multiculturally yours

It seems that every time a pope makes a trip to South America, there's a spate of news stories about Indians protesting the 16th century introduction of Christianity into the continent as a tool of colonialist oppression and an unprovoked assault on the indigenous spiritualies which flourished among the natives of the time. As with every comparable endeavor, no doubt there were many occasions of inexcusable rapacity in which the conquerors' religion was warped into an unseemly role. Yet it's facile to assume the indigenous religions were themselves free of unwelcome obligations. The following news item shows what it meant in pre-Christian Peru for your kids to take part in the Offertory:

LONDON (Reuters) - Hair samples taken from child mummies suggest the ancient Incas "fattened" up children chosen for ritual sacrifice months before actually killing them, British researchers said on Monday.

A chemical analysis of four mummies found high in the Andes mountains also indicates the Incans took the children on a lengthy pilgrimage prior to the killings, the team said. In the case of the 15-year-old "Llullaillaco Maiden" the road to death started at least 12 months before.

"We are looking at a process that began a considerable amount of time before their death," said Andrew Wilson, an archaeologist at the University of Bradford, who led the study. "The maiden was essentially being fattened up or prepared for her final fate at least 12 months before her killing."

Call it "full and active participation" in the liturgy.

When the Spanish got to the Aztec capital, they had an army of 40,000 natives, who hated their Aztec masters.

Its funny that the loss of religions, that cut out the living hearts of their enemies to sacrifice, should be weeped over by modern day leftists (atheists).

>The conquerors liberated them from pagan ignorance and human sacrifice, giving them a language they could use to take their redresses to the world at large.

I know you are not saying that the centuries of bondage were something to be proud of, or those that enslaved and forcibly converted the indians were even following the tenets of Christianity. But your comment sounds a bit like ‘it was for their own good’.

It could be said that the pagans were liberated from one brand of ignorance to another; were forced to no longer sacrifice, only to be sacrificed themselves to the Spanish Empire. What the Spaniards did to the indians better not be laid at the feet of Christ, for it was truly against His teachings.

Its funny that the loss of religions, that cut out the living hearts of their enemies to sacrifice, should be weeped over by modern day leftists (atheists).

It only seems funny to people who have not purged their minds of logic. The countercultural left detests the West. The counterculturalists will embrace, elevate, and celebrate any non-Western culture without the least bit of critical thinking. The content of that non-Western culutre is irrelevant to their delight. The only requirement is that a culture be non-Western to receive the highest praise. This is an expression of a Romanticism biten by a rabid dog and now foaming at the mouth--a Romanticism devoid of any true romance.

You reap what you sow.

When the Spaniards witnessed cannibalism, human sacrifice on a massive scale, ritual (including sexual) bloodletting, etc. etc., they were totally revolted. There was a good deal of feeling that any people capable of such enormities were somehow inferior, or perhaps not even fully human. That feeling justified a great deal of oppression.

On the other hand, there were good Christian men like Bartholomeo de las Casas who knew that two wrongs didn't make a right and worked to ameliorate the sufferings of the slaves.

If you believe that the natural moral law is in the heart of every man, the New World peoples knew in their hearts that what they were doing was wrong. Certainly their subjects who had those horrors inflicted on them knew it was wrong.

There are temporal consequences to wrongdoing, and this looks like it might be one of them.

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