Responses to Arguments Against a Name Change for Columbus Catholic High School in Waterloo, Iowa:

A number of counter-arguments have been raised against the idea of changing the name of Columbus Catholic High School.  Here, we respond to some of the arguments that have been made against such a name change.

If the name is bad, why didn't we call for a change sooner? 

This is the one argument that has been raised that has perhaps the greatest validity. We know a lot of people have been thinking for some time that the name should be changed, and much of the information behind the argument to change the name is not entirely new.  Certainly in the instance of the quincentenniel of Columbus’ voyage in 1992, many discussions arose of the destructive behaviors of Columbus during his voyages to the Americas and their harmful consequences.  In hindsight, many of us wish we had brought this issue up sooner. Perhaps we stayed quiet because we knew that when you challenge any tradition, you are stirring up a hornet's nest. That has certainly been the case, if you look at many of the social media comments in the past year opposing the name change and even vitriol and name-calling directed toward some of those who have advocated the change. However, that is not really a good reason to remain silent. Sadly, we were not taught a true history of Columbus or many other historical figures in grade school or high school. That is not a specific indictment of our schools because that was true of schools everywhere when we were growing up. So when we were in school and shortly after we graduated, we did not know the truth. But we have learned it since, and in hindsight, we probably should have spoken out sooner.

That said, the fact that we did not speak out sooner does not mean that we should not speak out now. The old adage "better late than never" comes to mind here. The fact that the name has not been changed in the past does not mean that it should not be changed now. America is in a nationwide debate about changing names and removing monuments that honor people who we know now are unworthy of honor. Some argue that this is an attempt to deny or erase history, but it is in fact the exact opposite of that. It is an attempt to tell history more in the way it really happened. To not honor someone is not to take them out of the history books. Thus, for example, Confederate statues can be moved from public places of honor to history museums where they are properly curated, explaining what the person in the statue did, why some considered them heroes, and why others found them offensive symbols of violence and hatred. That isn't erasing history; that is teaching it in the way that it should be taught. The same is true for the naming of buildings, schools, cities, and so forth. In the case of Columbus High School, if the name is changed, a plaque could be posted explaining the reasons why the school was originally named for him and why the name was eventually changed. In fact, this should be done. But as noted above, better late than never. If the name is wrong it is wrong, and the fact that it has not been challenged in the past does not mean that it should not be challenged now.

Columbus was not really as bad a person as his critics suggest. He was a good Catholic more interested in spreading the Faith than in taking land, gold, or slaves. Additionally, he followed the policies of the Spanish royalty of not enslaving baptized persons. 

If you look at writings of historians concerning Columbus, this is somewhat of a minority position, and it is undermined by Columbus’ own accounts of his voyages.  The writings of various individuals who were present with Columbus in the West Indies, and even to some extent his own journals, show that Columbus engaged in killing, physical abuse, and torture of Indigenous people, and in the taking and trading of slaves. The three documents recently added to the opening of our main Web page and to our “Suggested Readings” page document a number of cases of these behaviors. But let us for a moment assume that the aforementioned defenders of Columbus were right - he was more interested in spreading the faith than material acquisition, did not enslave baptized persons, and treated well the native people who converted to Christianity. As debatable as these claims are, even if all of them were true, he would still not be a person worthy of honor. No matter how well he may have treated those who converted, it is not a matter of much dispute that in the case of those who resisted him, the treatment was very different. He took their land, tried to force them to bring him gold (that for the most part did not exist), exacted tributes from all Native people he ruled, and killed and dismembered people who would not submit to him. And took many of them, probably thousands all told, as slaves.  A large number were sent to Spain on one of his ships to be slaves, and 200 of them died on that ship.  Others were “given” to Spanish colonists to be their slaves.

Taken as a whole, the evidence is strong that, while Columbus did seek to convert native peoples to Christianity and articulated a religious motive for his actions, he was more interested in finding gold, and when that turned out to be present only in limited quantities, profiting from the slave trade and helping Spain to profit from the slave trade.  And that, toward these ends, he was willing to engage in considerable violence against his fellow human beings, particularly any who did not submit to his demands. Is that the kind of behavior that should be honored by having our high school named for Columbus? We think not, and you cannot escape the fact that the person who is honored by having our school named after him did these things.

Those who criticize Columbus are judging a person of the past by today's standards.  He was just acting as many did on behalf of the Church and the Spanish Crown. 

