Posted on 05/26/2007 10:07:48 AM PDT by Teófilo
Behind this controversy hides a nefarious agenda
Folks, you've probably heard or read the news. At the end of his visit to Brazil to open the Fifth General Conference of Latin American and the Caribbean, a number of defenders of the rights of native peoples, as well as self-appointed "progressive" pressure groups, criticized the Holy Father for what he said about the relationship between the Church and native American cultures. This is what he actually said that caused so much of a ruckus:
Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment...Read the entire speech here.Ultimately, it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love. That is why Christ, being in truth the incarnate Logos, “love to the end”, is not alien to any culture, nor to any person; on the contrary, the response that he seeks in the heart of cultures is what gives them their ultimate identity, uniting humanity and at the same time respecting the wealth of diversity, opening people everywhere to growth in genuine humanity, in authentic progress. The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture.
The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.
The wisdom of the indigenous peoples fortunately led them to form a synthesis between their cultures and the Christian faith which the missionaries were offering them. Hence the rich and profound popular religiosity, in which we see the soul of the Latin American peoples:
This religiosity is also expressed in devotion to the saints with their patronal feasts, in love for the Pope and the other Pastors, and in love for the universal Church as the great family of God, that neither can nor ever should leave her children alone or destitute. All this forms the great mosaic of popular piety which is the precious treasure of the Catholic Church in Latin America, and must be protected, promoted and, when necessary, purified.
- love for the suffering Christ, the God of compassion, pardon and reconciliation; the God who loved us to the point of handing himself over for us;
- love for the Lord present in the Eucharist, the incarnate God, dead and risen in order to be the bread of life;
- the God who is close to the poor and to those who suffer;
- the profound devotion to the most holy Virgin of Guadalupe, the Aparecida, the Virgin invoked under various national and local titles. When the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the native Indian Saint Juan Diego, she spoke these important words to him: “Am I not your mother? Are you not under my shadow and my gaze? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not sheltered underneath my mantle, under the embrace of my arms?” (Nican Mopohua, nos. 118-119).
Activists pounced right away on the Pope's words: "It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab." "The state used the Church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that ... so is the Pope taking back the Church's word?" said Dionito Jose de Souza a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state." Father Sandro Tuxa, who heads the movement of northeastern tribes, also chimed in: "We repudiate the Pope's comments," Tuxa said. "To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening." (Source). Of course, that the Pope never said such thing is beside the point. In fact, I don't think that for Fr. Tuxa, the truth in this particular instance doesn't really matter.
I maintain that this "controversy" was completely fabricated, that these pressure groups were scanning the Pope's words in search of an excuse to create such a controversy and ride the wave of publicity for all that was worth. The wave was sufficiently high that it forced the Pope to clarify his remarks but by then, these agitpropagandists had already inflicted their damage and gained the publicity they sought.
Pope Benedict XVI has given a qualified support to the "inculturation" of the faith and has lauded it has a "legitimate aspiration." He also has acknowledged the "shadows" that befell Evangelization in Latin America and its effects upon native peoples. You can read it on the prologue he wrote in 2002, as a Cardinal, for his Introduction to Christianity
What the critics of the Pope are pursuing is precisely to excise the Christian foundational and constitutive elements found in all American cultures. Their interest is not to properly inculturate Christianity and native cultures, but to recast Christianity into a pagan or secular mould. What hides behind their demands for "justice" is their purpose of "punishing" Christianity by "retro-colonizing" it with indigenous religious elements, in order to weaken the central truths of Christianity and reinterpret them in accordance with indigenous mythology, "saving" in this way the "dignity" of these victim peoples and satisfying in this way their demands for "justice." Punished in this way, Christianity would then be displaced by the "innocent and pure" indigenous cultures who alone have the affirmative right to exist while Christianity only has left but the duty to wane and disappear.
I see a nefarious agenda operating behind all this pithy self-righteousness.
This "controversy" was manufactured by these agitpropagandists in order to serve their ends, by fiercely ideological groups in an eternal quest for "apologies" from organizations and institutions they have targeted as "enemies of the people" in order to accrue political credibility and with it, power. To seek the truth and to pursue it through calm, rational dialogue has never been their purpose. They are ready to use any tool, even native suffering, to achieve their nefarious ends.
