Name Change

Recently, a dialogue arose concerning the name of our mascot, The Crusader. A letter, signed by forty-eight distinguished faculty members, appeared in the latest The Crusader, urging students to engage in conversation because our newspaper shares the same name as the KKK’s and the feelings of animosity they believe the term “crusader” carries.

Claude Hanley ’18 already addressed how the College is purposefully slating the dialogue on this very matter in his article “Welcome to Secular Sunday School”. I echo what he said and would like to emphasize that changing our mascot solidifies our entry into this heretical “Secular Sunday School.”

In response to citing the KKK as a reason to discuss changing the name, that argument seems eerily close to an existential instantiation- a logical fallacy where one assumes existential import. I do not think that the vast majority of people know that the KKK’s newspaper bears this name and also, I do not think that the mutual name associates us with them. A proper assessment of Crusaders reveals that they (they being the Crusaders) were anything but white supremacists (since racism did not surface until later). The KKK’s message and agenda of hate and supremacy should not deter us from acknowledging that Crusaders are remembered for being staunchly Christian, above all else, even if that is simply a stereotype.

However, the crux of the argument to change the name that we identify with is not the connection to the KKK, but rather the “anti-Muslim tensions…counter to our mission and goals” as the faculty writes. This assumes that there is a direct connection between the Crusades and anti-Muslim tensions. While I can see how one could reach that conclusion, I believe that conclusion is an oversimplification of a complex series of wars.

Dr. Thomas Asbridge, a leading expert on the Crusades, in The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land writes “when Latin crusading armies arrived in the Near East to wage what essentially were frontier wars, they were not actually invading the heartlands of Islam. Instead, they were fighting for control of a land that, in some respects, was also a Muslim frontier.” Dr. Asbridge provides an excellent backdrop for how we should examine the Crusades- as a political war, not primarily a religious war. Understanding the Crusades as a political war allows you to recognize that both sides waged war over territory, not exclusively religious zeal.

Michael Haag, a historian with books published by Yale University Press, American University in Cairo Press, etc. writes in The Catholic Herald “In 1095, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade, but neither Christianity nor the West was the cause of the Crusades…The Crusades were part of a centuries-long struggle between Islam and Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world.”

Synthesizing these two historian’s thoughts, we see that the Crusades were a war fought between two groups of people, one mainly Christian and one mainly Islamic, but the Crusades resulted from political struggles.

Understanding the dynamic of the Crusades is crucial to understanding my argument about keeping the name. If one views the Crusades in a historical context, one sees that the Crusades do not originate from a place of Islamophobia, as some may argue. This distinction between hatred of a religion and a territorial struggle defines how we view the actual Crusaders.

Speaking of actual Crusaders, history and society stereotypes them as a zealous Catholic, pillaging every village and killing everyone in sight. As with most stereotypes of Christians, this is completely inaccurate. Dr. Thomas F. Madden, a Crusader historian, addresses this common misconception in his article The Real History of the Crusades by writing “They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world…But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.”

Immediately, Dr. Madden deftly squashes the stereotype of the pillaging knight, similar to how the College squashes open dialogue about perpetuating our Christian tradition. I write this statement ironically because similar to how I am advocating for preserving our Catholic history, the Crusaders believed that Islam would destroy Christianity as they destroyed Zoroastrianism, according to Dr. Madden.

As Christians, as American citizens, as people, as whatever we identify as, a universal truth that most, if not all, of us can agree upon is that everyone should have freedom of religion. Then, if a group tries to take away that freedom, wouldn’t we fight? The short answer is we’ve already done that. Earlier, I stated that the Crusades were a political struggle, which is true, but this political struggle led to Muslims inhabiting more territory and as Dr. Madden points out, posing a threat to Christianity. Dr. Madden concludes his article with “Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction.”

I write this not to justify the Crusades because anything that results in killing, stealing, etc. is morally wrong, but I think it expands our view of the Crusades. The Crusaders simply are not what they are remembered as, therefore we should not change the name of our mascot because of a misconception of their intent.

Yes, Crusaders committed atrocities, but so did people on the other side. I do not wish to justify their sins, but rather emphasize that they fought for their families, rights, and religions- in other words, what we call “noble causes”.

In my view, when we call ourselves “Crusaders”, we remember those who prioritized preservation of the family and Christianity. Beyond the stereotypes that society pins upon it, the term Crusader always evokes Christianity. To me, to change the name is to ignore that the message of Christianity is love. In Matthew 22, a Pharisee lawyer asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and Jesus responds “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it: love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these commandments.”

In this time in history where hate is unprecedented, it is crucial and essential that we spread love everywhere. Since we live in a time where Islamophobia is rampant, we need to speak out against the hatred with a message of love, which I believe we can do as Crusaders and as Christians. In my mind, our path forward is self-evident.

We need to delineate what we believe being a Crusader means, educate others on this, and then, check our personal contributions to hatred. Every slightly racist joke or phrase, instance of gossip, insult or jab, even sarcastic comment piles up and smothers the true message of Christianity.

Since Crusader carries negative connotations, we cannot simply do nothing about those connotations. I believe that we should stand by our Christianity, stand by our values of love, and stand by our name as Crusaders. As I wrote before, we need to educate others on the Crusades and what we mean by using the name, underscoring our commitment to Christianity. I view this name change as one attempt of many to rid the College of Christianity, which is why I strongly oppose the name change. Instead of denying our Christianity, let us embrace it, as the Crusaders did, and show our love for God and our neighbors by doing so.

