FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA: A saint or not...

In September 2015, Pope Francis will visit Washington, DC and canonize FATHER JUNIPERO SERRA as the first Hispanic saint in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal article THE POLITICAL ASSAULT ON CALIFORNIA’S SAINT by Allysia Finley (June 5, 2015) decries the fact that there is a lot of objection to this sainthood.

I remember taking my kids to San Diego for a vacation and then travelling along California’s coast from one mission to the next and then flying out of Los Angeles; Father Serra founded most of those missions.

The fact that Spanish missionaries did devastating damage to the indigenous population of Central and South America is well documented. Not only did they destroy their culture but they also destroyed their history by burning ancient texts thought of as satanic because the missionaries did not understand them.

In California, Father Serra took thousands of natives into his missions where he taught them Christianity and methods of farming, etc. He thought of the natives as children who needed a firm hand to put them on the right road to salvation. Yes, he destroyed their way of life and therefore their culture and true that many thousands died when the Spanish introduced diseases that the natives could not fight since they had no immunity to them, but was he doing what he thought was right?

Franciscan missionaries were instructed to bring the pagans to Jesus, first and foremost, and that is what they tried to do; Father Serra was no exception and did the bidding of the Catholic Church.

He was said to have protected the natives from rapacious marauding Spanish conquistadors as well as from drought and famine; just to add a few positives to this issue.

I have never thought much of the Catholic institution of sainthood mainly because of the process which allows popes to make people into saints just because they want to; the process is made to fit the desired outcome. Pope Paul V was a doofus that screwed up the social policies of the Church to the point that Catholics now just ignore Church teachings on certain issues; he will be made a saint. Pius XII was a Nazi sympathizer and Jew hater; he will be a saint. Pope John Paul II, very popular among the masses, but one who allowed priests to molest young males by protecting them and ignoring the issue all together; he will be a saint.

So you see that people being canonized saints is just a political ploy meant to give certain Catholic ethnic groups someone to call their own.

I would not make a big deal about Father Serra’s canonization because the Catholic Church will do what it wants to no matter what the criticism. I would make some noise though, in pointing out how absurd the process is and how much damage forced conversions did to native peoples around the world. 

Criticism of these canonizations should be loud and clear as a means of preserving the facts of history since canonizations tend to re-write and obscure the facts of history behind a veil of manufactured holiness.