{"id":1162,"date":"2020-06-29T11:22:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T11:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1162"},"modified":"2025-09-29T14:03:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T14:03:57","slug":"cardinal-dolan-column-the-destruction-of-monuments-only-impoverishes-our-sense-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1162","title":{"rendered":"Cardinal Dolan column: “The destruction of monuments only impoverishes our sense of history.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Junipero<\/a><\/p>\n

An op ed in this morning's Wall Street Journal. The Journal has a paywall, but I expect the Cardinal won't mind my sending around the entire column.<\/p>\n

Years ago I was dedicating a new parish to St. Peter. A woman wrote to protest: \u201cWhy would you name a Church after such a coward, a sinner who denied even knowing the Lord when Jesus needed him most, at the hour of His arrest and crucifixion?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Knowing her and what parish she was from, I wrote back, \u201cBut you\u2019re a proud parishioner at St. Mary Magdalene Church. She was sure not a paragon of virtue for a chunk of her life. Yet, by God\u2019s grace, she became a radiant, inspirational saint. If we can\u2019t name churches after sinners, the only titles we\u2019d have left would be Jesus and His Mother!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Isn\u2019t the same true of America\u2019s historical personalities? All of them had flaws, yet all of them still contributed a lot of good to our nation\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n

Defacing, tearing down and hiding statues and portraits is today\u2019s version of Puritan book-burning. Our children need to know their country\u2019s past, its normative figures and their virtues and vices. That\u2019s how we learn and pass on our story. Is there any more effective way to comprehend America\u2019s history of racism than reading \u201cHuckleberry Finn\u201d or one of Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s short stories, works of literature now ominously on the chopping block?<\/p>\n

My own mom kept a photo of her parents hanging on the wall of our house. Her dad, my grandfather, was an abusive drunk who abandoned his family. I\u2019m glad we got to know of him, the good and the bad.<\/p>\n

The same is true of the church I love and am honored to serve. Yes, there are scandalous parts of our history, and countless episodes when popes, bishops, priests and others\u2014including some who are now saints\u2014didn\u2019t act as they should have.<\/p>\n

God forbid we\u2019d go through a cultural revolution as China did five decades ago. Beware those who want to purify memories and present a tidy\u2014and inaccurate\u2014history. And who\u2019s to say which statues, portraits, books and dedications are spared? Remember when some objected to raising the status of the Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s birthday to a national holiday, citing his self-admitted flaws?<\/p>\n

If literature that depicts prejudice, or words or scenes that are today rightly abhorred, is to be banned, I don\u2019t know if even the Bible can survive. If we only honor perfect, saintly people of the past, I guess I\u2019m left with only the cross. And some people would ban that.<\/p>\n

As a historian by training, I want to remember the good and the bad, and recall with gratitude how even people who have an undeniable dark side can let light prevail and leave the world better. I want to keep bringing classes of schoolchildren to view such monuments, and to explain to them how even such giants in our history had crimes, unjust acts and plain poor judgment mixed in with the good we honor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An op ed in this morning's Wall Street Journal. The Journal has a paywall, but I expect the Cardinal won't mind my sending around the entire column. Years ago I was dedicating a new parish to St. Peter. A woman wrote to protest: \u201cWhy would you name a Church after such a coward, a sinner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5957,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions\/5957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}