Roman Catholic Church and colonialism

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The convent of San Augustin. A mission centre established at Yuriria, Mexico in 1550

During the Age of Discovery, the Roman Catholic Church inaugurated a major effort to spread Christianity in the New World and to convert the Native Americans and other indigenous people. The missionary effort was a major part of, and a partial justification for the colonial efforts of European powers such as Spain, France and Portugal. Christian Missions to the indigenous peoples ran hand-in-hand with the colonial efforts of Catholic nations. In the Americas and other colonies in Asia and Africa, most missions were run by religious orders such as the Augustinians, Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans.

Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar on the island of Hispaniola, was the first member of the clergy to publicly denounce all forms of enslavement and oppression of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.^[1] Theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas drew up theological and philosophical bases for the defense of the human rights of the colonized native populations, thus creating the basis of international law, regulating the relationships between nations.

In the early years most mission work was undertaken by the religious orders. Over time it was intended that a normal church structure would be established in the mission areas. The process began with the formation of special jurisdictions, known as apostolic prefectures and apostolic vicariates. These developing churches eventually graduated to regular diocesan status with the appointment of a local bishop. After decolonization, this process increased in pace as church structures altered to reflect new political-administrative realities.

Much Catholic missionary work has undergone a profound change since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and has become explicitly conscious of the dangers of cultural imperialism or economic exploitation. Contemporary Christian missionaries try to observe the principles of inculturation in their missionary work.

[edit] Age of Discovery

Religious zeal played a large role in Spanish and Portuguese overseas activities. While the Pope himself was a political power to be heeded (as evidenced by his authority to decree whole continents open to colonization by particular kings), the Church also sent missionaries to convert to the Catholic faith the "savages" of other continents. Thus, the 1455 Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex granted the Portuguese all lands behind Cape Bojador and allows to reduce pagans and other enemies of Christ to perpetual slavery^[2].

Later, the 1481 Papal Bull Aeterni regis granted all lands south of the Canary Islands to Portugal, while in May 1493 the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI decreed in the Bull Inter caetera that all lands west of a meridian only 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Spain while new lands discovered east of that line would belong to Portugal. These arrangements were later precised with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.

Furthermore, in 1512 the Laws of Burgos endorsed Christian evangelization of the indigenous people of the Americas, which had already been a counterpart of the Inter caetera bull granting the newly-discovered lands to the Kingdom of Spain. Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico. They worked hard to convert the Indians and to provide for their well-being by establishing schools and hospitals. They taught the Indians better farming methods, and easier ways of weaving and making pottery. Because some people questioned whether the Indians were truly men who deserved baptism, Pope Paul III in the papal bull Veritas Ipsa or Sublimis Deus (1537) confirmed that the Indians were deserving men.^[3][4] Afterward, the conversion effort gained momentum.^[5]

[edit] The Valladolid Controversy

Main article: Valladolid Controversy

Spanish treatment of the indigenous populations provoked a fierce debate at home in 1550-51, dubbed the Valladolid Controversy, over whether Indians possessed souls and if so, whether they were entitled to the basic rights of mankind. Bartolomé de Las Casas, author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, championed the cause of the natives, and was opposed by Sepúlveda, who claimed Amerindians were "natural slaves".

[edit] The School of Salamanca

Main article: School of Salamanca

An early visitor to California sketched a group of Costeño dancers at Mission San José with their bodies painted to resemble the patterns in Spanish military uniforms.^[6]

The School of Salamanca, which gathered theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria (1480-1546) or Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), argued in favor of the existence of natural law, which thus gave some rights to indigenous people. However, while the School of Salamanca limited Charles V's imperial powers over colonized people, they also legitimized the conquest, defining the conditions of "Just War". For example, these theologians admitted the existence of the right for indigenous people to reject religious conversion, which was a novelty for Western philosophical thought. However, Suárez also conceived many particular cases — a casuistry — in which conquest was legitimized. Hence, war was justified if the indigenous people refused free transit and commerce to the Europeans; if they forced converts to return to idolatry; if there come to be a sufficient number of Christians in the newly discovered land that they wish to receive from the Pope a Christian government; if the indigenous people lacked just laws, magistrates, agricultural techniques, etc. In any case, title taken according to this principle must be exercised with Christian charity, warned Suárez, and for the advantage of the Indians. Henceforth, the School of Salamanca legitimized the conquest while at the same time limiting the absolute power of the sovereign, which was celebrated in others parts of Europe under the notion of the divine right of kings.

