Of course I am not saying that everybody in the Catholic clergy claims infallibility on all matters, or anything like that. However, the Catholic church as a body does claim divine authority to judge these matters, so why should they be rejecting false miracles if that authority is factual? They are certain enough of this authority when they pronounce someone a Saint, giving their believers the go ahead to communicate with them through prayer. That’s pretty confident, I would say, otherwise they could possibly be encouraging spiritism or divination, if their judgement was sometimes incorrect.
Since the process of sainthood is dependent on the process that verifies miracles, the same level of authority must be assumed to be at work there too. Otherwise, it stands to reason, if they are sometimes wrong about the miracles, then they are sometimes wrong about the saints, and therefore dangerously presumptuous in telling people to pray to them. It’s a tricky path to say “we make mistakes”, there are more consequences than just the convenient ones.
“However, the lack of such a letter does not prove the falsity of the apparitions.”
No, it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t mean there’s no letter because the Bishop was afraid of some consequences if people found out what was happening. It’s just a bit odd that a main character in the story, who is, as you pointed out, the one most responsible for verifying these kinds of things, didn’t seem to tell anyone about it. Maybe he did and all the records have been lost, but unless we find something like that, I think it’s an oddity.
“As I understand it, the Nican Mopohua, written in classical Nahautl in 1556, is-— by way of comparison -— about as authentic as a birth certificate would be: it is an official document, and an early one.”
An official document of who? The church, the government, the local priest? They have a pretty good guess as to the author, but I don’t think it’s an official document so much as a tract that someone wrote promoting their story of this apparition. On the other hand, we have a source from at least as early, that is attributable to someone with some position of authority in the church, denouncing spurious claims of a miracle by the peasants that sound just like the Guadalupe cult. Even if that’s just the one man’s opinion, it demonstrates that there wasn’t a general belief, even 25 years later, that this miracle was legitimate and leading some miraculous wave of conversions.
“But there isn’t any other explanation-— other than the Guadalupe phenomenon -— for 5 million conversions between 1531 and 1536. I am open to competing hypotheses, but they’d better be good.”
Of course there are other explanations. First of all 5 million is impressive, but take things in perspective. There were over 5 million people in the capital alone, and Mexico is a large country, so if you were to look at it percentage-wise, it’s not so miraculous. Mass conversions do happen, sometimes at the point of a sword, sometimes from waves of fervor, and often during times of massive social upheaval. How many people were converted to Islam in a few decades? That doesn’t require any miraculous explanation, so why does this?
“It does no good to say this was all a 16th century Catholic proselytizing hoax, either, since it was controversial from the very beginning”
That really doesn’t do much to contradict the hypothesis, since it could have been simply one missionary, or local governor who hatched a plan that unexpectedly caught on. There’s no reason to assume that, if it were a “tall tale” concocted to win converts, that all the authorities in the region would be in on it.
“If it was a symbol of Spanish hegemony, it was not a very good one, since Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla initiated the bid for Mexican independence with his Grito de Dolores, with the cry “Death to the Spaniards and long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!””
The Law of Unintended Consequences can really come back to bite you.
“This recently found manuscript (called the Codex Escalada) provided the documentation needed for the canonization Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, which only happened in 2002 (471 years after the apparitions.).”
Yes, that was very convenient, that it was discovered just at the time that the very information in the Codex was needed to overcome objections. I guess you could either see that as miraculous itself, or suspicious, depending on your perspective.
“Not exactly a full-speed-ahead 16th century propaganda campaign.”
I don’t think it’s likely there was any official propaganda campaign. If it was a hoax, it was probably like every other hoax, the work of one or a few anonymous individuals who did it for their own reasons. If it’s just a folktale, then those stories just spread organically until someone bothers to write them down and set some version in stone.
”..the Catholic church as a body does claim divine authority to judge these matters... otherwise they could possibly be encouraging spiritism or divination, if their judgment was sometimes incorrect..”
This shows some unfamiliarity with the way such judgments are made in the Catholic Church. There is no doctrine which would forbid Catholics from petitioning intercessory prayer from any person whatsoever, saint or sinner, living or dead. I can ask my mother (d.1994) for her prayers. I can ask the Archangel Michael for his prayers. I could ask you for your prayers --- and I don’t even know if you’re a theist. That should be sufficient evidence of our promiscuity as to asking, and offering, intercessory prayer.
(I’m not speaking here about acts of formal recognition, such as their inclusion at the altar in a public liturgy which can only be done after a strict formal investigation and the approval of the bishop.)
BTW, this is not “spiritism”, i.e. the dead communicating with the living, something which we are strictly not to solicit.
”Since the process of sainthood is dependent on the process that verifies miracles, the same level of authority must be assumed to be at work there too..”
