Catholic Church historical colonies persecution of Native Americans

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mrsdizzyd said:
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phil19034:
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mrsdizzyd:
By some accounts, the Franciscans did not either.
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there was also A LOT of conflict between the Franciscans and other Catholic groups, esp the Diocesans and conquistadors.
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That has no bearing on the primary evidence of the atrocities of the mission system. This evidence comes from the Franciscans’ own meticulous records as well as those of the Spanish government.
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Well… I would argue that the conflict between the Franciscans and other groups of priests contributed to a general lack of holiness.
 
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I feel the best response is to teach your daughter about the Church on Mission. We, as a People of God are part of that mission in the pilgrim church.

Once upon a time…the activity of mission was within the framework of European Colonialism. Yes this did result in misdirected and at times, abusive evangelism. It’s mission framework was conversion to eternal salvation. The Church as part of the colonial framework, saw itself as absolute truth, the world hostile to it, and very much in error. Every indigenous community will have experience and memory of this. White European communities also do through history.
There is a new model whose framework is inculturation. It sees the Catholic Church as collaborative and shaping the world together with those it seeks to bring to salvation. There is a mission of dialogue with other Christians, religions, and peoples.
The Church promotes unity, fellowship, companionship and begins at an encounter of common ground.
A recent Pope, now a saint , embodied this and worked hard to promote this in his travels. He became known as the Pilgrim Pope John Paul 11.

Pope Francis says:
“At the beginning of dialogue there is encounter. This generates the first knowledge of the other. If, indeed, we start from the presumption of our common human nature, it is possible to overcome prejudice and falsehood, and to begin to understand the other from a new perspective”
 
niceatheist said:
It’s hard to read of the conquest of the Inca Empire as anything other than barbarism and savagery.
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Let’s keep in mind, the Europeans were HORRIFIED by what they found in the Americas (esp in Mexico and South America) in regards to Human Sacrifice.

The Europeans viewed bringing them Christ was a very noble and Godly thing.

I for one just wish the Europeans came sooner so more of my native Ancestors in the tropics could have known Christ.
 
Yes, I’m sure Gonzalo Pizarro’s attempted rape of the Inca queen, and her being shot full of arrows when she tried to resist, was to demonstrate evil ways of the Inca.
 
Let’s also keep in mind that unfortunately these places were all going to get colonized by someone eventually, unless they were too remote to access or too impoverished or harsh in climate to be of any economic value.

The economic picture of the time meant colonization was going to happen, just like in times past the economic picture meant Tribe A went out and made war on Tribe B, killed or enslaved them all and took all their land and goods.

It takes a long time for humanity to evolve sometimes. If we want to go back and hate on ourselves in the past, there are probably no civilizations that never did a harsh or cruel thing to their neighbor. People often didn’t see much value in the neighbor’s culture either. A number of the early Catholic missionaries to the new world actually did much better at appreciating and even preserving the culture of those they were trying to convert than their secular peers did.
 
Did they teach your daughter in school about what the Indians did to the North American Martyrs?
 
Im not sure. But, I will make sure to educate the kids about the discovery of the tzompantli in 2015 and the end of these horrific practices due to the mass conversions upon seeing the Our Lady of Guadalupe cactus tilma during my presentation for art masterpiece for their class. 😛
 
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When Pope Francis canonized St. Junipero Serra I was involved in a big discussion about this on another forum. From what I know, life in the California missions was brutal. Many Indigenous people were driven to the missions because the Spanish and their livestock were consuming the natural resources that they depended on. It was either go to the missions or starve. Once in the mission, they weren’t allowed to leave. If they did they were tracked down by the military, brought back to the mission and tied up and beaten. The Church was in league with the state in this endeavor.

Life on the missions was hard for the Indigenous. To hear them talk of it today, they were nothing but slaves. The death toll was high, but the Jesuit’s had a cavalier attitude towards this as they considered life as suffering.

That said, one of the members of that board worked at the library of a university that held the letters of St. Serra. According to his understanding, St. Serra was gentle spirited and wasn’t the person some make him out to be.

My personal take as a Catholic is that we still have an accounting to make. Some Native Americans hate Christianity and hold a special contempt for the Catholic Church. Given our history, I can’t really blame them and we can’t, as a Church, afford to neglect their suffering. We have a lot of making up to do for the sins of our spiritual kin.
 
tad said:
My personal take as a Catholic is that we still have an accounting to make. Some Native Americans hate Christianity and hold a special contempt for the Catholic Church. Given our history, I can’t really blame them and we can’t, as a Church, afford to neglect their suffering. We have a lot of making up to do for the sins of our spiritual kin.
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We actually are responsible for atoning for the sins of the whole world, not just our fellow Catholics. I can appreciate why some Native Americans, including those who were mistreated later in Catholic schools, feel upset towards the Church. I also accept that I have a general duty to atone for the many sins of all mankind. But I don’t feel I have a special duty to make atonement to those wronged by Catholics in particular.
 