[edit] Assimilation and mestizaje

Graffiti mural in Los Angeles showing Our Lady of Guadalupe in a nopal cactus.

The conquest was immediately accompanied by evangelization, and new, local forms of Catholicism appeared. The Virgin of Guadalupe is one of Mexico's oldest religious image, and is said to have appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin in 1531. News of the 1534 apparition on Tepayac Hill spread quickly through Mexico; and in the seven years that followed, 1532 through 1538, the Indian people accepted the Spaniards and 8 million people were converted to the Catholic faith. Thereafter, the Aztecs no longer practiced human sacrifice or native forms of worship. In 2001 the Italian Movement of Love Saint Juan Diego was created, and launched evangelization projects in 32 states. A year later, Juan Diego was canonized by Pope John Paul II.

Guadalupe is often considered a mixture of the cultures which blend to form Mexico, both racially^[7] and religiously^[8] Guadalupe is sometimes called the "first mestiza"^[9] or "the first Mexican". ^[10] Mary O'Connor writes that Guadalupe "bring[s] together people of distinct cultural heritages, while at the same time affirming their distinctness."^[11]

A life sized figure of Santa Muerte stands outside a fortune teller's storefront in Mexico City's Chinatown.

One theory is that the Virgin of Guadalupe was presented to the Aztecs as a sort of "Christianized" Tonantzin, necessary for the clergymen to convert the indigenous people to their faith. As Jacques Lafaye wrote in Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe, "...as the Christians built their first churches with the rubble and the columns of the ancient pagan temples, so they often borrowed pagan customs for their own cult purposes.^[12]"An alternate view is that Guadalupe-Tonantzin gave the native Americans a hidden method to continue worshipping their own goddess in a Christianized form; similar patterns of syncretic worship can be seen throughout the Catholic Americas (e.g. Vodou, Santería). Guadalupan religious syncretism is both lauded^[8] and disparaged as demonic^[13].

Such Virgins appeared in most of the other evangelized countries, mixing Catholicism with the local customs. The Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana was built in Bolivia, near the Isla del Sol where the Sun God was believed to be born, in the 16th century, to commemorate the apparition of the Virgin of Copacabana; in Cuba the Virgin named Caridad del Cobre was allegedly seen in the beginning of the 16th century, a case consigned in the Archivo General de Indias; in Brazil Our Lady of Aparecida was declared in 1929 official Patron Saint of the country by Pope Pius XI; Our Lady of Luján in Argentina; La Negrita in Costa Rica...

[edit] Jesuits

Main articles: Jesuit Reductions, Jesuit Asia missions, and Spanish missions in California

The Altar of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines. St. Francis is the principal patron of the town, together with Our Lady of Escalera.

The first attempt by Jesuits to reach China was made in 1552 by St. Francis Xavier, Spanish priest and missionary and founding member of the Society. Xavier, however, died the same year on the Chinese island of Shangchuan, without having reached the mainland. Three decades later, in 1582, led by several figures including the prominent Italian Matteo Ricci, Jesuits once again initiated mission work in China, ultimately introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy, and visual arts to the imperial court, and carrying on significant inter-cultural and philosophical dialogue with Chinese scholars, particularly representatives of Confucianism. At the time of their peak influence, members of the Jesuit delegation were considered some of the emperor's most valued and trusted advisors, holding numerous prestigious posts in the imperial government. Many Chinese, including notable former Confucian scholars, adopted Christianity and became priests and members of the Society of Jesus.

Between the 18th and mid-19th century, nearly all Western missionaries in China were forced to conduct their teaching and other activities covertly.

