{"id":2997,"date":"2011-11-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/11\/even-so-i-still-love-the-pilgrims.html"},"modified":"2011-11-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T12:00:00","slug":"even-so-i-still-love-the-pilgrims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/11\/even-so-i-still-love-the-pilgrims.html","title":{"rendered":"Even so, I still love the Pilgrims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A famous painting of the pilgrims.\u00a0 I always liked this one, perhaps owing to
it being used in my first grade class when we studied Thanksgiving.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

History is a tough nut to crack.\u00a0 Ultimately, we only have a few facts here and there with gaping holes in between.\u00a0 Into those holes goes a multitude of opinions, agendas, biases, prejudices, and ideals.\u00a0 Sometimes we are aware of these ad libs, sometimes we aren\u2019t.\u00a0 But it\u2019s always a difficult thing to get right unless you are really trying, and you are really honest with yourself.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The pilgrims, the ones from Thanksgiving that is, are a perfect case in point.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve blogged about here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, the holiday soon to be formerly known as Thanksgiving is already fading from its once lofty perch.\u00a0 This perch actually increased in popularity for a time as PC sensitivities and censorship eliminated the last vestiges of that holiday based on the birth of He-whose-name-we-cannot-mention, leaving a void in the family and friends and special memories category of American culture. <\/p>\n

But alas, as liberalism has faded into the post-Western, post-American secular Left, even it has begun to be pushed aside.\u00a0 We still have this day, which can still be mentioned as important for family, for days off of work (when non-unionized companies still allow it), and especially as the spring board for the first Holy Day of Wall Street: Black Friday.\u00a0 Soon it will be Black Thursday as the only real reason left for it to exist will be to buttress the profit margins of our annual frenzy of consumerism and commercialism.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

As for the original story?\u00a0 Well that\u2019s gone the same way as that other story about some baby in a manger so long ago.\u00a0 For the most part, it\u2019s ignored.\u00a0 If we\u2019re lucky it\u2019s ignored.\u00a0 In keeping with the dictates of multi-cultural education, we often hear about the evil legacy, the racism, the imperialism, the fanaticism, the zealotry and intolerance, the sheer corruption of heart and mind that infected every man, woman, and child that came from the ship of death, the Mayflower.\u00a0 The American Indians, are, of course, portrayed as pure, caring, loving, perfect, sinless, flawless, and living at one with one another, all visitors, and Mother Earth.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This is the unbalanced answer to a problem that never really existed in the first place<\/a>.\u00a0 Under the auspices that Americans never admitted to their own sins of the past, and always portrayed everyone else as the bad guys, MCPC propaganda has felt the need to overemphasise the opposite.\u00a0 Of course Americans did admit to their past, did give credit at times where it was due, and\u00a0often have been able to balance between going overboard with nation worship on one side, with nation abuse on the other.\u00a0 Admitting that, as Chesterton once said, love of country shouldn\u2019t be like saying \u2018my mother, drunk or sober\u2019, there was a time when they also realized it shouldn\u2019t be the same as \u2018my mother, drunken bitch, let her die.\u2019\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we\u2019ve been\u00a0focused on the sins, the bad, the failings, the flaws and shortcomings of our history over the last sixty years to such a degree, that many now see nothing of value in our past.\u00a0 Any old celebrations are by default a celebration of evil.\u00a0 Therefore there is nothing old worth keeping, nothing traditional worth saving.\u00a0 When the old America has burned to ashes, what will arise will be\u00a0a superior nation living up to the true ideals of our country\u2019s founding, living at peace with a world that has only awaited the advent of the generation that will set it right. <\/p>\n

Because of this rather silly and asinine approach to our country and its heritage, there is little hope that the story of a band of religious practitioners so passionate about their faith they were willing to risk life and limb to set up a new life in a forbidding wilderness, will be remembered in another decade or so.\u00a0 What is remembered now is mostly the bad.\u00a0 That these followers made friends with the native population, established a treaty that lasted almost fifty years, and managed to endure hardships beyond our wildest dreams, is already lost on most young people today, and not a few older folks.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just those rascally post-moderns.\u00a0 I\u2019ve certainly been saddened by the number of Catholic apologists who enjoy taking potshots at the folks of Plymouth Rock.\u00a0 I know, I know.\u00a0 There actually was a strong Catholic presence in the New World long before the Mayflower came to town.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t hurt if more Americans knew this.\u00a0 Most only know the Catholic Church was here to support the Conquistadors.\u00a0 Realizing that the Catholic Mass was already practiced when the Separatists were only beginning to feel unwelcome in England would do all Americans some good.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean we should toss out the pilgrims with the bathwater.\u00a0 First, there is an incredible legacy of sacrifice and passion for the Gospel that wouldn\u2019t exactly hurt your average Christian in America, c. 2010 to emulate.\u00a0 And that includes Catholics.\u00a0 There is also that tradition of rebellion, of revolution, that the pilgrims brought with them and planted in the ground along with the rows of corn.\u00a0 That seed would grow and grow and lay the groundwork for a mentality that bore fruit in the late 18th century in the form of the United States of America.\u00a0 For all its flaws, a country founded on trying to do the best it can.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason the revolution began in the part of the colonies descended from the Pilgrims, and not in the South, or in other parts of the colonies of other countries. <\/p>\n

