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Eugene

(61,595 posts)
Sat May 2, 2015, 09:14 PM May 2015

Pope defends California missions' founder ahead of canonization

Source: Reuters

US | Sat May 2, 2015 9:42am EDT

Pope defends California missions' founder ahead of canonization

ROME | BY STEVE SCHERER

(Reuters) - Pope Francis defended an 18th-century Spanish priest on Saturday from accusations he brutalized Native Americans in missionary work that helped lay the foundations for the Catholic Church in the United States.

The pope intends to declare Father Junipero Serra a saint at a Mass celebrated at the National Shrine in Washington on Sept 23 during his U.S. visit.

The Franciscan missionary built a series of missions along the Pacific coast in the latter 18th century, in what is now California, to spread the faith among Native Americans there.

Tribal leaders in California say Serra beat and imprisoned local peoples, suppressed their cultures and facilitated the spread of diseases that decimated the population.

Without addressing specific accusations, Francis praised Serra's missionary zeal and said the priest "defended the indigenous peoples against abuses by the colonizers".

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/02/us-pope-usa-serra-idUSKBN0NN0F120150502
22 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Pope defends California missions' founder ahead of canonization (Original Post) Eugene May 2015 OP
Makes you wonder skepticscott May 2015 #1
I'm sure it will be more measured than the New Atheist apologists here. rug May 2015 #2
interestingly, the Natives (the Acjachemen near me) are much more ambiguous on Serra MisterP May 2015 #3
An unrecognized tribe speaks Cartoonist May 2015 #4
It's very sad that some posters here skepticscott May 2015 #7
It's understandable. Igel May 2015 #10
^^^THIS^^^ beam me up scottie May 2015 #13
^^This Indeed!^^ mr blur May 2015 #16
What an awesome post. trotsky May 2015 #18
Serra is a very poor choice. okasha May 2015 #5
And which whites would those be, okasha? skepticscott May 2015 #6
I bet I was 'faking gender equality' advocacy too, when I get pissed off about gender-segregated AtheistCrusader May 2015 #20
That's a rather unpleasant bit of false equivalency there. AtheistCrusader May 2015 #19
My problem with this edhopper May 2015 #8
Are you assuming that Native Americans will be extincy okasha May 2015 #12
Not at all edhopper May 2015 #17
Woah there, spitfire! mr blur May 2015 #22
Bad call. He has shown a really lack of sensitivity towards aboriginal people, imo. cbayer May 2015 #9
Bad call? That's a very poor analogy skepticscott May 2015 #11
Let me prognosticate. The pope will pay no nevermind. LiberalAndProud May 2015 #14
The only thing the RCC cares about is the future of the RCC. beam me up scottie May 2015 #15
Pope Francis praises soon-to-be saint Junipero Serra amid Native American objections trotsky May 2015 #21
 

skepticscott

(13,029 posts)
1. Makes you wonder
Sat May 2, 2015, 09:30 PM
May 2015

which side the Native American Catholic apologists will take here. Especially those who would vehemently deny that the white Catholics could know more than their own people about Native American history and heritage.

Inquiring minds want to know.

MisterP

(23,730 posts)
3. interestingly, the Natives (the Acjachemen near me) are much more ambiguous on Serra
Sat May 2, 2015, 10:36 PM
May 2015

than some Neomexicano: the Amerindians are the ones making the complaints, but they're much closer the mission system and have more understanding of it

Cartoonist

(7,298 posts)
4. An unrecognized tribe speaks
Sat May 2, 2015, 10:47 PM
May 2015


February 24, 2015

Re: Open Letter to Pope Francis,

Your Holiness, Pope Francis, My name is Valentin Lopez and I am the Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Our historic and continuous Tribe is comprised of the documented descendants of the indigenous peoples taken to Missions San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz in the state of California, United States of America. Our Amah Mutsun Tribe is not a federally recognized Tribe. The Federal Government of the Unites States does not acknowledge our Tribe nor does it provide assistance to our members. We are writing this letter to voice our disbelief and objection to your intent to canonize Franciscan Friar Junipero Serra.

snip . . . full letter: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/03/02/18769396.php