Elsewhere, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan. By the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese followed Roman Catholicism. Church growth came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians.^[14] Japanese were forbidden to leave the country and Europeans were forbidden to enter. Despite this, a minority Christian population survived into the 19th century.^[14][15]

Location of the most important Jesuit Reductions in the Southern Cone, with present political divisions.

In South America, the Jesuits protected native peoples from enslavement by establishing semi-independent settlements called reductions. Pope Gregory XVI, challenging Spanish and Portuguese sovereignty, appointed his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in 1839 (papal bull In Supremo Apostolatus), and approved the ordination of native clergy in spite of government racism.^[16]

Many buildings erected by the Jesuits still stand, such as the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Macau and the Santisima Trinidad de Paraná in Paraguay, an example of a Jesuit Reduction.

[edit] Later missions

[edit] Spanish missions

In the Americas, the Catholic Church expanded its missions in cooperation with the Spanish government and military. Junípero Serra, the Franciscan priest in charge of this effort, founded a series of missions which quickly became important economic, political, and religious institutions.^[17] These missions brought grain, cattle, and a new way of living to the Indian tribes of California. Overland routes were established from New Mexico that resulted in the colonization of San Francisco in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781. However, by bringing Western civilization to the area, these missions and the Spanish government have been held responsible for wiping out nearly a third of the native population, primarily through disease.^[18]

[edit] French missions

The french colonial effort began later than that of the Spanish or Portuguese.

[edit] Decolonization

Dedolonization in the Americas began with the wave of revolutions, inspired by the American revolution and the French Revolution in the closing decades of the 18th century.

[edit] 20th century

Map indicating countries which were visited by John Paul II.

But the Catholic faith also implanted itself in the middle classes, in particular through the lay movements created following the 1891 Rerum Novarum encyclical enacted by Pope Leo XIII, and which insisted on the social role of the Roman Catholic Church ^[19]. New devotions appeared through-out the 20th century, such as Fidencio Constantino Sintora (known as the Niño Fidencio) (1898-1938) in Mexico, the Santa Muerte in Mexico (who has been attacked by the Catholic Church as being a pagan figure) or Difunta Correa in Argentina. The latter's pilgrimage site was visited by 700 000 persons in 2005 ^[19].

[edit] Liberation theology

Main article: Liberation theology

In the 1970s, the Jesuits would become a main proponent of the Liberation theology which openly supported anti-imperialist movements. It was officially condemned in 1984 and in 1986 by then Cardinal Ratzinger (current Pope) as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under charges of Marxist tendencies, while Leonardo Boff was suspended.

[edit] Accusations of ethnocide

Sanctuary dedicated to the Difunta Correa, a semi-pagan saint, located in Uruguay, between the Tacuarembó and Paso de los Toros cities.

After a journey among the Bari in South America, the ethnologist Robert Jaulin called for a convention on ethnocide in the Americas at the Congress of Americanists, and, in February 1970, the French Society of Americanists convened for that purpose ^[20]. Jaulin criticized in particular the role of Christian missionaries towards non-Western cultures.

Proselytism has continued however through-out the 20th century, with Latin America accounting for the largest Catholic population in the world. But since the 1960s-70s, Protestant evangelism and new religious movements have began to strongly compete with Catholicism in South America, while various approaches to evangelism have been developed . In response, the Pope John Paul II made frequent travels to this continent, visiting among other countries Chile during Pinochet's rule. He also supported Catholic Charismatic Renewal movements against rival Charismatic movements, and groups such as the Neocatechumenal Way (which has close to 20,000 communities in Latin America and 600,000 members alone), Focolari, Comunione e Liberazione or the Opus Dei, which are main vectors of Roman Catholicism in the region ^{[19] [21]}. In the 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio (subtitled On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate), John Paul II stressed "the urgency of missionary activity"^[22] and in which he wished "to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment."^[23]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Charismatic movement
• Christianity in China
• Christianity in Japan
• Colonialism
• Legion of Christ
• Missionary
• Neocatechumenal Way
• Valladolid Controversy
• School of Salamanca
• Indigenous church mission theory
• Our Lady of Guadalupe