Francis in a homily
The pope went ahead and “canonized” Junipero Serra, Reuters reports.
The pope later said Mass in Spanish to about 25,000 gathered inside and outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and canonized 18th-century Spanish missionary Friar Junipero Serra. The canonization was controversial because critics say that Serra beat and imprisoned Native Americans, suppressed their cultures and facilitated the spread of diseases that heavily reduced the population.
During the first canonization on U.S. soil, Francis in a homily hailed Serra as a man who “sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it.” Some Native American activists condemned making Serra a saint, with one, Corrina Gould, saying Serra intended to wipe out the native people.
But the Catholic church, naturally, ignored them, because the Catholic church thinks it’s fine for Catholics to force their religion on other people. Their hooray-word for a person who does that is “missionary.” I don’t suppose they think of Islamic State as “missionaries.”
When I was in middle or high school, Junipero Serra was part of my informal random collection of Chicano pride stories. Back then, if I had heard a bunch of mostly-white atheists attacking him, I would have felt it was a racist attack on my culture. How embarrassing!
Most Christian saints were certifiable psychopaths and moral imbeciles, Serra seems a typical example.
What Junipero Serra did was “forcing religion” but I don’t think it’s fair to say that that is what “missionary” means. There are missionaries who provided education, practiced linguistics and created hospices. The record of missionaries is extremely mixed, but hyperbole does no good.
The medical catastrophe of colonialism is minimized by claims of deliberation. The ‘smallpox blanket’ legend is just not true. No matter how much Ward Churchill repeated it.
The systematic enslavement of the native Californians, the exploitation of their weakened societies, is crime enough, and deserves the full shock and horror of our comprehending it.
suya – well I take your point, but all the same, forcing religion was the core reason for the missions.
Forcing religion was definitely the core reason for the California missions and I am not debating that at all. I think the canonization of Junipero Serra is totally disturbing. But there are many different kinds of missionaries, and I want to be careful about generalizations, particularly because accusations of “forcing religion” have been used for example in justifying the burning alive of Graham Staines.