There were many horrendous and documented events during the mission period in California. For example, in 1809 a Commander of the Spanish military ordered Spanish soldiers to massacre 200 women and children who refused to continue to march to Mission San Juan Bautista. These women and children were cut into pieces with sabers while the commander ordered that their remains be scattered on the ground; this event is documented. After this atrocity “the priests swore all of the soldiers to secrecy.” While some will argue that Junipero Serra himself was not directly responsible for this massacre, there is no dispute that he is responsible for creating the system that allowed these types of inhumane and depraved events to occur. Furthermore, to remove him from the consequences of the missions would be the same as removing the leaders of terrorist groups, or military aggressors who acted in the name of religion of any era, including the terrorist groups of today, from the actions of their followers.
 

skepticscott

(13,029 posts)
7. It's very sad that some posters here
Sun May 3, 2015, 07:53 AM
May 2015

Have tried to euphemise the actions of Spanish missionaries and conquerors as nothing more than a "land grab". That kind of apologetics for brutal murder and cultural destruction has no place on a progressive web site.

Igel

(35,197 posts)
10. It's understandable.
Sun May 3, 2015, 11:46 AM
May 2015

There are those who try to take explicitly religious acts and force them into their own framework to make them appear better. Killer claims a religious motive, out to cleanse the Earth of the unfaithful, and the re-analysis is "he doesn't understand that he's just fighting a class war against the neo-imperialist West based on his family's social status."

Suddenly the explosion that killed kids and civilians because part of a struggle for dignity and independence, and only a heathen would be against dignity and independence.

At the same time, we can take what is explicitly partisan (redistricting) or profit-driven (bank loans) and assert that the only possible motivation for what our foes do is racist. We're masters at reanalyzing things in ways that make sense to us to make us and those we want to be in solidarity with look good and those we dislike look bad.

A lot of progressives also are more legalistically Catholic than they recognize. In this reanalysis, we extend forgiveness and even indulgences to those who would sin against our precepts as long as they're "ours". But we're unsparing in the need for not just repentence but penance or even condemnation to Dante's hell for those that we disapprove of.

Even those who claim to be the "true Xians" are unsparingly un-Christlike when it comes to this division between goats and sheep, and invariably, godlike, separate them to their own right and left (hands). Zealotry is a bad thing because it's usually self-forgiveness merged with a zeal for sacrificing, just usually not themselves.

It's humorous when one thoroughly biased side looks at the other side and says it's biased. I can't help but ponder the delightful irony that it takes two symmetrically opposed butt-cheeks to make a perfect ass.

Much of what the Catholic missionaries did was explicitly cultural genocide. They didn't care about some aspects of culture; they really did care about other aspects. It wasn't full cultural genocide--that comes about for a variety of reasons, and typically the bearers of culture switch sides for a variety of reasons (some from political pressure, some from questions of prestige, some out of economic interests, some through intermarriage, some through sheer exposure to a larger mass of people).

Simultaneously, it's apparently required for the Catholic church to reject some aspects of its culture and adopt anothers' perspective, because some cultures just don't deserve to exist any longer and must be destroyed. Thus rounding out the, uh, circumstances.

Same for the land-grab hypothesis (in which missions are a tool not of the Catholic church per se but of a Catholic government--much as jihadis are religious but are the tools of secular powers, or NGOs work in culture and for a particular subset of the public good but can also serve the interests of particular political parties). Along parts of the mission line the locals used the missions to try to ward off land grabs by locally non-indigenous tribes (although by some modern views those peaceful tribes, who didn't think of land as being owned in any way, had valid land claims from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and were apparently entitled to kill off other tribes to preserve those claims). The problem wasn't land ownership or land grabs per se--it was who got ownership and who was making the grab for land. Another rotund situation nicely, um, fleshed out.

okasha

(11,573 posts)
5. Serra is a very poor choice.
Sat May 2, 2015, 11:16 PM
May 2015

While he may have saved some California Native Americans from outright massacre by the Spanish invaders, it's a documented fact that the mission system in the area imposed a gradual cultural genocide.

As I've pointed out before, either De las Casas or Sahagun would have been a better choice if Francis wants to canonize an early Catholic missionary to the Americas.

