Junípero Serra not just another saint

Orange County Register ^ | September 20, 2015 | Deepa Bharath

[EveningStar]

When Pope Francis canonizes Father Junípero Serra on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Serra will be the first Hispanic American saint, and the first saint canonized on American soil.

He also figures to be one of the most controversial saints in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church – a symbol that roils some hearts even as it lifts others.

Serra, an 18th-century Spanish friar who founded nine of the 21 California missions, including Mission San Juan Capistrano, is gaining sainthood, in part, because he helped bring the church to the Americas. By one reckoning, Serra’s legacy is nothing less than California itself.

Serra also was revered during his lifetime, and is said to have reached beyond the cultural mores of his era to help individual native Americans and protect the oppressed.

Many Catholics, particularly in Orange County, have urged Serra’s canonization for decades.

But some Native Americans view Pope Francis’ decision to canonize Serra as a cultural and personal affront.

[Gumdrop]

Well, when I was in college John Kennedy ran for President and I see the know-nothings are still at it here in FR. Some of this anti-Catholic drivel here is astounding and mostly erroneous.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Salvation]

Hammer meets nail with your comments.

[Regulator]

Yessirree, John Kennedy and his brothers were a real godsend to America.

Yup, ya gotta be one of them Eeeevil, cold Protestants not to see the Greatness of the Kennedy Brothers and all that they did to..um...for America.

Might wanta pick another example for your totem.

[Regulator]

Ooooohhhh got it!

The truth is, you're actually an anti-American.

We're really the evil, racist, colonialist Empire that tooks the land of the Sacred Mexican people from them!

Moral relativism! The Eeeevil Protestant occupation of The One True Church's land is filled with iniquity, barbarity towards children, Catolicos, Negros and small kittens!

How dare we criticize the descendants of Ferdinand and Isabella. They have created great and Moral countries, the envy of all the Earth!

It is all the fault of the Gringo! That these countries unfortunately do not have paved roads, or electric lamps on the streets!

Excuse me for laughing. Your comparisons are absurd.

[ronnietherocket3]

Moral relativism! The Eeeevil Protestant occupation of The One True Church's land is filled with iniquity, barbarity towards children, Catolicos, Negros and small kittens!

You're the one running around accusing Serra of killing Native Americans while ignoring that America has killed 56 million people in abortion.

[Carry_Okie]

If not by design then willful negligence. It had been known since Cortez's conquest of Mexico that European diseases brought down the natives.

Twenty years after Cortez, when evidence of a smallpox pandemic should have been obvious, Cabrillo encountered no sign of any such demographic disaster in the highest concentration of Indians in the State. Nor did his descriptions note any sign of scarring. He was stationed along the coast for five months, plenty of time for a plague to have developed, but there is no such record in the log, despite the fact that the symptoms would have been readily discernible to the Spanish.

So you're still peddling this stuff without having read the cause of death statistics? Really? Milliken's PhD thesis is very detailed on the matter.

[Regulator]

Really?

Yeah, really, I am.

Are you smoking wacky terbacky up there in the woods?

Cortez was in 1520. We are talking about 300 years later, the 1780s to 1835 when the Mission system collapsed after Secularization.

The number of Indian graves in the mission cemetaries alone are around 63000. At San Gabriel Arcangel it's about 6000. At Mission Dolores, similar numbers and the famous die-in there that took about 5000 lives in a few weeks.

This is an Aztec painting showing a scene of smallpox:

.

Perhaps your friend Milliken would like to 'splain that to Loosy. Me, I'll take the conventional history.

