“The imperialism of missionary work is one of the biggest flashpoints between contemporary progressives and established religion,” the leftist publication VOX declared in 2015 in an article about St. Junipero Serra, the 18th Century Catholic saint canonized by Pope Francis in 2015.
Serra, the first saint of the Catholic Church to be canonized on American soil, was a professor of philosophy before taking up the crusade of evangelization (“Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature”) and founding five (Franciscan) Catholic missions in southern California.
The essayist Agnes Repplier, in her biography of Serra, wrote that the missionary,
“… Had the qualities of those emotional, penitential, and migratory years, when endurance was the keynote of existence, and when the love of life was balanced by the honor paid to death. His harsh asceticism, the boards on which he slept, his meager diet, the cruel mortifying of his flesh, all savored of the Middle Ages; and so, too, did his habit of putting his mind and soul into his work.”
The social justice warriors who defaced and then pulled down a statue of Serra at Mission San Rafael Arcangel in San Rafael, California on October 12, 2020, would have a hard time understanding the concepts of “harsh asceticism” and the mortifying of the flesh in the name of a Supreme Being.
Leftists, after all, don’t “do things” for God or for the salvation of their souls. They “do things” to advance a revolutionary social agenda.
The San Rafael statue wasn’t the only image of Serra that was destroyed in 2020. On June 19, a statue of Serra was torn down in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. On July 4, rioters dismantled a statue of Serra in Sacramento. Serra’s “crime” was “imperialistic colonialism” or “cultural genocide,” both labels for the “forced” imposition of Catholicism and European culture on Native Americans.
That imposition, rioters claimed, involved the “problematic” introduction of foreign animals and plants by European conquerors into the southern California ecosystem, an activist analysis that has more to do with a contemporary understanding of science than what was known in the 18th Century.
The Serra statue destroyers also condemned the saint’s method of dealing with Roman Catholic converts/natives who may have changed their minds about their conversion and then made attempts to leave the missions.
Serra, the extreme ascetic who slept on boards and denied himself food, might be described as someone who was as hard on himself as he was on the natives under his charge.
Critics like to point out how he once worked as a field agent for the Spanish Inquisition, an association that looks worse on paper than how it played out in reality.
While Serra’s halo in the leftist media is referred to as a “halo stained with blood,” the saint’s strictness did not involve outright cruelty. In fact, his “medieval” way of dealing with issues like runaway convert natives was considered normal by 18th Century standards, yet when viewed through a contemporary lens that behavior appears skewed, unreasonable, and “bloodstained.”
Maureen Tilley, Professor of Theology at Fordham University, writes that once the natives were baptized, they were confined to mission territory, even though their families may have lived outside the mission.
“If they tried to run away, they were brought back and punished. Serra tried to mitigate punishments, tried to keep the Spanish soldiers from preying on Native Americans.”
Again, by 18th Century standards, the habit of restricting newly baptized natives to a confined territory implies a catechumen-like state that may have had more to do with ongoing religious instruction, a protection against the influence of pagan families on the outside.
While this ‘lockdown missionary mentality’ would never fly in the 21st Century, it still does not merit the scorn and contempt that has been heaped on this saint as if he alone were responsible for the multiple atrocities that occurred in the missions after Serra’s death in 1784.
Of course, the notion that a newly baptized person should be sheltered against persuasive outside pagan sources may appear to be quite insane to mostly (secular atheist) leftists who cannot conceive of souls being saved for eternity (“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”)
“Saved from what?” they would surely ask.
Tilley and other Serra scholars also agree that what abuses did occur in the California missions happened post-Serra and were government-imposed penalties unrelated to Serra’s original mission to bring the natives to Christ.
The leftists’ beef with Serra comes down to the saint’s zeal for evangelization, or his daring to presume that the jimsonweed-hallucinogenic cult practiced by the Gabrielino-Tongva tribes of southern California was inferior to Christianity.
When Pope Francis canonized Serra in 2015, the leftist media reported that many Native Americans felt that his canonization was an affront to their culture and history. ‘Their culture’ in this case means a pagan culture since Christianity is viewed by leftists as a European import item on a par with foreign animals and plants.