There remains this to say. Those whites who have shown no interest in the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island except to make our history a club to beat other whites with can dry their crocodile tears. You're just as guilty of exploitation as those you accuse.

 

skepticscott

(13,029 posts)
6. And which whites would those be, okasha?
Sun May 3, 2015, 07:49 AM
May 2015

And are you really, truly saying that showing no interest in the here and now is the same as the brutal exploitation and genocide that occurred in the past? Are those whites born recently equally guilty simply because they insist that the abuses against Native Americans that happened long before they were born not be forgotten or minimized, and that blame for them be correctly attributed?
Seriously?

I know you've accused other posters here of faking their support for LGBT rights as an excuse to criticize religion (I'm sure someone can provide the link if you've forgotten), and now you seem to be doing the same thing again, which is sad. Not sure why, but you seem deeply confused and conflicted about who the real wrongdoers are here.

AtheistCrusader

(33,982 posts)
20. I bet I was 'faking gender equality' advocacy too, when I get pissed off about gender-segregated
Mon May 4, 2015, 10:33 AM
May 2015

religious nonsense.

AtheistCrusader

(33,982 posts)
19. That's a rather unpleasant bit of false equivalency there.
Mon May 4, 2015, 10:31 AM
May 2015

So let's say I NEVER expressed a shred of interest in any indigenous peoples (not the case, but let's assume it) and I stood up and told the RCC/followers that it is unacceptable for them to glorify people well known to have abused these native populations, that's just as exploitative as stealing land, locking people in open-air dungeons, force converting them to other religions, killing them, wiping out cultural practices, art, and artifacts, etc?

You really want to call those 'equally exploitative'? Even granting/assuming the straw premise that I 'showed no interest' otherwise?

edhopper

(33,208 posts)
8. My problem with this
Sun May 3, 2015, 10:12 AM
May 2015

is obviously not the religious hoodoo that comes with sainthood.
But that the Church now has a great say in what the history of these people will be.

In a few hundred years will people know the evils this man did, or the horrible acts of Teresa, when their history is mainly told by the Church?

I am sure the other facts will still be somewhere around, but will anyone take the time to search for them?

Monsters made into the definition of good. Wonder what Jesus would say?

okasha

(11,573 posts)
12. Are you assuming that Native Americans will be extincy
Sun May 3, 2015, 04:58 PM
May 2015

"in a few hundred years?". We've managed to hold on to our.true history so far-- and golly gee, nowadays we can read and write and stuff like that, even use computers, some of them programmed for our own languages.

What patronizing tripe.

edhopper

(33,208 posts)
17. Not at all
Sun May 3, 2015, 05:42 PM
May 2015

I meant the general public. The weight of the Church and it's propaganda against the few who might bother to combat it.

Wasn't implying anything about Native Americans.

cbayer

(146,218 posts)
9. Bad call. He has shown a really lack of sensitivity towards aboriginal people, imo.
Sun May 3, 2015, 10:59 AM
May 2015

Just like most descendants of the victorious invaders.

 

skepticscott

(13,029 posts)
11. Bad call? That's a very poor analogy
Sun May 3, 2015, 12:11 PM
May 2015

and very poor apologetics, cbayer. A "bad call" is made quickly, in a split second of action. Calling something a ball when it really caught the corner is a "bad call". Calling something a charge when it was obviously a block is a "bad call". But the pope and the RCC have had years to consider the sainthood of this rather unsavory person and to look at what he did from a variety of sources and perspectives. They are under no pressure to make a "call" even now, but are determined to do so, with full and absolute confidence that they are doing the right thing by bestowing this honor. Unlike a referee, they would vehemently deny that this was a "bad call" even after hearing all of the arguments against it.

LiberalAndProud

(12,799 posts)
14. Let me prognosticate. The pope will pay no nevermind.
Sun May 3, 2015, 05:06 PM
May 2015

The course of the Catholic Church is nothing if not predictable.

beam me up scottie

(57,349 posts)
15. The only thing the RCC cares about is the future of the RCC.
Sun May 3, 2015, 05:12 PM
May 2015

Despite the media hype, the pope is no different than previous spokesmen, he just has a better pr team.


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