Responding to this argument requires some historical context about just what kind of era Columbus lived in. It was a historically ugly era in Church and Spanish history. The Inquisition was under way in Spain. People were killed and tortured if they expressed religiously "incorrect" views. This included people who were even suspected of being Jewish or Muslim.  Some people are criticizing the move to change the name of the school as "political correctness" but if you want to see what that really looks like, take a look at the Spanish Inquisition.  Anyone who expressed views deemed “incorrect” by the inquisitors was subject to torture and/or death, including by brutal means such as being burned at the stake.  Also in that time, Spain and Portugal were taking slaves from Africa and doing it with the APPROVAL of the Catholic Church. At that time the Church regarded slavery as OK as long as the enslaved person had not been baptized. The Pope had even gone so far as to say that the Spanish and Portuguese royalty could engage in the African slave trade, and divided the Americas into regions where land and natives would be subject to the church-approved rule of Spain and Portugal.  One pope (Innocent VII) even accepted a gift of 100 slaves from King Ferdinand and distributed those slaves to bishops and to Roman nobility.

Today, the Catholic Church regards such behavior as sinful and has admitted that what it did then was wrong. If the Church can admit that it was sinful and wrong, why would we today want to celebrate it with the naming of our school?  It should also be noted that despite all these actions by the Church that it now regards as wrong, the Pope at the time, Alexander VI, did not authorize Columbus to take slaves and urged him to teach and bring the word of Christianity to those he encountered, with no mention of engaging in violence or taking slaves.

And there is a more American argument about why we do not want to celebrate a figure like Columbus or his life and times. The accepted notion in Columbus's era - and he most certainly accepted it and was an example of it - was that a country had an established religion and the right to enforce belief in and practice of that religion by law and by military action. Hence the Inquisition, in Spain and other countries (which was also brought eventually to the New World in the form of the Mexican Inquisition). This notion, which was widely accepted in the world at the time and for centuries afterwards, led to widespread warfare, martyrdom, torture, and death all over the world. It was not strictly a Catholic notion; Muslims and, once they came along, Protestants, did the same thing. Sometimes Catholics were the perpetrators, but in other cases (think Henry VIII) they were on the receiving end. The Crusades, which are sometimes cited as a motivation for Columbus voyages (looking for a new route by which to free Jerusalem from the Muslims), are a perfect example of this mentality, on both sides. It was the religious duty of Muslims to convert Christians and kill them if they would not convert, and it was the religious duty of Christians to do the same to Muslims and "take back" land that had fallen under Muslim control. This mentality led to centuries of endless battles and warfare in Europe, the British Isles, the Middle East, and elsewhere. And the formation of the United States was a reaction against it.

Political conservatives in the United States love to talk about "American exceptionalism" but they often fail to understand its most important element. The United States was the first country in the world to explicitly renounce the concept of state-established religion. Here, there would be no official religion into which people would be forced to comply, like what Columbus was doing in the West Indies. Here, people would be free to practice whatever religion they wanted, unlike Spain, England, France, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and nearly everywhere in the West at the time the United States was formed. So yes, Columbus lived in a different era, but his advancement of the practices of that era is not something that we should want to honor. Ironically, naming things for Columbus is often seen as patriotic, but the reality is that the beliefs and the regime that Columbus was promoting were about as un-American as anything could be, because they were in diametric opposition to the founding principle of this country, enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And a principle that nearly all the world has now joined the U.S. in accepting.

Finally, we would note that, despite the many practices and beliefs present in the era of Columbus that no true Christian would honor today, the concept of “Thou Shalt Not Kill” predates Columbus by more than one and a half millennia.  It was as much a Commandment in the era of Columbus as it is today.

Our school was really named for the Knights of Columbus, the organization that played a crucial role in getting the various parishes together to form the school. 