These "vanguards of the people" do not hide their overall strategic objective: to reduce the Church's moral authority, to silence her voice in the public arena, to expel her from public discourse or, failing that, to domesticate here, to make her meek and pliable and docile to their directives. These ideologues recognize that the Church is their only credible competitor in the pursue of a true social justice and now that, if they can't destroy her, they might as well attempt to subvert her from within.
The sincerity of these "protests" should be taken with a grain of salt. They are not what they seem. In the meantime, we ought to pursue true social justice, based in the Gospel that tends to the spiritual wellbeing of peoples as well as their material and bodily welfare, outside of political ideologies and violent means.
Let's pray for our Pope, that he remains steadfast in the preaching of the truth.
PING!
Not sure about Latin America and the Caribbean, but in the California mission areas the native death rate was close to 90% during the mission era, 1769-1834.
source?
Yes, please. Source?
It is common knowledge among anthropologists who work in the area and study the mission records. This information also appears in a number of books on California Indians and missions.
The thing that has led to lower estimates in the past is the large influx of Indians from non-mission areas, necessary because the local populations were dropping and threatening the existence of the missions (they relied on Indian labor). This skewed the population statistics of the groups actually within the mission areas.
By the way, the mission records are now online at the Huntington.
Common knowledge among anthropologists isn’t particularly impressive. I will look at the mission records.
The high mortality rate came from complex mix of demoralization, forced labor, poor food and living conditions, followed by introduced diseases. All of these effected both the death rate and the birth rate.
Jackson's Indian Population Decline (1994) gives a good list of the major epidemics as his Appendix 1: smallpox, influenza, dysentery, measles, typhus, and Asian cholera. Jackson's list omits gonorrhea and syphilis, "consumption" (tuberculosis), diphtheria, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, as they did not spread as epidemics. (Smallpox reached the California missions, so was not as significant there as elsewhere.)
Hackel's Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (2005:114) notes that at Mission San Carlos diphtheria and pneumonia killed 11% of the Indians in 1802, and measles killed 13% of the Indians in 1806. At Mission La Purisima measles killed 150 Indians about July of 1806.
Sandoz (2004) gives the population figure of 65,000 Indians originally in the mission areas, dropping to 17,000 by 1832, a decline to 26% for all missions. This figure is high because it reflects many Indians brought in from the outside the mission areas to supplement the local populations, who had been dying at a very high rate.
This type of information, and my own research, is where my figure of 90% death rate in the mission areas during the mission era (1769-1834) comes from.
Correction: (Smallpox reached the California missions late, so was not as significant there as elsewhere.)
(A result of posting while caffeine deficient.)
“All of these effected both the death rate and the birth rate.”
If you don’t know the birth and death rates before colonialism the point is moot.
Your thesis is that the Catholicism/missions were the cause of population decline/death. Evidence in support would show that the local population decline was due to death and was strictly associated with the mission.
Knowing that people died of cholera, measles etc.is interesting but irrelevant (and why would you even bring up TB, that’s been shown to be endemic to the New World since the Pleistocene). You’re saying the death rate changed.
"pneumonia killed 11% of the Indians in 1802, and measles killed 13% of the Indians in 1806"
Knowing that certain percentages of populations died is more to the point however my question is, is that abnormal?
Epidemics of indigenous hemorrhagic fevers finished off 90% of the population of Mexico in the 16th century so we know Native populations were sometimes subject to severe depopulation.
“Sandoz (2004) gives the population figure of 65,000 Indians originally in the mission areas, dropping to 17,000 by 1832, a decline to 26% for all missions.”
Why are you so sure this is caused by death?
Indians were reported to leave the missions after Mexican independence when the Mexican government confiscated the mission properties.
"many Indians brought in from the outside the mission"
Brought in" or came in of their own free will? I’ll be looking at your sources (if I can) this week, it’s an interesting subject.
Two additional, although somewhat older, sources:
Sherburne F. Cook, The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization (1976). University of California Press.Take a look and get back to me.Sherburne F. Cook, The Population of the California Indian: 1769-1970 (1976). University of California Press.
Prayers for the Holy Father! Viva Il Papa!
“”It’s arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs,” said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe”
One word for you, Jerkinaldo: “Apocalypto.”
