Conditions in Palestine
Attwater, Donald
318 THE COMMONWEAL January 26, 1927 CONDITIONS IN PALESTINE
By DONALD ATTWATER T O THOSE who know something of the real history of Europe and have the traditional Christian conscience of...
...True, a Turkish soldier no longer lounged on the divan within the church of the Holy Sepulchre itself, defiling the place with his presence and the smoke of his cigarette (though the keys of the basilica were handed back to the Moslem custodians, representatives of the two families to whom Salah-ed-Din gave charge of the January 26, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 319 doors in I187...
...The army of Duke Godfrey was a cosmopolitan mob, with a common religion and a common enthus-iasm...
...The influence of the High Anglicans is not yet strong enough to have had much effect on these proceedings...
...that they must still mourn for the palace which is deserted, the inheritance defiled by the heathen...
...For the first time in 6oo years, we can look eastward to the cradle of our religion, and see it not obscured by the poisonous halt ~-light of Islam...
...the stolen tomb of Our Lady was yet in the hands of schismatics...
...But Jerusalem remained in statu quo...
...Damascus, Tripoli, Aleppo fell...
...She became neither the King's daughter of the Christians, nor the Zion of the Jews...
...Whenever a mission is established, it is always announced that there is no intention of proselytizing among other Christians, but only of offering the advantages of European educational and medical facilities, and cordial co6peration with the native church...
...Romanizers in the worst sense of that cant term...
...The Jews, who when the city fell had been keeping the Feast of Lights, in commemoration of the deliverance by Judas Maccabeus in 165 B. C., found that the omen was false...
...When the Allies took the city, no conquering flag was hoisted...
...Not that I would suggest for a moment that there is much in common between the rescue of Jerusalem in lO99, and its capture in i917--or even that, except in loose rhetoric, the victors of the latter year were engaged in a crusade at all...
...and with much less reason, of the Mohammedans...
...Almost invariably, they come into collision with the local ecclesiastical authorities, and a few more schisms added to the divisions of Christendom are the result...
...straightway the Christian banners, the cross of Saint George, the leopards of England, the lilies of France, flew over its walls...
...and it is the same wherever the Church has gained or kept a foothold throughout the land...
...But I venture to say that Godfrey de Bouillon, Richard of England, Raymund de Saint Gilles, and their peers, would have accounted the blood and treasure, the misery and terror of five years, only a fitting price to pay for such a privilege--and the public opinion of Europe in that day would have been behind them...
...It is Catholicism that is, by comparison, plain and practical and scornful o( superstition, and concerned for social work...
...Balfour, in the name of his sovereign, had made a certain promise to the Jews...
...for they were yet debarred from the sacred Temple enclosure, and they them-selves regarded with suspicion or contempt by their conquerors...
...G. K. Chesterton wrote admirably in the New Jerusalem: In the East, it is Catholicism that stands for much that we associate with Protestantism...
...But the high-handedness of the Orthodox Greeks was unchecked...
...and we may yet witness the spec-tacle of the non-Catholic Christians devouring each other in Palestine as they have done elsewhere...
...This is what happened among the Orthodox in 1836 , among the Gregorian Armenians, among the Syrian Jacobites, among the Nestorians (whom, for some obscure reason, they call the "Assyrian Church") and above all, among the Malabar Christians of South India, where the efforts of the Church Missionary Society have helped to bring about an amazing confu.- sion of sects...
...for hitherto Protestant missionaries have been looked upon only as an amiable source of temporal ad-vantages, and beneath contempt from any other point of view...
...It is Greek Orthodoxy that is stiff with gold and gorgeous with ceremonial, with its hold on ancient history and its in- heritance of imperial tradition...
...At best, the Egyptian expeditionary force was descended collaterally, not lineally, from the forces of Coeur-de-Lion...
...They rejoiced together when, on December ii, 1917, General Allenby entered the city by the Jaffa Gate, on foot and walking alone-- the successor of Cyrus, of Judas Maccabeus, of Con- stantine, of Heraclius...
...But further developments are inevitable...
...These few comments on our separated brethren of Palestine are not set down in any spirit of malice or bitterness, but to show that the Catholic Church does not, as has been sometimes suggested, labor under any grave disabilities or unusual handicaps in that country...
...Hattin was avenged at Esdraelon, and half- a-dozen other battles...
...And, for a longer or shorter period, this program is faithfully carried out...
...The Crusaders took the city...
...Of this, one of the keys to the religious position, Mr...
...It is the Greek who defends such childishness as childlike faith, and would rebuke such common sense as common scepti- cism...
...These good men will try to improve, to spiritualize, and ultimately to re-form these ancient churches (which know more about Christianity than their new teachers have ever heard of...
...But the English and American Protestant missions which have descended on Palestine both before and since the war, have two valuable assets...
...So it came about that, under the eyes of a horde of oriental mongrela to whom humility in a leader means weakness, the British conquerors, who do not understand what humility is, adopted, at any rate officially, an humble "we want to please you all" attitude, and succeeded in more or less disappoint- ing everybody...
...Now one could openly pray in the cenacle without fear of one's life...
