Junipero Serra statue beheaded, splashed with red paint in Central California

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It’s great that kids are obliged to learn it at school. I agree with you that the language has to be part of a child’s life. As I said previously, I’ve met Gaelic speakers: one was from somewhere in western Ireland and the other was from the Outer Hebrides. The lad from Bara spoke fluent Scots Gaelic and the language seems to thrive on the islands because they speak it as a first language at home.

I think it’s essential that Ireland preserves it’s language; and the most effective way to do it would be to speak it at home and teach kids from a young age. Ireland should promote its unique culture e.g. folklore, literature, music, sports. I’ve read that De Valera was keen on promoting Irish culture but I don’t know what the current politicians are like.

The one thing I admired about men like Pearse was that they always treated the Church as an integral part of Irish culture. However, from what I’ve heard recently, the Church in Ireland doesn’t play the important role it once did; and many young Irish are not religious. This is a great shame but at least there are no acts of vandalism like what occurred in California with Junipero Serra.
 
exnihilo said:
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Xanthippe_Voorhees:
To be fair, there’s a huge difference between parents not teaching a language and a group of people who were actively oppressed.
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Since oppression, especially today, means just being made fun of, I can join a victim class. My grandmother grew up not speaking English in America. She was mocked terribly particularly by school kids.
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Oh, give me a break. I’m talking about book burning, child beating, literal child kidnapping* and “no colored” signs, not teasing from peers.

*native american children were taken from their parents in forced into English-only boarding schools as children OR forcibly taken and adopted to white parents if the child was “white” enough. This occured well into the 1900’s and was only stopped by laws created in the last few decades.

Want to be a silly sally and call teasing oppression, fine. But you should darn well know the kinds of abhorrent things done to Native Americans were far different than a bit of classroom drama.
 
Here’s a link to an article written back in 2015 concerning St. Junipero http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...s-to-clear-the-record-on-junipero-serra-27662.

When you take St. Serra’s mission to the New World in the light of history, you have a better understanding. The Franciscans came to Mexico in 1521. In 1531, the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe occured. That was just over 250 years prior to St. Serra arriving in the ‘New World’
Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as a native with so many signs that gave the Aztec In less than a year’s time, more than 3 million Aztec had been converted and baptized into Christianity. The conversions did not occur in a vacuum and the ‘legend’ of Our Lady spread north. In 1746, New Spain (California to El Salvador) was put under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe. St. Serra arrived in Mexico in 1749, just 3 years later. Our Lady did not appear to the natives to ‘strip away’ their culture but show them the culture God wants them to have through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now to the big questions: Were there Europeans that didn’t act very Christian? Yes. Were there natives that didn’t act very Christian? Yes. Is Junipero Serra human? Yes. Do all humans have flaws? Yes. Does that exclude any human from Sainthood? NO!
 
I’ve never said he should be excluded from sainthood or that he was not a good man of his time. However, I’m stating that at this time when we have become more and more aware of the travesties perpetrated against native people it may be wise to understand how some could feel he is a symbol of the loss of culture, heritage, family and language.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Oh, give me a break. I’m talking about book burning, child beating, literal child kidnapping* and “no colored” signs, not teasing from peers…

Want to be a silly sally and call teasing oppression, fine. But you should darn well know the kinds of abhorrent things done to Native Americans were far different than a bit of classroom drama.
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What about when people are made fun of for being gay or perceived as such? I thought there was a huge national effort to stop this because it was a great injustice.
 
exnihilo said:
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Xanthippe_Voorhees:
Oh, give me a break. I’m talking about book burning, child beating, literal child kidnapping* and “no colored” signs, not teasing from peers…

Want to be a silly sally and call teasing oppression, fine. But you should darn well know the kinds of abhorrent things done to Native Americans were far different than a bit of classroom drama.
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What about when people are made fun of for being gay or perceived as such? I thought there was a huge national effort to stop this because it was a great injustice.
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Bullying is both an injustice and carries psychological ramifications but it’s not oppression unless other factors are involved, namely, controls from authority not otherwise placed on the population.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Bullying is both an injustice and carries psychological ramifications but it’s not oppression unless other factors are involved, namely, controls from authority not otherwise placed on the population.
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I’d say people can be oppressed even without help from authorities.
 
Most who are “enraged by what he (Saint Serra) did” are deeply ignorant about what actually happened. When Saint Serra lay dying in Carmel, many natives began mourning his condition and pending death. They would not leave his bedside.

Two things are provoking this terrible behavior. First, long-time troublemakers are upset that Serra was canonized. They were certain they could prevent this as they had done for many decades. When Pope Francis of all people made the decision to move ahead, and to do it in WDC away from potential harm and all the politics here on the Central Coast, they began to glow with hatred. Odd they are opposed to the canonization given their almost universal contempt for the Church. Politics is politics I suppose.

Second, their terrible behavior is sanctioned (in their eyes) by the current attacks on Confederate generals statuary and all the other crazy Antifa garbage going on in many parts of the US. They feel they have license to destroy private property. It’s so terribly sad.

One thing Saint Serra detractors never face is the reality that the Catholic Church is the only thing that kept their communities from truly being annihilated. Had the first prolonged exposure to outsiders been to Euro-American gold miners in 1849 and not the California Mission System beginning in 1769, they truly would have been slaughtered – each and every one. There would be nothing left. As it is the California Mission System is by far the largest repository of California Indian culture in the world.
 