Some theologians would say that if a canonization is solemnly proclaimed by the Pope himself, it is infallible; however, this opinion itself has not been defined as doctrine, and so disagreement is possible. Asked this question, Fr. Edward McNamara, a liturgy professor at Regina Apostolorum (Link) had this to say: “ The reason is that the decisions emanating from the consistory are juridical and not theological in nature.”
And he goes on and onnnn about degrees of authority. It is well to remember that the process of canonization is not part of the Deposit of Faith and is not set in stone; it’s not standardized in the Scripture or in the Fathers; it can be revised (as it was in 1917, and again in 1983).
About the absence of any reporting of the Guadalupe apparition in the letters of Bp Juan de Zumárraga:
If you knew the appalling situation Zumárraga was in, you would not be surprised. The top civil authorities at the time were the vicious Nuno de Guzmán and his henchmen: enslavers and abusers of the indigenous people. Guzmán mistreated some missionaries, and went so far as to threaten to hang the bishop for rebellion.. They were sworn enemies of Zumárraga, who was very vulnerable because as “Protector of the Indians” he had no troops or enforcement measures whatsoever except for moral suasion.
Knowing that Zumárraga meant to report their crimes to the Spanish Court, Nuno and his men intercepted and censored all letters from New Spain. (Zumárraga finally did get one uncensored letter through in a cake of wax which he immersed in a barrel of oil!) He revealed that the first missionaries, starting with Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo, despite their zeal were ineffective in converting the Indians.
At the beginning of 1530, after Guzmán had departed, the acts of oppression of his fellow administrators against Indians and missionaries were such that Zumárraga declared an interdict against them: a suspension of Mass and the Sacraments. Guzman’s clique were for a time excommunicated. Suffice it to say that in letters before the Guadalupe Event you find Zumarraga despondent about the moral depravity of New Spain and the general lack of success of the Catholic mission.
In any case, the conquerors’ excesses resulted in a great deal of rancor and hatred by the conquered. The Aztec, Chichimec, and related people were stolidly opposed to conversion to the Christian faith; neither did the Spanish political and military leaders favor it, since they were interested in exploiting the indigenous people, not telling them that they were spiritual equals, created not for slavery, but for liberty and dignity. (The military governors were not about to expose the Indians to the Natural Law theories of Bartolome de las Casas or the School of Salamanca!)
So it stood before 1531: the Indians sullen when not in open rebellion, the Bishop depressed and beleaguered.
Then from 1532 until his death in 1548, bang! Zumarraga’s letters show a transformed man, a whirlwind of optimism: he sent for teachers and established schools in which Indian girls enrolled in droves; founded the Colegio Tlaltelolco and various hospitals (Mexico City and Veracruz); instituted technical schools in mechanics, agriculture, and industrial trades; and, just two years before he died, introduced the first printing press in the Western Hemisphere. And native people were begging for baptism, not only in Mexico City, but Tlaxcala, Texcoco, Huejotzingo, and as far away as Veracruz: during the last years of Zumarraga’s episcopate, at the very least, 5 million Indios baptized.
“[Nican Mopohua] ...an official document of who? The church, the government, the local priest?”
It is a classical Nahuatl work, written as a Tecpaneca testimonial, as is indicted by the words “Nican Mopohua,” repeated throughout the text, which manifest a formal declaration (“It is hereby declared.”) The author, Don Antonio Valeriano, was a nephew of emperor Montezuma and a witness, as he lived between 1520 and 1606. He was 11 years old in 1531, the year of the apparitions, and 28 in 1548, when Juan Diego Cuautlatoatzin died. In 1533, at 13 years of age, Don Antonio Valeriano, acquainted with Nahuatl literary and courtly tradition through the tutelage of his parents, began studies at the Holy Cross School of Tlatelolco, founded by Zumarraga. He was, therefore, one of the first Indians to speak and write Latin, Spanish and Nahuatl, and was governor of Azcapotzalco for 35 years.
There’s more documentary proof for the Nican Mopohua than for any other Nahuatl document of the 16th-17th centuries. As I see it, you either have to consider it "very probably reliable," or dismiss native testimony altogether.
And as for the Codex Escalada (Link), well, judge for yourself.
About conversions and numbers:
I would like to see reasonable guesstimates for the population of Mexico in the 1530’s. The native people of Mexico experienced epidemic diseases in the wake of European conquest, beginning with the smallpox epidemic of 1519 to 1520 when 5 million to 8 million people perished.(I got this from a CDC historical review of infectious diseases (Link) I have seen estimates that the population of Mexico City dropped as low as 100,000.
”How many people were converted to Islam in a few decades? That doesn’t require any miraculous explanation, so why does this?”
"A few decades"... are you speaking of the century after Muhammad's hegira?? And were those conversions to Islam occasioned by girls' schools, barefoot mendicant preachers, opponents of oppression, and hevenly apparitions of maternal sweetness --- or by jihad? You tell me.