[Regulator]

And this statement from Cabrillo College - the bastion of Central Coast leftism - has this to say about the activities of their heroic idols, the Spaniards:

"The native peoples did not thrive during the mission period and the death toll was exorbitant. In the brief span of 65 years of mission operation, extending from the first founding (1769) to the secularization on the missions (1834), 81,000 Indians were baptized in the missions, and 60,000 deaths were recorded. Causes for the high death rate varied. Foremost were the European diseases (smallpox, measles, diptheria) against which the Indians had no natural immunity. Additional causes include a diet high in carbohydrates, but low in vegetables and animal protein, working conditions, harsh life-styles imposed by the missionaries, and poor sanitation and health care. Native health care practioners were prohibited from employing their skills and knowledge and at night the Indians were forced to sleep in dank, dark dormitories. Thomas Farnham, an early Anglo-American visitor to Mission Santa Barbara, was repelled by the evidence of massive death he found there. He noted the mission cemetery was so filled with dead Indians that their bones had to be exhumed periodically to make way for new bodies. In the mission's courtyard he saw

three or four cart-loads of skulls, ribs, spines, leg-bones, arm-bones, etc., lay in one corner. Beside them stood two hand-hearses with a small cross attached to each. About the walls hung the mould of death!

Similar scenes could be witnessed at most of the other missions. By 1834 there remained about 15,000 resident neophytes in the 21 missions. Missionization had been an unmitigated disaster for the Native Californians.

"Unmitigated disaster"....gosh, let's beatify this guy. He really did a great job of evangelization.

Serra's mission was a monarchial imperative to increase Spanish territory and power. Period. It failed miserably, and California was settled in great numbers by the Anglo-Protestants who made it a billion times more successful and wealthier then the scrofulous Spaniard Conquistadors, who never came to Make, but rather Take.

[Regulator]

Hilarious strawman.

Some of us are able to actually oppose the abomination called Abortion and its decimation of an entire generation - what would have been the second Baby Boom - and at the same time recognize that the Spaniard forays into North America were uniformly evil! Just as they are today!

Shoulda let the French win at Puebla.

[Carry_Okie]

Are you smoking wacky terbacky up there in the woods?

You said smallpox did them in and specifically mentioned Cortez.

Cortez was in 1520. We are talking about 300 years later, the 1780s to 1835 when the Mission system collapsed after Secularization.

YOU were talking about Cortez. When the mission system collapsed, the Indians had already been taken down, but not by smallpox.

You were wrong. Got it?

The number of Indian graves in the mission cemetaries alone are around 63000. At San Gabriel Arcangel it's about 6000. At Mission Dolores, similar numbers and the famous die-in there that took about 5000 lives in a few weeks.

Please learn to use the spell-check provided.

This is an Aztec painting showing a scene of smallpox:

So then you go back to conflating deaths from influenza, tuberculosis, and syphilis in 18th Century Los Angeles with 16th century deaths from smallpox in Mexico. Given that you have cited the time differential, you know how problematic is that defense.

It's dishonest. You're busted. You were wrong about disease and you are still wrong about the motives of the Spanish, which were different between the Franciscans and the military about which you drew no distinction in your pique. And no, I'm not a Catholic.

Perhaps your friend Milliken would like to 'splain that to Loosy. Me, I'll take the conventional history.

Milliken's prototypical work was done in the Bay Area specifically. Not Mexico. He went through those death records with a methodology that was then repeated in Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. Hackel's work was in Monterey. These are areas less under the influence of Uzo-Aztecan tribal interactions and thus less likely to carry highly contagious diseases for reasons I cited in that link you didn't read.

You cited a smallpox pandemic as the cause of Indian deaths in California. It wasn't. You don't know what you are talking about.

[Carry_Okie]

You probably don't realize that Victor Golla called the bibliography to which I directed you the most complete among any scholar in this State. If you don't know who he is, you are out to lunch. So I couldn't care less about your "sources" at Cabrillo. What you cited is a hand-wave statement from a culture of victimization, not scholarship. Nor did you offer a source.

"Unmitigated disaster"....gosh, let's beatify this guy. He really did a great job of evangelization.

Spell check is your friend. Use it.

First, Serra was out of the picture early in the missionization project; the bureaucrat in charge during the serious die-off was Francisco Palou. Second, there is a huge ethical difference that apparently escapes you between people earnestly failing at "saving" Indians who would have been overrun anyway and a directed act of subjugation. If you really want to understand the internal psychology of this particular dysfunctional cultural superposition, you could always try Torchiana, but you probably won't because that's a rare book.