“Who’s a Saint, Anyway?” The Atlantic magazine asked in 2015, while VOX upped the ante and declared that Serra was a “brutal colonialist,” and then went on to ask, “So why did the Pope make him a saint?”
These 2015 progressive media strikes against Serra made the soil ripe for the string of Serra statue attacks in 2020.
First you print distortions and lies, then you double down on character smears, then you wait for an opportune moment—the George Floyd riots of 2020—and watch as your work simmers to a boil.
As it did, in Serra’s case.
San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, as reported by the Catholic News Agency in 2020, praised the Marin County District Attorney for filing charges over the vandalism of the Serra statue at the San Rafael Mission.
“This is a breakthrough moment for California,” the archbishop declared. “This represents the first time that any of the lawbreakers attacking statues of St. Junipero Serra and other acts of vandalism on Catholic Church property across California will be held accountable for their actions in court,” Cordileone told CNA.
But on May 26, 2023, the Marin County DA’s office announced that it would reduce the charges against the San Rafael Junipero Serra statue vandals from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Archbishop Cordileone was quick to respond: “The lawbreakers came prepared with ropes, chisels and spray paint, clearly indicating forethought in committing this crime. If crimes like these are not punished, then the government is telling mobs they get to decide what symbols Catholics and other faiths may display.”
Cordileone added that if the same offense had been committed against another religious group, “it would almost certainly have been prosecuted as a hate crime.”
PART 1
When you make a COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS of the different European empires ( Portuguese,Spanish,French and English)
you discovered the Spanish one was the most original of all. It was based NOT on having a common language, nor common culture but only on………………..common faith,Catholicism.
1. There was a time when the king of Spain was also king of PORTUGAL and BRAZIL ( 1580-1640),for 80 years.
2. The Spanish king never tried to make Spanish the official language there,even though the two are very similar,90%. The important thing was…………..common faith,not common language.
3. From 1763 till 1803 ( 40 years), the region of LOUISIANA ( 33% of today’s US) was part of the Spanish empire. It was in fact part of the viceroyalty of NEW SPAIN ( capital Mexico City).
Yet they NEVER tried to impose Spanish there,the OFFICIAL language continued to be FRENCH.
The important thing was…………..common faith,not common language.
4. In 1542 they had the “New Laws of the Indies” in Spain,on how to govern the natives of America.
There were to be different administrative regions: “Republic of Spaniards” and “Republic of Indians”.
The first were the cities and towns where Spaniards had settled,a small portion.The rest were ruled by some Spaniards and mostly by NATIVE leaders ( princes, nobles, chiefs).
The Spaniards never tried to impose Spanish on the natives,they simply created SCHOOLS for the native ELITE,so they would be BILINGUAL and serve as interpreters and corulers of the Spanish empire.
Only thing in common:same faith.
5.The PHILIPPINES was part of the viceroyalty of New Spain and they had the same thing:”Republic of Spaniards” and “Republic of Indians”.
There were 300 towns outside MANILA and the ones in charge were FRANCISCAN priests. Those 300 towns were NOT part of the Republic of Spaniards.
The priests never tried to impose Spanish but learned the local language.The one thing in common: common faith.
PART 2
1. In the 1580s PHILIP II of Spain passed a law that said the MAXIMUM hours of work per day for workers
in the empire would be……………….8 HOURS, 6 days a week,
and for those in the MINES……………..7 hours(plus reaffirming previous law that
said NO Women and Children were to be allowed to work in the mines).
Unlike the industrial UK of the 18th and most of the 19th century: work was 12 HOURS a day in the MINES and elsewhere,and women and children worked in the mines.
2. The JESUITS in the early 1600s created a new work system in their missions,inspired by the UTOPIA of Thomas More:
a. Work for only FIVE days of the week.
b. And SIX hours per day: 9 am to 12 and then 2 hours of rest, then 2 to 5 pm.