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Duesenberg said:
When Saint Serra lay dying in Carmel, many natives began mourning his condition and pending death. They would not leave his bedside.
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I suppose the protesters of today would paint these natives as having been poor brainwashed “Uncle Toms”. People will always rewrite history to suit their own preferred narrative.
 
I’ll second that: jog on son. I’m a proud Englishman and don’t consider myself Irish in any way, but both sets of my great grandparents were born and raised in Ireland. A lot of Irishmen and Irishwomen moved to England and had English relatives. The great Irish rebel, James Connolly, was born in Edinburgh and he fought and died for Irish freedom!! It bloody annoys me when plastic paddies take it upon themselves to berate England and foment hatred towards the English! I was once insulted by an ‘Irish’ American man in a New York bar because I was English but I probably had more Irish blood than him - and I guarantee I knew more real Irish people and more about Irish history and culture!
 
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Good. Who cares. Irish should be made manditory. It ha salways bothered me that the us speaks english, who should have adopted german or french just to not speak the same language as the lobster bellied tyrants.
Anonymous1 said:
Every single one of my ancesters alive at the time fought for the revolutionary cause. None of them had only pretense of loyalty to the island of philistine parasites with no culture, no intellect, and bad teeth. Even their lies to attempt to give their race intelligence were a farce. They expect us to believe that a rank and file alchemist quack who was struck by an apple invented calculus!! Calculus like all things was a Germanic invention.
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Admirable troll job, mon frere. Next time, maybe try and not be so ridiculous.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
I’ve never said he should be excluded from sainthood or that he was not a good man of his time. However, I’m stating that at this time when we have become more and more aware of the travesties perpetrated against native people it may be wise to understand how some could feel he is a symbol of the loss of culture, heritage, family and language.
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From where exactly? Many cite “oral history” that seems to stem from the late 1960s and newer.
 
MargaretofCortona said:
Unfortunately, true. The Confederate general is a symbol of slavery to some. From what I know about Father Junipero Serra I don’t think he respected Native Americans.
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It’s SAINT Junipero Serra now that he has been canonized.

I’m curious what source(s) led you to believe that he didn’t respect Native Americans? I’m truly interested. I have studied a great deal about Serra and he was quite the advocate for the “gentiles” at the California Missions.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
St. Serra was a missionary, not an invader. Yet, in many ways, he carried the same issues that an invader did. He set out to erase the people’s culture, language, and traditions. What he did was an attempt to erase the history of an entire people. Now, in his time, this was pretty standard even among native tribes. He should not be judged by what we know today.

That said, the Church owes much to these people. Stripped of cultural roots many fall prey to alcoholism and other vices. Yet the church has done very little to ensure a restoration of native values.

It is completely understandable that people would be mad. They are faced with a person who represents the loss of their cultural identity, a tumble into a dark place and many other unpleasant things.
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You post that opinion as if it were fact and it’s not. That’s very wrong.

The Church doesn’t owe “these people.” If anything the debt is in the reverse. Also, what exactly do you mean about “a restoration of native values”? Build them more casinos? Give them the venerable California Missions so they can incense them with burning sage? Why would that be up to the Church?

Like it or not, the gift of Jesus Christ to “these people” was real. Unfortunately too many of them died (for reasons no one in the world understood at that time!) for the spreading of the Gospel to be deemed a success in many peoples’ eyes.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Here’s one on forced sterilization

Forced Sterilization of Native Americans: Late Twentieth Century Physician Cooperation with National Eugenic Policies | The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity

Here’s one on boarding schools

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865

Here’s an article that shows how Native Children are taken from their homes to this day, a problem the 1978 law tried to stop

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families
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Let’s focus on the California Mission System under attack, shall we?

There was no “forced sterilization” in the California Missions. The padres did their best to halt the practice of abortion and infanticide which preexisted them.

There were also no boarding schools in Alta California that focused on Native Americans. Conversely, members of my own family received excellent educations generations ago at more than one California Mission.

Native American children were not taken from their “homes” in the California Mission System.
 
Duesenberg said:
Let’s focus on the California Mission System under attack, shall we?

There was no “forced sterilization” in the California Missions. The padres did their best to halt the practice of abortion and infanticide which preexisted them.

There were also no boarding schools in Alta California that focused on Native Americans. Conversely, members of my own family received excellent educations generations ago at more than one California Mission.

Native American children were not taken from their “homes” in the California Mission System.
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All of these crimes were perpetrated in the times after the missions in all areas. To many Native Americans, these crimes began when their culture was changed, and that began with St. Serra. He was undoubtedly a catalyst for the changes they later faced.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
All of these crimes were perpetrated in the times after the missions in all areas. To many Native Americans, these crimes began when their culture was changed, and that began with St. Serra. He was undoubtedly a catalyst for the changes they later faced.
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No, not in all areas. You are wrong about that.

My goodness. You are aware that Saint Serra and the California Missions were not the first contact American Indians had with Catholic missionaries, right? Not by a long shot. As expected you can’t provide any factual information to back up your accusations with respect to the California Missions because quite simply it didn’t happen as you feel it did.

Using your tactics I could judge Gabrielino Indians (who were focused around present day Los Angeles) to be evil based on the actions of some Aztecs who quite literally sacrificed the lives of thousands of their neighbors due to their “culture” and their sickening belief system.
 
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Just a statue, and so are the Confederate statues that are being destroyed by leftists and anti-americans,

Destroying statues doesn’t change history or faith. It is just an act of vandalism by poorly educated people, with nothing better to do.
 
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