Look, I NEVER claimed that the Spanish were all Saints.

That period was really the end of the Middle Ages, hence it was still a very brutal time.

With that said: how about we play a little role play for a moment.
  1. pretend for a moment that TODAY, you were on an expedition and found a group of humans in an isolated part of the planet. And they are so isolated, that they have never seen a wheel before. Would you give them the wheel and teach them how to create simply machines, like pullies and wheelbarrows? Or would you leave them alone and not help them? Would you want to help them improve their lives with just a fraction of our education?
  2. let’s assume for a moment that you decided to leave them alone and not spoil their culture. So you don’t teach how to build a pulley and you don’t teach them how to build a wheel barrow, etc. That’s cool. However, what would you do if one day you witness one of their holidays and as part of their celebration they start killing hundreds or 1000s of innocents, including women & children in ritual human sacrifice as part of their worship? And we are not talking about killing criminals & prisoners of war, the Inca belived in killing the best people So they could be with their gods (which is why so many kids were killed). Do you think you & your expedition would still stand by and do nothing? Or do you think you (or members of your team) would be compelled to stop it, even with military force? And before you answer, let’s say as you are asking questions, members of society’s elite secretly ask you to use your technology to over through their leaders because they don’t want their family to be sacrificed one day. What would you do? What do you think the other members of your expedition would do? And what do you think your nation’s rulers would do once your team reported what you found?
It’s easy to say that the Spainish simply raped and plundered the natives they encountered. But put yourself in their shoes. Would you be tempted to bring civilization to them if you witnessed the human sacrifice? With the Inca alone, one event the Spanish witnessed had approx 4000 humans sacrificed.

God Bless
 
It’s kind of pointless to have these discussions with those who think any kind of balanced perspective noting that there are good and bad people on both sides and that context is important, just doesn’t matter.
 
tad said:
My personal take as a Catholic is that we still have an accounting to make. Some Native Americans hate Christianity and hold a special contempt for the Catholic Church. Given our history, I can’t really blame them and we can’t, as a Church, afford to neglect their suffering. We have a lot of making up to do for the sins of our spiritual kin.
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To: @tad
Cc: @niceatheist

You know what, I would like to make a comment about this. Yes, in the United States and in Canada (which were Protestant nations) most Native Americans are not Christian and still have some hate towards the Church.

However, in Latin America, the vast majority of decedents of the native peoples are all Catholic.

In Peru, 90% of the population today is Christian and 76% of the population is Catholic. 86% of Peruvian population is decendent from the native peoples. 86%! And most of them are Catholics.

The Archdiocese of Lima was founded as a diocese in 1541, and then promoted to an Archdiocese in 1546! So to say there were no Catholics is to deny history. They would NOT have promoted Lima to an Archdiocese 13 years after the fall of the Incan Empire if the people were not genuine Catholics.

Also, the Spanish founded a college in Lima in 1551!!! The National University of San Marcos founded in 1551 is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. Founded 18 years after the fall of the Incan Empire.

Again, why would the Spanish do that if all they cared about was destroying the Inca with barbarism and savagery?

One thing I know for sure: history is always far more complex that people like to pretend it is.

God Bless
 
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The Catholic Church (and others) were commissioned by the Canadian government to operate schools to assimilate indigenous people. The government provided funding, the Church operated the schools. Atrocities and deaths resulted and the various parts of the Catholic Church have apologized over the years.
 
I think that the teacher made a good point that the Native Americans were mistreated by all of the colonies, and most of those involved were not Catholics. Native American populations were decimated, some of it intentional and some by diseases introduced by the colonists.

A recent book by Collin Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation (Oxford University Press, 2018) describes the role that Washington played both before the Revolutionary War and afterwards to disposses Native Americans of millions of acres of their lands in the Ohio country and further west. He was a big land speculator, so he had a personal interest in this. This was also contrary to British policy which had tried to protect the Native Americans from all the land hungry colonists.
 
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Thorolfr said:
Is there a special Catholic version of American history that would require a devout Catholic to teach it?
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Not necessarily a devout Catholic- just someone who can stick to an approved syllabus.

Catholic schools should teach a version of US history which includes talk about Catholic forefathers.
 
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