...Had our politicians had but a little greater degree of success, the hereditary enemies of Christendom would have been our allies, and the Holy Land still a Turk- ish province...
...When in Palestine in I917-I 9, having expected to find that in popular repute and distinction, the Eastern Orthodox Church was to the Catholic Church what the Anglican body is to the Nonconformist in Eng- land, I found the exact contrary...
...And again there was a nassacre, but of something more noble than Turks...
...A mere visit to the Latin churches in Jerusa- lem is a rebuke to one who would doubt our prestige and capability...
...Militarily and politically, the release of Palestine was an incident in, not the object of, a campaign...
...A C~sader was one who fought to deliver the holy places from the Moslems...
...it was a massacre of the high hopes of enthusiastic people...
...Balfour...
...The native Mohammedan had welcomed the Brit- ish general with a pun, as el Nebi, the prophet who had delivered the Mohammedans from the Ottoman tyranny which had begun just 4oo years before when SeIim I took Cairo, and wrested the caliphate from the last of the Abbasides...
...They compass heaven and earth to make a convert, not only from Islam or Judaism, but from the already Christian Catholics, Jacobites, etc., with some or all of whom they claim to be in communion...
...I do not speak of the theological tenets, or even the deeper emotions involved, but only . . . of contrasts visi- ble even in the street...
...But they soon began to re-alize that, after all, Brigadier-General Ronald Storrs was, in fact, an accomplished oriental scholar and courteous governor, and not some prophet-descended moutesarrif...
...This must give to them a prestige in the eyes of the natives that they have never enjoyed before...
...visiblement p6n6tr6," said Monsignor Baudrillart, preaching at Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, in Paris, "du souvenir de Godefroy de Bouil- lon...
...Pru-dence dictated the course...
...and there was a terrible massacre of infidels...
...Now there are some sixty million Mohammedans in India, and Mr...
...It is a significant fact that twice in the years 192o-21, the Uniate Arch- bishop of Aleppo (Syrian rite) had to protest against the unfair bias shown against Catholics in the distribu- tion of charitable funds, subscribed in America by Catholics as well as Protestants...
...It is the Roman Catho- lic who is impatient with Russian and Greek childishness, and perpetually appealing for common sense...
...In the cant of our own society, we may say it is the Roman who rationalizes, and the Greek who Romanizes...
...Second, without wishing to be offensive or using the epithet in any disparaging sense, it must be admitted that the principles of these missionaries are most accommodating...
...Hence the massacre of hopes...
...Lessons learned in "souperizing" days in Ireland have not been forgotten...
...but was just el Kuds, no less and no more a Mohammedan city than in the days of the Turkish moutesarrif who held his office from the Sublime Porte...
...On the other hand, there is a curious feature of Protestant missions in the Near East, of which sight must not be lost...
...318 THE COMMONWEAL January 26, 1927 CONDITIONS IN PALESTINE By DONALD ATTWATER T O THOSE who know something of the real history of Europe and have the traditional Christian conscience of the West, there is a minor result of the great war which appears as one of the greatest of its achievements...
...The oriental churches, schismatical or heretical, are indeed stiff with gold and form...
...The root of the trouble was that Jerusalem had been captured, not only by the king of Christian England, but also by the emperor of India and by the sovereign of Mr...
...First, they represent the official religion of the all-conquering British, and of what may become here, as in Egypt, not only the protecting nation, but also the governing class...
...only the Red Cross (not of Saint George, but of Geneva) the red crescent, and the red shield of David were displayed above their respective hospitals...
...The new Jerusalem was, in fact, stiU the old Jerusalem--and so to a great extent it remains...
...while that of General Allenby was a highly-trained force, also cosmopolitan, but divided among three religions, with any number of subdivisions...
...It was indeed a fine act conceived in the spirit of the place, thus to enter--dismounted, unarmed, at-tended only by a few representatives of the allied forces...
...the Turks were literally smashed, and sued for an armistice...
...But there were some among the Christians, intransigeant, as one must be in this land of long memories, who had hoped to see opening and entrance made through the Golden Gate--that portal on whose site was the gate which witnessed the first Palm Sun- day procession, and 6oo years later, the return of Heradius triumphantly bearing the true Cross re-covered from the Persians, which for centuries has been guarded by Turkish soldiers day and night...
...Schools, medicine, and alms-deeds are the three hand- maids of religion in Palestine...
...the Basilica of the Nativity was not restored...
...To Catholics, the British admin- istration appeared simply Roman, in that it confined its activities to keeping the peace, settling disputes by compromise, and improving the temporal state of the city by the provision of water and so on...
...childish often (but not childlike--only bland) torpid and woefully uncul-tured...
...Months passed, and the high hopes were still un- fulfilled...
...Jerusalem is the Holy City, not only of the Chris- tians, but also of the Jews...
...To the Council of Versailles, to the press which manipulates public opinion, to the mass of the people, this may seem a small thing...
...and the Egyptian expeditionary force bore about the same relation to the armies of the Crusades, as the English Order of Saint John of Jerusalem does to the sovereign and sacred military order of that name...
...for prophecy had said that through it should come the destroyer of the power of Islam in Jerusalem...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 12