“In the meantime, we ought to pursue true social justice”
The concept of “social justice” is of and from Satan, just like “solidarity,” “surplus value,” “worker’s paradise,” and the rest of that leftist garbage.
Well, the death rate in Mexico in the 16th Century was about that, but most of that can be attributed to disease. Doubt most of them caught maladies from baptism. Many Indian activists forget that the basic fault lay in the biological weaknesses of our kindfolk. Wasn’t until we started to interbreed with the whites that our populations started to come back. Se also suffered from low birthrates, which may have something to do with our cultures. You are a Darwinian. Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?
I don't think you'll find social justice in hell, but plenty in Heaven.
-Theo
“I don’t think you’ll find social justice in hell, but plenty in Heaven.”
There will be no “social justice” in Heaven.
As with all leftist evil, “social justice” substitutes the power of the state for our God-given free will. Where God says He wants us to be loving, merciful, and charitable, but leaves us the free will to be otherwise, “social justice” is the state saying, “Screw free will. You will *act* as we think you should, or men with guns will come arrest, fine, or kill you.”
As Shakespeare tells us, “...mercy...is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
“Social justice,” conversely, is twice cursed: It robs the free will of him that gives, and degrades him that takes.
Shakespear also notes that “...in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy...”
There is God’s will at work: people learning to be merciful for its own sake, and not because some leftist has a gun pointed at their heads.
And what does “social justice” teach us? From the POV of the taxed, “Men with guns take my hard-earned wages and give it to strangers, leaving me no choice in where and whether to perform deeds of charity.” From the POV of the taker, “They are so reluctant to help me that men with guns have to make them do it. How deep their contempt for me must be.”
As with so many of Satan’s programs, “social justice” appears to be noble, but is in fact deeply evil and destructive.
See posts 8 and 9, above, for some of the causes of both high death rates and low birth rates for California Indians at the missions.
See the sources provided in those posts for additional data. They are excellent works and will provide a good background.
The Indians prior to the arrival of Europeans were well-adapted to their environment, and were thriving. The specific diseases brought in from Europe and elsewhere were new, and no resistance to them had been developed. Many people died, but some survived. Those individuals who survived were obviously more resistant to the diseases. They passed on those characteristics to their children.
That sounds like adaptation to me (for which somebody, years after Darwin's pioneering work, coined the unscientific phrase "survival of the fittest").
Except you all always forget about the Squawmen who came into to supply the Indians with antibodies. The high death rate that came with the Conquistadors was due largely to a lack of immunities and of course maltreatment. That is why African slavery had to be introduced to the West Indies. Even so. the black slaves were never able to reproduced themselves. because among the diseases introduced were virulent one that the slaves brought with them. That necessitated the continuation of the slave trade. On the mainland, of course, the populations gradually recovered and beginning with the food revolution of the 18th century saw in fact a radical increase. The exception would be the Red Indians in large part because, unlike in Mexico, the two genepools were slow to mix. By and large I would attribute the disaster that hit the California Indians to culture shock. Well adapted? No, tenuously balanced and easily overthrown, just as the cultures that DeSoto first encountered as he moved up from Florida. My own people did much better. They kicked the crap out of the Spanish ,took in a number of survivors, and thereby made their first appearance on the historical stage.
Note the first cause I listed in my post, above.
Well adapted? No, tenuously balanced...
Actually, not so. The first Spanish explorers described villages as large as 500-1000 people in a number of spots when they first trekked the California coast in 1769. Recently, there is beginning to be a realization how diseases may have seriously reduced the California Indian population in the century or two prior to 1769. In either case, California groups were large, stable, and some were relatively wealthy.
...and easily overthrown, just as the cultures that DeSoto first encountered as he moved up from Florida.
Two causes in California:
First, the groups were not organized into large confederations, but rather into small tribes or tribelets. Also, warfare was much different for the Indians, so the small but heavily armed groups of Spanish soldiers were able to defeat them.
Second, the Indians practiced imitative magic, and one of their practices was trying to control game through magic and ritual. When the Spanish arrived riding horses, with oxen, mules and other domestic animals they appeared to the Indians to be powerful sorcerers practicing a religion similar to what the Indians practiced, but much more successfully. This had a significant effect.
My own people did much better. They kicked the crap out of the Spanish ,took in a number of survivors, and thereby made their first appearance on the historical stage.
Good for them! What group?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.