[Nationale7]

So let me get this straight: as conservatives we think it’s okay for emissaries of an absolutist monarchy to march uninvited into territory that isn’t ours and tell the people who live there they have to work for us and change their religion and their customs to ours? I’m confused.

[terycarl]

they brought Africans in chains? Gosh, that turned out real well.

No, those were the protestant democrats in the south...hated blacks and Catholics...remember the KKK...no Catholics at all in that all American group....and the Salem witch trials...I don't recall a lot of Catholics being involved in that....both sides have their idiots but please don't put the Catholics down...ever...without Catholicism there wouldn't be the advanced western civilization that we have. When the protestants revolted against Christ's church, the world was a relatively advanced civilization...there were churches, schools, hospitals, monastaries, libraries, museums, ALL provided to you by the Catholics....say thanks Catholics.

[terycarl]

So let me get this straight: as conservatives we think it’s okay for emissaries of an absolutist monarchy to march uninvited into territory that isn’t ours and tell the people who live there they have to work for us and change their religion and their customs to ours? I’m confused.

There are few, if any, countries on Earth that were not settled by the effective use of force. If you want to hunt buffalo and live in a teepee, go ahead...as Europeans moved into the Americas they were pretty merciless in many cases, but in only 400 years, we are the most advanced civilization that the world has ever known.

By the way, I've eaten buffalo and it is quite tasty.....no bow and arrow involved.

[Regulator]

Hey Spud. Your buds invented the Inquisition, St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (where they murdered people in my family), the Massacre of the Albigensians, The 30 Years War (which drove my German ancestors out of Westphalia), and just in general the oppression of the Vatican based monarchies of Europe. We came to America. Long before you. And started the place, the one that your ancestors decided to come to. Guess it was a lot better then the good ol' Holy Roman Empire, huh?

The Spaniards brought the first Africans. You apparently are unaware of that. Last time I checked the Spanish are still Catholic. They had no problem wiping out entire groups in the Americas, and their slave problem still pervades the Caribbean.

As far as the South goes, 95% of the people who lived there were Protestants who didn't own slaves. And as far as the KKK goes, perhaps you weren't aware that the largest Klan groups were in Indiana in the '20s. The Northerners weren't fighting for black freedom, they fought to get rid of competition from slave labor. Remember "Free Labor, Free Soil"? It was about economics. Even before the War the State of Indiana imposed bonds on Freedmen:

Blacks were not allowed to vote or to serve in the militia. They could not testify in court cases involving whites. Black children were not allowed to attend public schools. After 1831, black settlers in Indiana were required to register with county authorities and to post a $500 bond as a guarantee of good behavior.

Didn't know that? But they were anti-Slavery Protestants, they just didn't consider Africans as part of their nation. And if you knew anything about American history, you'd know that the Radical Republicans - my ancestors also - were the principal opposition to Slavery.

And last time I checked, Greece and Rome invented "civilization"...heavy on the Greece part. The Reformation provided the push out of the Catholic Dark Ages, where anyone with a different opinion was subjected to ostracism and torture. It was only when Catholic gangsterism was ended in Northern Europe that natural science and political science took off, leading to the Enlightenment.

So get it, Padre? Reformation -> Enlightenment -> America

America - the one you got to live in - is a Protestant idea. Comes precisely from the notion that dogma is for trogs. Ask questions and force those in power to prove their legitimacy, not just assert it with the force of arms.

As for your assertion that all the good stuff was provided by Catholics, that's hilarious. The Huguenot of France were the elite of the country. When they were forced out, France went backwards, fast. To this day, the most Catholic countries of Europe - Spain, Italy and Portugal - are the technical laggards. That's what happens when you suppress a culture of critique and inquiry in favor of dogma.

So I see no reason to thank you. You murdered people in my family and drove us overseas, and then when our civilization was clearly superior, you followed us here - and with your buddies in South America, it's clear you plan to destroy what was created, and take us back into the night, along with your Spanish speaking allies.