3. This method was used by the FRANCISCANS in CALIFORNIA for the 20,000 Indians in the 21 missions.
LA PEROUSE was a French explorer who visited a mission in 1786 and said the Indians were treated as bad as in the FRENCH plantations.
What would that mean?
In the FRENCH plantation the slaves worked 12 HOURS a day, 6 days a week. The records of the Franciscans show it was not so.
4. In the French plantations the LIFE EXPECTANCY of a slave from Africa was……………….2 YEARS.
In BRAZIL it was……………………5 YEARS.
At that rate the 20,000 Indians in the California missions would have DIED out in 10 years.
The Franciscan records tell us they obeyed the rules,either La Perouse saw a very,very extreme case,or exaggerated.
PART 3
As I said before the Spanish empire was the most original of all.
1.Virtually all the California tribes when the franciscans arrived were NOMADS, there were no towns.
2.The Spanish king ordered the conversion of the natives and they were to be made sedentary,living in missions…………………..for 10 YEARS.
The missions lasted from 1769 to 1833 ( 64 years, 2 generations).
That was not the original plan.After 10 years learning different TRADES ( carpentry,pottery, wine-making,cattle-raising,weaving,blacksmith,etc) the natives were to be allowed to leave and
automatically became CITIZENS of the empire. To live as they wished.
But time and again the Franciscans convinced the Spanish authorities it was not a good idea and so the mission system lasted longer than intended.
3.Different from the US way,when it took over California in 1848,the natives LOST the status of CITIZENSHIP even though born there since in the US CONSTITUTION then( written in 1789) there was a law that said
citizenship for those BORN in US territory was restricted only to WHITES,and that only WHITE IMMIGRANTS could acquire US citizenship.
Thanks for your bold truth-telling regarding social policy of Spanish Empire.
The same enlightened Catholic Spanish royal llberality was applied to Moses and Stephen Austin when they applied and received their land grant between the Colorado and the Brazos River. The Spanish and their successors, the Mexicans after 1820, were very anxious that Stephen welcome as many settlers into Texas as practicable. Stephen obliged by bringing settlers from his former residence in Kentucky and from Tennessee. These settlers presented a problem in that they were not bilingual and were English in their political tradition. These settlers separate culture would eventually foment the rebellion of the Texas War of Independence. It is common to blame Mexico for the war, but there is another point of view to consider that the greatest liberality of policy may have come from the Spanish side. The Texans may have forced war on the Mexicans than vice versa.
Trump was mocked by the “unbiased” press for making the obvious observation that these woke street-trash wouldn’t stop at pulling down statues of Robert E. Lee (an honorable man).
These nihilistic scumbags hate this great nation more than they love themselves, and their hunger for more destruction leads them to more.
They’re worse than Stalin. He only air-brushed his political enemies from history books.
As long as the refuse to send Vandals to Prison and make them pay the price from their own pockets without their idiot friends fund Rasing for them this will just continue to happen. Vandals belong in jail for 10 years
While modern leftists feel that they are being good and kindly and humane when they promote child sexualization and transgender procedures, letting people rob stores up to a certain limit at will, “bail reform,” illegal immigration, and many other things some of us think are distinctly wrong, we (they) can’t seem to grant the possibility that missionaries of centuries past may very well have believed and acted upon the belief that they were saving souls and giving them the gift of grace.
I want to BE in a world where we can complain about the past, but not change it. That way we CAN learn from it and not start over from the egg every time. The future individuals will complain about me when I am gone but I wish reality to BE for them.
I hate hate when its used as an excuse to do good as well as bad! Is that a Hate Crime?
The I-280 Freeway that runs from San Jose to San Francisco is called the Junipero Serra Freeway and about halfway there is an area high off the East side where you can park your Car for a rest and see the massive statue of Junipero Serra.
The main Road that goes through Daly City, south of San Francisco, is also called Junipero Serra Highway.
Did they pull down that huge statue on the I-280 Freeway?.
I moved out of the Bay Area in the early 1990s.
The leftist hordes are “evangelists” in their own cause, trying to control education and eliminate all opposition. They are even “cultural imperialists,” trying to insert leftist Western indoctrination into Afghani schools.