Can You Imagine?

So, President Trump wants to place a statue of Columbus on White House grounds.  It’s no secret that Trump wants to restore America’s traditional heroes and the Great Navigator not only opened the New World but propelled Western Civilization to global leadership.

The revisionists who want to expunge Columbus are blind to history.  Chief among them is Representative Nancy Pelosi.  If you recall she defended the mob in Baltimore that tossed the statue of Columbus into the harbor.  “People will do what they do,” she said.  This hurt is deep for me as she carries the Italian surnames of both her parents and her spouse.

Our satisfaction will come when that very statue dumped in the Baltimore Harbor will be restored and adorn the nation’s executive grounds.  The statue was retrieved from the harbor by a local Italian American group led by Maryland lobbyist John Pica with the help of Maryland state delegate Nino Mangione.  The statue will be “on loan” to the White House because Trump’s successors may again bow to the mob and trash it. 

Such happened with the Columbus statue in Chicago, the mayor removed it surreptitiously and offered the dazed Italic community to substitute a more deserving icon in the park.  Previous community leaders at first refused to compromise but a new one accepted Mother Cabrini as a replacement for the man who unified the globe.

In Philadelphia, the exact opposite happened.  There attorney George Bochetto fought and won many court battles with the mayor.  That statue still stands in Marconi Plaza, but the city still wants it out.

Why aren’t the Catholic Church and every other branch of Christianity coming to the defense of Columbus?  He intentionally brought Christianity to the New World.  In fact, his goal was not to exterminate the indigenous peoples but to convert them, and he succeeded on a grand scale.

Imagine, if you will, what the alternatives to 1492 would have been.  North and South America as Islamic califates, Chinese provinces, or mega-empires of Incas, Aztecs, and Iroquois.   If you think that any of these cultures dominating the vast lands and resources of the Americas would better serve humanity look no further than their modern descendants.

Would the indigenous people of the New World have survived Asian or African diseases?  Would they be better off as Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims?  For all its faults, Christianity did not breed fanaticism.  Imagine South Americans in perpetual jihad, women in head-to-toe burkas; Sharia law instead of Roman law.  As wars go, South and Central America have fared immensely better than even Europe mainly because of tolerant Christianity and a Romance (as in “Roman”) language. 

The northern European dominance of North America also began with Columbus and Italian explorers Cabot and Verrazzano, agents for England and France respectively.  Again, these were Christian motherlands.  Say what you will about how “un-Christian” they treated the natives, but just imagine how any other colonizers would have dealt with them.

In previous essays I have wondered why the Catholic Church never considered the Roman emperors (Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian), who actually made it a global phenomenon, as saints in their pantheon.  Now, I wonder why Christopher Columbus isn’t venerated by our clergy.  Not since St. Paul has one man done more for Christianity than the “Christ-bearer” himself.  An estimated 880 million inhabitants of the Americas are Christian and their societies are dominated by them.  Imagine if they weren’t.

Praise the real St. Christopher!  –JLM