And of course there is a little lesson I learned as a Protestant.\u00a0 One of the developments that aided me in my pilgrimage back to Catholicism was the realization on the part of some Protestant scholars and apologists that we are living in an anti-Christian world.\u00a0 Even if folk don\u2019t want to kill us, it doesn\u2019t mean they want our Faith around.\u00a0 And as non-Christian morphed into post-Christian and then into anti-Christian, it became increasingly difficult to separate between Protestant this and Catholic that.\u00a0 So they realized that each time a Protestant apologist lambasted the Catholic Church because of the Inquisition, or the Witch Burnings, or the Crusades, or any one of a thousand things Protestants have blamed the Church for over the years, the rest of the world merely heard \u2018Followeres of Jesus burned witches, tortured heretics, slaughtered infidels.\u2019\u00a0 There was no longer a separation between Protestants and Catholics.\u00a0 To slam the Catholic Faith was to slam the Christian Faith.\u00a0 And therefore, they began backing off, defending the Church, reexamining some\u00a0 of the old tales about Catholic horrors, and generally tryin
\ng to portray a more positive history of the Faith. <\/p>\n

Hello Catholics.\u00a0 That goes the other way.\u00a0 As fun as it might be to point out the flaws of the Pilgrims, to focus on the general terrors of America and link them to those rascally English Protestants, to attempt to diminish the story or the contributions of those seeking religious freedom, just remember this: each time a finger is pointed at Protestant Christianity, the rest of the world steps in and bends the other three right back to the Church.\u00a0 I think of this when I remember articles I\u2019ve read over the last few years.\u00a0 Sometimes former Protestant converts are the worst.\u00a0 As if trashing and dismissing the contribution and the role of the Pilgrims is some rite of passage, they can do the Pilgrims worse than any post-American God hating secularist. <\/p>\n

So for me, Catholic though I am, I still love the Pilgrims.\u00a0 They lived their faith.\u00a0 Were they perfect?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Neither were the Indians.\u00a0 Neither were the Catholics.\u00a0 Neither are they today.\u00a0 And that includes any atheists who might be reading.\u00a0 I needn\u2019t ignore the bad in order to appreciate the good.\u00a0 If I demand perfection before I admire someone, then I had best provide perfection myself.\u00a0 And I\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t do that.\u00a0 Therefore, I can look back and see the tangled mess and complex story that was the Pilgrims, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and the first Thanksgiving, and give thanks that Christians such as those actually stepped forth and lived their faith.\u00a0 They put it all on the line.\u00a0 They did what far too few today could ever boast \u2013 they risked their lives for what they believed.\u00a0 And they brought a spiritual emphasis and revolutionary spirit to a land that, for all it\u2019s flaws, became a beacon of light for humanity that has helped bring the promise of what can be to people around the world.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So thank you Pilgrims, and thank you God, that through your blessings and grace, they were able to survive those first years and leave the seeds of a witness that the Church today so desperately needs to pick up and run with.\u00a0 May we all stop pointing fingers at those who have gone before, and instead live in such a way that will inspire others four hundred years from now.\u00a0 After all, despite all attempts to diminish their legacy, it still lives on.\u00a0 Happy Thanksgiving pilgrims, American Indians, and all who look to learn the best from our past so that we can contribute the best to our future.<\/p>\n

(this is a repost originally posted last year I thought was worth repeating)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A famous painting of the pilgrims.\u00a0 I always liked this one, perhaps owing to it being used in my first grade class when we studied Thanksgiving. History is a tough nut to crack.\u00a0 Ultimately, we only have a few facts here and there with gaping holes in between.\u00a0 Into those holes goes a multitude of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEven so, I still love the Pilgrims<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A famous painting of the pilgrims.  I always liked this one, perhaps owing to it being used in my first grade class when we studied\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/11\/even-so-i-still-love-the-pilgrims.html\" \/>\n<meta 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