short thread on history and statues
Do some statues deserve to be toppled and removed? Of course. My father went to school in Italy when fascism was largely still a taboo in school programs, but thank God many fascist monuments had been removed after 1945.

European culture is NOT innocent and made of lot of victims. But what are the cultures/religions that are totally innocent?
"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." (Walter Benjamin)

what is needed, especially from those who have a professional vocation to do this, a discernment of the spirits.
Following Walter Benjamin’s view of history: we are responsible for the past, and destroying statues will not solve the problem of MAKING us responsible of the past

Even more dangerous, I think, is the iconoclasm against works of art: works of art are living things, never closed or finished, they are subject to new interpretations, scholarship

destroying is easier than re-signifying the monuments (statues and not) of the past

then there is the problem of the theological tradition: are we going to cancel from PG and PL all the Fathers of the Church that held anti-Jewish or sexist views? OR are we going to read them in order to learn how the comprehension of the Gospel grows in history?

ultimately, I do think that theologians could offer a more nuanced view of the past and of history: a theological-eschatological view of history and not just political.
The problem is that historical disciplines have become totally marginal in contemporary Catholic academia.

Walter Benjamin’s view of history is important to make us responsible for the past.
Benjamin regarded the belief that history was "on our side" as the last word in politically suicidal complacency.

You can have Christian hope in the redemption of victims through a struggle that is also political, or you can see yourself as on the right side as opposed to the other side.
"the right side" - works in politics maybe; intellectually and morally borders with self-delusion.

in a culture without a sense of history, destroying statues it all looks like drama. It should be instead about a tragic sense of history.
History CANNOT be undone.

Again, some statues NEED to be toppled. But there is something else that intellectuals and especially historians and theologians could do in this moment.
(It would be interesting to compare with what happened to statues of Communism in Eastern Europe: quite different).

the end

ATTN @Scaevola67 @MiltonJBravo @Prof_RBW @aselak @DrClarkM1 thank you