Koan #40: Criticizing the Crusades

It is often the case that many Unbelievers and Misunderstanders, in their quest to discredit the Faith in any manner possible, criticize the Crusades as an example of Christian injustice and evil. Yet while it is both possible and true to criticize the actions of individual Crusaders with such a claim—and as all men are fallen sinners, which Catholicism preaches and teaches, such evil individual actions are not only not unexpected, but inevitable—the Unbelievers and Misunderstanders cannot justifiably criticize the Crusades as a whole with such sweeping claims. For it takes only a moment of historical study to realize that the Crusades were waged primarily to defend Christendom, through a strategic counter-attack, from hundreds of years of Islamic military expansion, aggression and murder—which, it might be added, would continue for many hundreds of future years—making the Crusades both just and necessary. And thus, in the same manner as one might criticize the actions of individual Allied soldiers during the Second World War as evil, but cannot justifiably criticize the Second World War as a whole as such—which was also waged primarily to defend the Western World from Axis expansion, aggression and murder—so too can the Crusades, as a strategic defensive action, not be so easily claimed as evil by anyone with a modicum of historical and moral sense.