Reconciling "Wokeness" & The Church

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There has been no serious opposition to Mother Theresa, Fulton Sheen or Joan of Arc, to my knowledge. Dorothy Day is controversial because of her politics and because she had an abortion.

Most saints known to the general public will bring out some people opposing them. There were people who didn’t want the Martos canonized because they were too young, and others who thought Padre Pio was a fraud. This to me doesn’t constitute a serious opposition though.

I’m sure when Mother Angelica’s cause is opened, many people will oppose that too just because they didn’t agree with her views expressed on the TV network.

I thought about it and I think St. Josemaria Escriva is the other recent one besides Serra who had some really serious opposition.
 
on_the_hill said:
Discrimination is something we white people think about when it’s in the news
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You must live in a predominantly white area of the country. I’m white and I’ve faced plenty of discrimination throughout my life. Plenty other whites I know have as well
 
Well, yes, but the atheist community has absolutely no bearing on who becomes a saint.

Whereas some of these other people have opposition actually within the ranks of the Church faithful.

I personally think Dorothy Day’s mentor, Peter Maurin, should perhaps be put up for sainthood even before her, and I am pretty sure she would 100 percent agree with me.
 
on_the_hill said:
Discrimination is something we white people think about when it’s in the news.
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Please speak for yourself. I do not like being lumped in a category of “we white people” any more than I’d like some feminist referring to “we women”. And as somebody who worked in the justice system, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and dealing with actual and perceived discrimination when the news was ignoring it. I have also occasionally suffered discrimination myself.

None of this makes me an expert or a big victim, but I find it offensive to have another white person making statements on behalf of all white people. Please don’t do this.
 
Merton was an atheist who turned Catholic, who became a monk, and wrote some absolutely beautiful and amazing spiritual works (I’m currently delving into “Seeds of Contemplation” and I can only read about two or three pages in a sitting. It’s very dense.)

But later, he got permission to study with some Buddhist monks, and kinda “went native”. I confess I didn’t read any of his books from this time, but from other people’s testimonies , he either delved into heresy, or came very close to it, or wrote stuff that looked at in a certain way was heretical (depending on whose testimony you believe).

I’m pretty sure, however, he reconciled with the church before he died. I heard a quote attributed to him to the effect that everything he was looking for in Eastern religion was already in the Catholic Church.
 
I don’t know if it’s open yet, but I do believe some are trying to organize one. Same for Chesterton I believe.
 
Thank you for those who answered my question.

A few comments:
  • I appreciate people sharing pictures of Christ and Mary depicted as being of different ethnicities. Something I do like about how the Catholic Church in this regard is that they do give room for expression in this manner. Also, even though I don’t fully understand it the Black Madonna’s are pretty cool.
  • As far as Colonialism, I find the “it was a different time” argument to be ineffective. I think acknowledging sin as sin and looking to repair it is the best thing, as some people alluded to. I guess I’m disturbed that some of it doesn’t seem to be repented of, as seen in the case of Junipero Serra.
  • Many people seem to be caught up on my use of the word “woke.” This is done half in jest, which maybe I shouldn’t have done, so please forgive me for that. I was poking fun of how culture now uses it. What I mean in this regard is that I am concerned for biblical social justice in regards to racial and ethnic matters. Several people have been rude about my use of the word and seem to have tried to belittle or assume untrue things about me rather than directly asking or trying to understand based on the context (as some people did do, which I appreciate.) Overall the reaction by many people is quite disheartening and, in my opinion, not very Christ like or hospitable.
 
If you want to beat up on saints for doing and saying things we wouldn’t today, there are a lot of them.
St. Thomas More approved of beating a mentally challenged person who kept yelling out disrupting Mass. As described in the article I posted on St. Junipero Serra, it was thought that this was the appropriate way to teach people they were doing wrong - a child who did the same thing would have also been beaten to teach them. St. Bernadine preached a lot of anti-Semitic sermons. There are many more.

I think the article I posted on St. Juniper gives a fair assessment of how he was not perfect himself, but also was blamed for a huge number of sins committed by other people that he himself couldn’t control and in many cases knew nothing about.