Gosh won't it be great for you when the U.S. is just another miserable South American Religious Oligarchy?

All "Thanks" to you. Good job, Papists.

[Regulator]

PS

Here ya go, Slick: Read all about it. Apparently your schools up there in the Catholic ghettos of the formerly industrial Midwest never heard of the reason all those factories used to exist: The Enlightenment"

[Regulator]

The Money Quote for all here:

The Renaissance rediscovered much of Classical culture and revived the notion of humans as creative beings, and the Reformation, more directly but in the long run no less effectively, challenged the monolithic authority of the Roman Catholic Church

[pbear8]

Real Saint, that guy Serra.

Yes he was. Would you walk all the way from Monterey to Mexico City and back to get a 'bill of rights' for the Native Californians? He was trying to protect them from the excesses of the Spanish Commandante.

[Regulator]

Are you smoking wacky terbacky up there in the woods?

You said smallpox did them in and specifically mentioned Cortez.

In the link I provided there was this:

Overall, some estimates say that 90 - 95% of the native population of the New World died due to smallpox

That’s “some estimates”. And the reference to Cortez was simply to establish the introduction of the virus, and its effects. The fact that other European – or African – diseases also were a factor is not disputed.

“The native people of Mexico experienced an epidemic disease in the wake of European conquest, beginning with the smallpox epidemic of 1519 to 1520 when 5 million to 8 million people perished”

From Rodolfo-Acuna, “Megadrought and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico”, Volume 8, Number 4—April 2002, CDC

There’s really no dispute about smallpox and its introduction into Mexico. As for megadroughts and hantavirus analogs, that I couldn’t say.

Did the Spaniard soldiers and African slaves bring other diseases? Of course. Syphilis, Rubella, cholera, dysentery…all of it. But do you think that the virus simply disappeared after 1520, and only other diseases dominated? Obviously not. The 1781-82 Smallpox outbreak is documented by R. H. Jackson in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1981.(Rivera y Moncada expedition).

Cortez was in 1520. We are talking about 300 years later, the 1780s to 1835 when the Mission system collapsed after “.

YOU were talking about Cortez.

Correct. As a pointer to the introduction of the virus through the vector known as the Spanish population.

When the mission system collapsed, the Indians had already been taken down, but not by smallpox.

It’s clearly one of the major contributors and nobody said it was the only disease.

Example:

Smallpox was introduced to Native Americans in California when an infected Spanish sailor landed in the San Diego mission, as reported by Holmes in “The History of Riverside County, California.” Entire villages were depopulated by the disease; out of seven villages near the San Diego mission, only one remained. Baja, still considered part of California at the time, was also hit with a smallpox epidemic in 1781 that originated in central Mexico.

That reference would be “History of Riverside County, California”, Elmer Wallace Holmes, 1912. Go ahead, dispute it. Just a confused old cracker, right? From his book:

Early in the nineteenth century smallpox was introduced among the Mission Indians of Southern California by a sailor who landed at San Diego. The disease was unknown to California Indians and they used the same remedy as in other fevers, that is, the sweat and cold plunge. It proved to be the most fatal treatment they could have hit upon. Their people died like sheep—whole villages being depopulated. In their terror the stricken ones fled from the village, spreading certain death as they went. Thus the dread disease swept and spread for weeks and months, and when it had run its course village upon village was wiped out of existence, and in this great valley, where before there were seven happy villages, the smallpox scourge left but one remaining—Soboba. It is said on authority that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Indian population of the San Jacinto and Santa Ana valleys was 6,000. At the present time the Indians of this entire part of the state, extending to Fresno, is about 3,000. The terrible smallpox plague is directly responsible for this fearful loss.

You were wrong. Got it?

I am? The preceding paragraph is but one reference. So no, there’s nothing to “get”. You are saying that Holmes and many others were wrong. You base your conclusion on one reference that focused on a few areas. Do you really think smallpox is so isolated that it could have outbreaks – even pandemics – in Baja California (1781-82), Oregon and Washington, and somehow completely miss all of upper California? The history in Oregon is this:

There were more smallpox epidemics in the Pacific Northwest, and their timing—1800-1801, 1824, 1836, 1853, and 1863—suggests that the disease recurred whenever there was a sufficiently large cohort of nonimmune people who had been born since the last outbreak and were, hence, vulnerable to infection.

