Crusades (Earth, Kingdom, churches, catholic, pope)

[Popeyesays]

Originally Posted by Steve

Hi all, <SNIP>


Like to know your thoughts.

That you're mistaking a Christian evangelical apologetic polemic for actual history.

Regards,
Scott

[Ryan2065]

Originally Posted by Victor

This makes it sound like you don't consider Catholics as Christians. But I doubt you mean that..[img]images/smilies/bouncy.gif[/img]

Funny, I read what he said and got the message "The Crusades were not faught by ALL christians but by the Roman Catholics... How you translated that message into "Roman Catholics are not Christians" is beyond me...

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Ryan2065

Funny, I read what he said and got the message "The Crusades were not faught by ALL christians but by the Roman Catholics... How you translated that message into "Roman Catholics are not Christians" is beyond me...

Here let me paste it for you:
That's certainly our problem with the Crusades, particularly the 4th. And, of course, that everyone refers to them as Christian wars when they were, in fact, Roman Catholic wars only.

Tell me, where is the word ALL you inserted?
And how many Christian denominations do you think existed back then?

It's no big deal. I know he didn't mean that...

~Victor

[Popeyesays]

Originally Posted by Ryan2065

Funny, I read what he said and got the message "The Crusades were not faught by ALL christians but by the Roman Catholics... How you translated that message into "Roman Catholics are not Christians" is beyond me...

The Eastern and Syrian orthodox Christians were victims of the Crusades largely speaking.
When Jerusalem was threatened by the First Crusade the 30-40,000 Christians living there were expelled from the city. They functioned as native supporters for the Crusader army, showing them where water and timber could be found.

When the crusaders took the city, one of the first things they did was to imprison and torture the eastern priests to disclose the location of the "true cross". Then the eastern Christians were again expelled from the city. Between 20 and 30 percent of the Muslim defenders of the city were allowed to withdraw under the laws of parole, the rest were massacred whether they surrendered or not. Almost the entire Jewish population of the city was massacred men, women and children.

[Ryan2065]

Originally Posted by Victor

Here let me paste it for you:
That's certainly our problem with the Crusades, particularly the 4th. And, of course, that everyone refers to them as Christian wars when they were, in fact, Roman Catholic wars only.

Tell me, where is the word ALL you inserted?
And how many Christian denominations do you think existed back then?

It's no big deal. I know he didn't mean that...[img]images/smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Just letting you know that what he said does not imply anything remotly like what you read =)

And there were more than one Christian denominations back then... To say that Christianity waged the Crusades is very wrong, as he pointed out... I don't know what plainer language he could have used? Lets put it this way... Lets say I say this....
The little league won the game.
Obviously a whole league cannot win a game... so lets change it.
Only the Cougars won the game.
Does this imply that the cougars are not part of the little league? Apparently accoridng to your logic it does...

[Doc]

Originally Posted by Darkdale

Just for the record, I did not find Kingdom of Heaven to be anti-Christian.

I saw this movie as well and found it to be fair to both the Muslims and the Christians.

[James the Persian]

Originally Posted by Victor

This makes it sound like you don't consider Catholics as Christians. But I doubt you mean that..

~Victor

No, I don't consider RCs non-Christian. The important word in my sentence was the last one - 'only'. All I meant was that I get sick of people trying to claim that Christianity is evil and violent, often the more fanatical Muslim apologists, because of the Crusades. Neither we nor the Oriental Orthodox were involved, except as victims. That's what I meant when I said that the Crusades were Roman Catholic wars only.

About the worst example of this sort of nonsense I've recently seen are the fanatical Muslims in Egypt referring to the Coptic church as a 'crusader church'. Just how historically cockeyed can you get? Of course, I don't think it's fair to tar modern Roman Catholicism with the brush of the Crusades either, especially given the apologies by the likes of JPII, but at least that position, indefensible though it is, has some basis in historical fact. Villifying all of Christianity for the abuses of one (at the time) comparatively small group does not. Hope that has made what I had thought quite clear even more so.

James

[Jaiket]

The massacre of Jerusalem's inhabitants as well as the atrocities against the Jewish people of Europe were in defense? Not the greatest examples of Christian love I've heard.