By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Common sense tells us there are certain arguments that do not deserve a reasoned response, but are best met with an exasperated sigh and an impatiently muttered, “Give me a break.” I submit that the case being made against the canonization of Fr. Junipero Serra falls into that category. Fr. Serra’s adversaries are not looking for an honest give-and-take in search of the truth about his life; they are arguing dishonestly, making points that are a smokescreen for a hidden agenda.
It is not that I object to those who are methodically countering the charges against Serra by citing the historical record. Fr. Robert Barron, recently named an auxiliary bishop for Los Angeles by Pope Francis, did that admirably in his column for ZENIT News Agency, reproduced in the September 10 edition of The Wanderer. It is a valuable source of information for those who might find themselves confronted by misrepresentations about Serra’s missionary work in California.
Perhaps those caught up in such a discussion will be talking to someone of goodwill who may be won over by an accurate and fair description of Serra’s life.
But I wouldn’t count on it. Most of those who are attacking Serra have no interest in hearing the evidence that the Indians in 18th-century California were not forced to join Serra’s mission communities, that they were not baptized against their will, that they were treated fairer than the Indian tribes in British-held territories of North America, and that the punishment meted out to Indians who broke the rules in Serra’s missions was more lenient than that administered to lawbreakers in Europe at the time.
It won’t make any difference to Serra’s critics that Serra frequently defended California’s native peoples against the violence of the Spanish authorities, or that the worst atrocities committed against those Indian tribes took place during what the historians call the “American period” that followed upon the end of the Spanish mission system.
None of that matters for those who oppose Serra’s canonization. Edward Castillo, the director of Native American studies at Sonoma State University in California, is a good example. According to Jeffrey M. Burns, writing in America on August 31, Castillo, who identifies himself as a Native American, argued at a symposium on Serra at the University of California in March, that none of the good that Serra did outweighs the “legacy of poverty and invisibility that tribal peoples suffered” and the “destruction of their cultures” caused by the Spanish missionaries, such as Serra.
There’s the hidden agenda. When the critics of Serra speak of the “destruction of the culture” of the California tribes, they are not talking about tribal dances, native garb, pre-Columbian music and art. It would not have mattered to the critics if Serra dressed like the native tribes, spoke their language, adopted the tribal way of life and had every church that he had built in the missions constructed to match the architectural styles favored in the tribal villages.
He would still be depicted by his critics as an evildoer — as long as he sought converts to Catholicism. That was his crime for the multicultural left, whether they will say that openly or not.
For the modern secular left the Catholic missionaries were ethnocentric, cultural imperialists because — precisely because — they preached the Gospel of Christ, because they depicted Christ’s message as superior to the pagan beliefs of the native peoples — because they acted upon Christ’s command to teach all nations in His name. It puts the missionaries on the wrong side of history, makes them the enemy of multiculturalism and diversity.
The secular left condemns anyone who rejects the proposition that all religions offer equally valid spiritual paths. They see Catholic missionary efforts as expressions of a close-minded belief that the religious convictions of Third World people were lacking the fullness of truth. It would not matter to them if Serra did none of the things his critics charge him with doing, if he acted upon a belief that there was something inadequate about the tribal religious beliefs of the native California tribes and worked to convert them to Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
He would not be a virtuous man in their eyes as long as he preached that the Catholic Church was the church established by Jesus and that Jesus was the only-begotten Son of God. That belief is what makes him a bigot, a racist, an unacceptably ethnocentric agent of the European imperialist drive to transform the world in its image.
But, wait: Don’t the leftists have a point? Isn’t there something untoward, arrogant, and self-righteous about Europeans spreading Christianity to peoples with different religious beliefs?
No; it is preposterous to say that — unless you deny the core beliefs of the Catholic Church. Every Christian who lived at the time Serra lived was a Christian precisely because Christian missionaries converted their forebears. That was the Good News they carried to the native tribes in California. They wanted the rest of the world to share in what had been preached to them.
St. Patrick brought Christianity to the Irish; St. Augustine to the British Isles; Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs; St. Boniface to the Germans. Junipero Serra’s Spain was converted in the first century AD by Christian missionaries from Rome. You get the point. There is no need to go through the complete list.
One more thing: The attack on Serra’s canonization cannot be justified by pointing to the harsh treatment of the Native American tribes in California by the Spanish conquerors. His missionary efforts did not cause whatever exploitation took place. The Spanish would have behaved the same, probably far worse, if Serra had never come to the New World and established his missions.
Beyond that, conquerors with other religious beliefs have behaved far worse than Spanish Catholics: Genghis Khan, Muslims, Vikings, Japanese Shintoists.
Serra’s critics would be defaming him even if the Spanish colonial authorities acted like Mother Teresa. Serra’s “crime” was being a Catholic priest dedicated to spreading the message of Jesus. Period.
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