St Junipero Serra statue toppled in San Francisco

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Does it really matter why he left, when the response he got was smarm and mockery?
 
“Grace” asked if you are Catholic so as not to assume you know Catholic teaching.

Let. It. Go.
 
VonDerTann said:
Does it really matter why he left, when the response he got was smarm and mockery?
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It just means the problem is a single incident. However, a silly gif certainly doesn’t really rise to the level that you are making it out to be, but I will say it probably isn’t in good taste.
VonDerTann said:
When old hands mock, ridicule, etc., newbies, they turn this board into what it often is: An echo chamber of the same people, repeatedly congratulating themselves for how smart they are, how charitable they are, etc., while condemning those who dare question them
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Both sides do this.
 
Do both sides do it? I see it more from 1 side. But even if they do, it’s still wrong.

Grace’s GIF wasn’t in good taste. That we agree on.
 
Eh maybe. Maybe not. As a rule we ought to be kinder to newbies. We ought to encourage new folks here, not drive them away. CAF shouldn’t be a club of the same people.
 
VonDerTann said:
Eh maybe. Maybe not. As a rule we ought to be kinder to newbies. We ought to encourage new folks here, not drive them away. CAF shouldn’t be a club of the same people.
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It’s not, there are two clear sides and for the most part newbies are treated alright.
 
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Ok fair enough. He wasn’t “cancelled. Still, not something to revel in.
 
Hi Grace,

I just wanted to say thank you for removing the post in question.

I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great week.

-WR
 
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Actually, isn’t that what canceling is? Someone gets so frustrated that they either delete their account or just go away?
 
BLM and Antifa are the stormtroopers of the Lunatic Left. They don’t believe in tolerance of any opinion not their own and will not hesitate to resort to violence to get their way. They need to be shut down.
 
1ke said:
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DonQuichote1235:
In what way was Serra abusive towards native Americans? Did he torture native Americans?
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He is representative of the entire mission system, Because he was the leader of the founding of the missions in California. His statue is representative of the whole thing, I don’t really think it’s about Junipero Serra individually.

The missionaries and soldiers came and took the land as they pleased and built these fortified missions.

The native population was put onto the mission lands, largely coercively. They worked the land, did not receive pay, the goods they created and animals/crops they toiled to raise were sold for profits.
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This is more an elaboration on than a response to 1ke.

I have lived in California my entire life. For the last 32 years I have been a parishioner of (or at least attended Mass at) a parish named for Fr. Serra. Three years ago I moved to a nearby city which has a mission founded by Serra. I live two blocks from a statue of Serra on public land.

Serra is an extremely controversial figure around here.

The local indigenous tribes see him as the leader of the people who destroyed their once thriving, mostly peaceful, culture. Many of them do see him as guilty of torture.

The English and Spanish opinion of indigenous new world cultures is quite different. The British tended to have a more hands-off admiration for those cultures but it was kind of in the same way they admired wild animals. Leave them alone so long as they weren’t an inconvenience; destroy them if they got in the way. The Spaniards saw other cultures as potential citizens for Spain, but only after they had been given a thorough (however painful) cultural makeover.

I believe Serra cared deeply for the peoples he met. Some of the things he and his successor padres did were designed to protect the people from the Spanish soldiers. But the padres thoroughly bought into the concept that Spanish culture was a tenet of Catholicism. Serra considered the Indians to be children and as was normal in European culture, (but not in many of the indigenous cultures) children were regularly disciplined with harsh corporal punishment.

So far, the statue near me has survived. But it is apparently slated to be removed after some long-term talks between the pastor of the mission, the mayor, and the leader of a local band of indigenous peoples. It’s not clear where it will go.

Those of us who grew up Catholic but are not native peoples find the negative feelings about Serra to be distressing. In public schools he was taught as a state founding father. In Catholic school he was considered a hero of the Faith. It’s hard to see that those who have more ancient roots to this area really have comparable feelings about what happened to their ancestors.
 
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Fr. Serra could have remained in Spain and continued a brilliant career as an academic and a teacher. But he desired to be a missionary to those who had never been evangelized, never heard the Gospel. Bringing the Faith to the unevangelized through the missions was an essential work to him. I’m not sure that such evangelization would even be attempted today.

I wonder if California will now want to change the names of its ‘litany of saints’ cities. In Missouri, I hear that some are agitating to change the name of the city of St. Louis.
 
And that’s what the poster felt was happening to him. He felt attacked. Whether or not he left on his own is irrelevant.
 
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Welshrabbit said:
And that’s what the poster felt was happening to him. He felt attacked. Whether or not he left on his own is irrelevant.
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He left because of an ideological disagreement, he never mentioned being attacked.
 
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Well he deleted his post so I can’t verify what he originally said.

What was the point of your original post to me? What were you hoping to accomplish?
 
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