Quod Verum Pulchrum: What's Behind the Fenwick Review Motto

By Stephen Merola ‘16, Editor Emeritus

The motto of this journal was once the Latin phrase quae nocent, docent – what harms, instructs – and its acerbic veracity reflected well the Review’s predilection for tough love. Then for one issue (November 2012) it was changed to the less blunt but equally strong Ciceronian aphorism “If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.” For whatever reason, however, that quotation never again appeared as the journal’s maxim. “To give witness to the truth” (testimonium perhibere veritati) stayed for a few issues three semesters ago, but after that the paper was left without any pithy prescription to adorn its front page.

But as any observer of this edition’s front page can observe, the year-long dearth of dicta has come to an end. We have chosen for our motto three Latin words which contain elements of the above three phrases (essentially, the need for the truth) and add to them a description of the nature of that truth. It is simply, quod verum, pulchrum – what is true, is beautiful.

In his treatise on moral obligations, Cicero (by no means the first to see the relation between truth and beauty) expounds on the concept of decorum. In his context, this Latin word refers not to its modern connotation of seemly behavior, but rather expresses the idea of propriety and rightness. Decorum is the ideal but attainable form that a thing possesses, to which it aspires and away from which it is imperfect. In short, it is the truth in which an entity is called to participate fully. And Cicero argues that someone or something which has attained this true form is beautiful for having attained it. We perceive things that exist rightly as expressing an inherent pulchritude and lacking that decorum we apprehend them in their deformity. Beauty, then, is the experience of truth.

Cicero’s observation (if we think it accurate) necessarily points us to a larger question: why does truth have an inherent aesthetic appeal? Why does it follow that, if something is what it ought to be, it must be beautiful? Cicero’s own answer to this question is that the relation is accidental. His descriptions of the decorum-beauty reality seem only to say that it is simply the nature of things for it to be so. And so, although his exploration of this relation provides us insight into its unfolding within nature, we are still left to ask whether there is any grounding to that relation at all.

In an effort to discover this grounding, we should begin by trying to pin down what we mean by “beauty.” As St. Augustine observed about time, we all seem to know what beauty is until asked to define it. And although we cannot deny that the Sanctus of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcellior the coming New England autumn, for example, possess the rapturous and delightful quality we call beautiful, the reason two things as disparate as the October florae and a Renaissance Mass should evoke (ultimately) the same ineffable experience remains mysterious. Yet when we consider the beauty that nature or music effect, we can acknowledge that this beauty is utterly gratuitous; it need not be. As (among others) theologian David Hart has argued, beauty is an end unto itself. It is not ordered toward any one end, as most other things are, but simply exists to exist. It is a gift we are delighted to receive amidst our participation in reality. But although beauty is a gift, we would be foolish not to acknowledge that without beauty our experience of reality would be severely lacking – indeed, entirely different. In Hart’s words, “the beautiful presents itself to us as an entirely unwarranted, unnecessary, and yet marvelously fitting gift.”

With this understanding in mind, we proceed to a modified form of our original question: if something is true, and for that reason beautiful, does truth express the same gratuity its aesthetic appeal portends? If we are to understand truth as a gift, we are led to contemplate the idea of creation. All that exists exists solely because it participates in the transcendent reality of its Creator. Creation is the temporal unfolding of the eternal logos, and as such finds its source and sustenance in a reality both eternally beyond and wholly immanent to itself. In short, being as we know it is only so by the grace of the ineffable Godhead. Truth is an unwarranted, unnecessary, and yet marvelously fitting gift, and by virtue of that givenness is inherently beautiful.

Yet because of the gift of revelation, we can delve even further into this transcendent understanding of beauty and truth. For as Christians we confess belief in the Trinity, a God who is one in being and three in personhood. The three persons neither divide the Godhead nor are confused among themselves, but rather the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally proceed from the Father, and, though not created, are begotten by Him through all eternity. Though we cannot say that the persons of the Trinity are unnecessary as we are, we can nonetheless see that the pattern of the divine life is one of eternal and necessary gift and thus eternally beautiful. Since we, therefore, exist in a reality whose source and sustenance is this same divine giving, our truth is a temporal reflection of that eternal outpouring of love. The beauty of the Trinity is our origin and the end for which we are made.

To answer the question prompted by Cicero’s initial observation, then, truth is beautiful by virtue of its givenness as creation and its participation in the Trinity.

Though I cannot adequately treat these matters in a mere editorial (or in any capacity, for that matter), I hope I have at least made clear some of the logic behind The Fenwick Review’s new motto. Our past mottos (and indeed our mission as an independent journal) have always expressed a striving towards and defense of the Truth.  Those who write for the Review are often at odds with the predominant animus at Holy Cross, and as such have been made to endure ridicule, vehement opposition, and even the accusation of being hateful. Nonetheless, our hope is simply to give witness to what is true and to turn from what is false. And our new motto should serve as a reminder that regard for the truth is not hateful. It is just the opposite; to pursue the truth is to pursue the ultimate, ineffable beauty toward which we aspire and to which, from all eternity, we have been called.