the last time a Pope officially called for a crusade was 1480 (when the Ottoman Turks were invading Italy). There were some “crusades” called by Kings or local religious figures after that. And there were crusading military orders, which arguably were engaged in an ongoing crusade. The last of these was disbanded in 1798 (when Napoleon occupied Malta and disbanded the Hospitallers).
The final official bit of the crusades was the collection of a special crusading tax. The last one of these was formally abolished in 1945. In Pueblo, Colorado of all places.
Arguably, and probably more than arguably, President Bush’s use of the term “crusade” was just unfortunate phrasing on his part, and he doesn’t really believe the War on Terror is a religious war to destroy the infidels. In fact, Bush fairly regularly made statements stressing that the War on Terror wasn’t directed against Islam or Muslims as a group, that he didn’t believe that Muslims should be singled out for discriminatory treatment, or that Islam mandates or encourages acts of terror. He made it clear that the whole thing was strictly a secular matter and not a religious one.
I’d personally be really curious as to whether or not the Knights Hospitallers (Knights of St. John) would stick with running ambulances and hospitals, or whether they’d go back to their old ways and roll out some combat units.
I agree, in colloquial speech it had lost most of the associations.
This speech however was clearly meant to invoke the old meaning, most likely as an appeal to the christian base.
Obviously whoever wrote this had not expected the outcry it provoked and it has done quite some damage to the US image.
Anyway this was not just a slip of the tongue thing but something structurally wrong in the ideology of the neo-cons.
I thought we established during the Popey retirement threads that there was no procedure for removing a sitting Pope, regardless of whether he’s sane. Frankly, it seems to me that if you leave the matter of selection up to the Holy Ghost, and HG’s choice goes nuts, it must be God’s will.
Judiasm has not been a conversion concern for awhile. But in this hypothetical, some people wouldn’t like it. Not that they fundies care about the Jews, but an invasion of Jerusalem would bring the crazy Jack Chick types out of the woodwork. By a Jesuit no less! Not Romanian, though.
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