Somehow it hits the Northwest hard but completely misses all of California?! There was absolutely no human interaction between the two areas that would lead to transmission?!

Please. That’s a hypothetical, but just an illustration. The virus was introduced not later then 1520 in the western part of the Americas, and certainly got around on the West Coast. That’s not even accounting for what happened in the East.

You can dispute that Smallpox was one of the diseases responsible for the massive deaths but there are many, many references that contradict that. Here’s another one, closer to home, Mission San Jose:

A devastating epidemic of smallpox and measles took a terrible toll on the neophytes (over 150 died) in 1805-06.

Measles and Smallpox. There is one old researcher – Dr. Elisabeth Keupper Valle – who believed that the real culprit was measles, not smallpox. Let you track that one down and find all the evidence supporting that viewpoint. The Spanish King Carlos tried to immunize the mission populations beginning in 1804 with Variolation, but it doesn’t appear to have completely wiped out any expression of the virus. There was an outbreak in the same area – southern California – 1829, when the Pattie expedition tried to sell themselves as having vaccine.

The number of Indian graves in the mission cemeteries alone are around 63000. At San Gabriel Arcangel it's about 6000. At Mission Dolores, similar numbers and the famous die-in there that took about 5000 lives in a few weeks.

Please learn to use the spell-check provided.

Ah. A pedant. Would now be a good time for you to explain who the Uzo-Aztecans were? I know who the Uto-Aztecans were…please learn to use the spell-check provided.

This is an Aztec painting showing a scene of smallpox:

So then you go back to conflating deaths from influenza, tuberculosis, and syphilis in 18th Century Los Angeles with 16th century deaths from smallpox in Mexico. Given that you have cited the time differential, you know how problematic that defense is.

No one said the other diseases weren’t present or unimportant, and you forgot measles. The point about the painting is simply to show that the virus was introduced and recognized early on.

It's dishonest. You're busted. You were wrong about disease and you are still wrong about the motives of the Spanish, which were different between the Franciscans and the military about which you drew no distinction in your pique. And no, I'm not a Catholic.

You’re the one being dishonest, and as far as being “busted”, you’re nuts. I guess you’re accusing me of some Thought Crime Heresy against the Saintly Spaniards, which is hilarious. As for the motives of the Spanish, you have no better view to that then the man in the moon, much less me. The stated motive of the Spanish Crown then and now was to forcibly baptize the aboriginals which under the rules then made them Subjects of that Crown, as the Pope had given Spain dominion at the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1495 and concluded with the Treaty of Zaragosa in 1529. The Spanish King needed a tripwire population in California to humanize his claim to those lands, otherwise the Russians would have no compunction about exterminating anyone they needed to in their own quest for colonization.

Perhaps your friend Milliken would like to 'splain that to Loosy. Me, I'll take the conventional history.

Milliken's prototypical work was done in the Bay Area specifically. Not Mexico. He went through those death records with a methodology that was then repeated in Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. Hackel's work was in Monterey. These are areas less under the influence of Uzo-Aztecan (Spell checker, please! Only an uneducated Rube would mistake Uzo for Uto! Or an angry pedant…) tribal interactions and thus less likely to carry highly contagious diseases for reasons I cited in that link you didn't read.

You cited a smallpox pandemic as the cause of Indian deaths in California. It wasn't. You don't know what you are talking about.

And I’m the dishonest one? Where do you see the word “pandemic” used by me? But as cited, there were many who came before us that very definitely did use the word epidemic or the more modern pandemic. You now claim they were all wet. Think that’s a matter of relative numbers.

I don't know if Milliken claims there were no smallpox deaths in California. It’s very difficult to do that with only skeletal remains, or spotty records. Absent real proof, it’s more than reasonable to go with the observations of those who were closest to it.