If a particular saint doesn’t appeal to you, you’re free to find one who does. St. Martin de Porres and St. Josephine Bakhita were victims of discrimination themselves. St. Peter Claver devoted himself to helping African slaves.
 
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Mr_Kooper_513 said:
As far as Colonialism**, I find the “it was a different time” argument to be ineffective.** I think acknowledging sin as sin and looking to repair it is the best thing, as some people alluded to. I guess I’m disturbed that some of it doesn’t seem to be repented of, as seen in the case of Junipero Serra.
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Part of being “woke” is to realize that the fallacy of presentism is a barrier to understanding.

The church recognizes that the tactics the missionaries used were problematic. That’s not at issue here.

During his time, Junipero Serra was not doing anything that he would have recognized as wrong. On the contrary, he thought he was addressing injustices and saving souls. Therefore, his morally culpable for anything we might consider sinful or wrong today is diminished. This is not to say that what happened was OK. It is simply an knowledgement that the situation is a complicated one.

When it comes to sin, the question of culpability arises again. It is Catholic teaching that our culpability for mortal sin is mitigated by our full knowledge and full consent that our behavior was sinful.

So, someone like Junipero Serra can become a Saint precisely because it was a different time.
 
Maybe I’m too 1900s to be “woke,” but I have no problem with the Church being full of sinners, and as such, being involved in the societal sins of the centuries in its long history.

We expect religious bodies to be holier than the people that compose them, but the whole cannot be purer than the sum of its parts.

And really. Where is the surprise in religious art being Eurocentric, when it was mostly created in European countries, by European masters, and using other Europeans as models?

We Westerners have a unique foible of cutting ourselves down. We ought to quit, as no other culture does that, and all are equally full of sinners.

IMINWHO.

ICXC NIKA
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
In a number of cases the Catholic missionaries were actually more friendly to the culture/ dignity of the indigenous persons than some of the other forces looking to colonize them (often it was a case of “going to get colonized by someone, no avoiding it”) and the Catholics helped greatly to preserve some of the indigenous culture that otherwise would have been completely destroyed.
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Yes like in the Jesuit missions in California and Paraguay for instance. Because they saw fellow human souls not slavery opportunities.
 
Anyone who knows Australian history knows the horrors and atrocities committed against the native Aboriginal peoples. The Church did not really have much of a presence here for a while, yet the first few Bishops here, especially those setting up missions outside of the cities where very focused on reaching out to the Aboriginal people and trying to reconcile the past. Here’s some awesome Aboriginal representations of Catholic art:
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St. John of the Cross was accused of quietism heresy and St. Theresa of Avila was accused having illusions from the devil and the authorities were constantly opposing her actions. St. John of the Cross was also put imprison and it took quite some time for his canonization.
 
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Mother Teresa was portray in a very derogatory fashion in Hitcken’s documentary on her called Hell’s Angel. There was also opposition because the medical conditions, lost money, and the religious aspect of the Order. Even the miracles attributed to her are regarded with scrutiny. You will find much slander on her if you look up something.

One of the pope (I think it was a Pius) was accused of helping the Nazi’s, so there’s that. I’m not sure if he got canonized yet.
 
So you think it would be better if the Natives were left to themselves? They would have been damned to Hell. The Satanic Aztec Empire required each community with a Temple to sacrifice a thousand people a year, and that was just to their primary god. They sacrificed so many people to their demonic deities. The Natives played sports using human heads as balls. There was rampant slavery among them as well. Just look at the titles: Aztec Empire and Inca Empire Yes, that means they conquered and ruled other peoples. Hernan Cortes was joined by an army of 50,00 Tlaxcalans who were natives subjugated by the Aztecs that wanted to see them go. Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra were both heroes. If you’re so “woke”, feel free to go back in time and have your still beating heart be cut out of your chest and your body kicked down the steps of an Aztec Temple, though.
 
Yes, a person with a non white skin colour named Barack Obama even had to live with it for 8 years in the White House. That name kinda of sounds like a microagression to me, but then again, I’m not woke so I can’t tell. 🤔
 
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