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.
tossed him in the harbor.
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 disdain is all the worse as she carries the Italian surnames of both her parents and her spouse.
But 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 “leader” 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 yet 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 caliphates, Chinese colonies, or mega-empires of human-sacrificing Incas and Aztecs. 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.
to help convert the natives.
Would the indigenous peoples 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 burqas, Sharia law instead of Roman law. As wars go, South and Central America have integrated more peacefully than Europe mainly with the Catholic form of Christianity and common Romance (as in “Roman”) languages.
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 its 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.
Shouldn’t we give thanks to the real St. Christopher! –JLM
From AI:
“A 19th-century movement to canonize Christopher Columbus was driven by Irish and French Catholics, with support from Pope Pius IX, aiming to recognize him as a saint for bringing Christianity to the New World. Although Pope Leo XIII praised his faith in 1892, the cause stalled due to his illegitimate children and lack of documented miracles.”
Such high standards in the Church that used to sell indulgences! Finding 2 new continents while sailing on faith alone sounds like a miracle to me. Thanks for sharing, Bob.
The book “Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem” by Ph.D scholar Carol Delaney
(Stanford University and the University of Chicago) should be a must-read for anyone, particularly anti-Columbus activists. Delaney came to the subject cold–she said the only thing she knew about Columbus was the old rhyme about “sailing the ocean blue in 1492.”
As a religious scholar, she was especially intrigued when she found out that Columbus’s view on exploration was also informed by his quest to expand Christianity. So she boringly did what most bored journalists still have not done: she read Columbus’s actual journals.
Far from being the rantings of a racist (cf Howard Zinn’s radical take), Columbus’s journals reveal a deeply religious man who tried to do right by everyone, including the natives.
I will let Delaney speak for herself via this link to a printed interview for “We The Italians”:
http://www.columbusthetruth.org/delaney.htm