On page 11 of the Twenty-Five Year Annual of Columbus High (1959-1983), it states: "Columbus High School was named for Christopher Columbus who was a man of great courage and began an adventure without knowing what the future might hold. Those attending Columbus that first year were very much like that man."  So, it is not true that the school was named for the Knights of Columbus.  But even if honoring the Knights of Columbus were a motivation for the naming of the school, the question of the name cannot be avoided.  We must still ask, for whom were the Knights of Columbus named? There is an almost exact analogy to this question. There is a neighborhood in Denver, Colorado that until recently was called the Stapleton Neighborhood. That is a neighborhood that was built on the site of the old Denver Stapleton Airport when the new Denver International Airport (DIA) was built 25 miles or so to the northeast and the old airport was abandoned. So the new (20+ years ago, now) neighborhood was named for the old airport on whose site it was built. But who was the old airport named for? It was named for Benjamin F. Stapleton Sr., a leading member of the Ku Klux Klan when he was elected mayor of Denver in 1923. So even though the Stapleton Neighborhood was named for the airport, the origin of the Stapleton name was an effort to honor a Ku Klux Klan leader. Yes, he had other accomplishments and was mayor of Denver, but none of that negates the fact that he was a leader of one of the most racist organizations in the history of the United States. So recently, after 20 years of debate and a couple neighborhood votes to keep the Stapleton name (there, as in Waterloo and everywhere, traditions are strong and hard to change, even when they need to be), the decision was finally made to change the name. All of this seems quite analogous to the situation of our school. Even if it were true that our school was not directly named for Columbus, it carries his name nonetheless, just like the neighborhood carried Stapleton's name. And none of Columbus's accomplishments negate the fact that he took slaves and dismembered and killed people. Or that his legacy was the death, due to warfare, disease, slavery, and other causes, of somewhere around 90 percent of the people who lived on the islands when he arrived. And eventually, of more than 90 percent of the Native people in the Americas - not directly attributable to Columbus, but an eventual result when others followed in his footsteps and treated Native peoples in similar ways. We hope it won't take 20 years to change the name of our school, although we are not naive and know that it won't be easy.

None of this is intended to criticize the Knights of Columbus.  They are an important Catholic organization that does great charity work.  But we do believe that, had the wrongdoing of Christopher Columbus been known when the K of C organization was established, its founder, Father McGivney (now deservedly under consideration for sainthood) would have chosen a different name for the organization.  Now again, if the name of our school is changed we do think a plaque or historical marker should be added at the main entrance to the school explaining the history, and that it should include credit and thanks to the K of C for their role in the initial founding and funding of the high school. As an organization they deserve honor for their work on behalf of the school and the many other good things they have done - the name change is about Christopher Columbus, not the K of C.

This is just another example of “cancel culture,” trying to erase history by taking away names and monuments that honor figures important in the history of the United States.

This argument has already been partially addressed in response to some of the other counter-arguments above, but we want to be clear: We are not about cancelling history, but rather about telling history in a more honest, accurate, and complete way.  Yes, Columbus had some very real accomplishments, but he also behaved in ways that were extremely immoral and destructive.  For the latter reason, he is not worthy of being honored by having our school named after him.  At the same time, we believe it is important to tell the full story of Columbus.  The historical marker we have proposed above is an important part of this, telling both why the school was originally named for Columbus and why the decision was made later to change the name.  And it is equally important that, in our school and in all schools, the entire story of Columbus, including both the good and bad, needs to be told.  As noted above, in the case of anyone who refused to submit to his demands, Columbus took their land, tried to force them to bring him gold (that for the most part did not exist), and killed and dismembered people who would not submit to him. And took many of them back to Spain to be sold as slaves.  Taken as a whole, the evidence is strong that Columbus was more interested in finding gold than in saving souls, and when gold turned out to be present only in limited quantities, he turned to seeking profit for himself and for the Spanish Crown from the slave trade.  And that, toward these ends, he was willing to engage in considerable violence against his fellow human beings, particularly any who did not submit to his demands.

Some critics of changing the name have argued that the financial cost of doing so would be high.

Although there is no doubt some cost involved, we believe that this argument is largely a red herring. The name of what is now MercyOne Waterloo Medical Center has been changed twice, and they seem to have survived financially. And as others have pointed out, most of the branding and imagery need not change. We can, and in our opinion, should, stay the Sailors. No reason to change the Green and White, either. And there are a number of other names that could be given to our school that would fit equally well with those themes, such as for example naming the school for any one of the several Patron Saints of sailors. But other names would not require the mascot or school colors to change, either. And things like uniforms, signs, banners, etc. could be gradually replaced over time. All that said, some who support a name change have indicated that they would be willing to help out with any financial costs of a name change.

It would be disloyal to our school to change its name.  Those who want to change the school’s name are seeking to destroy a tradition.

It is not a name that makes a school. It is the people and the learning that goes on there. The teachers, students, staff, alumni/a, and those who support the school. A name change does not change any of that. The learning goes on, and we are all still Sailors.  Those of us who seek a name change are long-standing loyal alumni/a and supporters of our school.  But now that we know the full truth of Columbus, which neither we nor anyone else were taught when we were in school – not at our school and not at other schools – we do not want to have our school named for a person whose behavior is contrary to the values we were taught there.  Values such as the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Our school is too good to be named for someone who went against the Golden Rule.  It should not have a name honoring someone who, regardless of their accomplishments, committed great evils that harmed his fellow human beings.  If you have read this far, thank you for reading, and 

GO SAILORS!