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The wisdom of the indigenous peoples fortunately led them to form a synthesis between their cultures and the Christian faith which the missionaries were offering them. Hence the rich and profound popular religiosity, in which we see the soul of the Latin American peoples:
- love for the suffering Christ, the God of compassion, pardon and reconciliation; the God who loved us to the point of handing himself over for us;
- love for the Lord present in the Eucharist, the incarnate God, dead and risen in order to be the bread of life;
- the God who is close to the poor and to those who suffer;
- the profound devotion to the most holy Virgin of Guadalupe, the Aparecida, the Virgin invoked under various national and local titles. When the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the native Indian Saint Juan Diego, she spoke these important words to him: “Am I not your mother? Are you not under my shadow and my gaze? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not sheltered underneath my mantle, under the embrace of my arms?” (Nican Mopohua, nos. 118-119).
FULL TEXT
"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab.You still lived in grass huts, without the wheel, draft animals, organized agricultural, or writing. Some of you practiced ritual cannibalism. You were showing zero progress.
No, it's not.
-Eric
The neopagans are becoming bold not only in Brazil, but in Bolivia - where official government policy proposed before the Congress is to forbid the teaching of Catholicism in both public and private schools, and to replace it with compulsory instruction in pagan savagery.
ping
I wonder are they going to burn things down now? Their own artifacts show what kind of peoples they were. They weren’t particularly nice. Puhleeze.
Viva Il Papa!
This is infuriatingly bad history. I know next to nothing about the history of colonial Brazil, but in North America at least, this same canard is offered and it is grossly distorted.
The biggest slaughterers and enslavers of Indians in the 1600s-1700s were other Indians themselves--who often allied themselves with European colonial powers (e.g. Hurons and Algonquins, Narragansetts & Mohegans), OR attacked and destroyed other tribes completely on their own volition without European help except for arms (e.g. Iroquois).
The Iroquois, in particular, dispossessed the following tribes of the original homelands: Hurons, Petun, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Mascouten, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo. We can also add the Neutrals, Erie, Honniasont, Mosopelea, who not only were destroyed by the Iroquois but were never heard from again.
Colonial history is complex--shifting allegiances, intra-tribal warfare, colonial powers playing against each other. It is a massive disservice to portray it as simplistically as people tend to do nowadays.
But I think that's the point, isn't it? Indians good, Europeans bad. Nice pat formula that fits in nicely with race hatred against Europeans.
Reuters, you are abysmal.
Faith in God has animated the life and culture of these nations for more than five centuries. From the encounter between that faith and the indigenous peoples, there has emerged the rich Christian culture of this Continent, expressed in art, music, literature, and above all, in the religious traditions and in the peoples’ whole way of being, united as they are by a shared history and a shared creed that give rise to a great underlying harmony, despite the diversity of cultures and languages. At present, this same faith has some serious challenges to address, because the harmonious development of society and the Catholic identity of these peoples are in jeopardy. In this regard, the Fifth General Conference is preparing to reflect upon this situation, in order to help the Christian faithful to live their faith with joy and coherence, to deepen their awareness of being disciples and missionaries of Christ, sent by him into the world to proclaim and to bear witness to our faith and love.
Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.
Ultimately, it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love. That is why Christ, being in truth the incarnate Logos, “love to the end”, is not alien to any culture, nor to any person; on the contrary, the response that he seeks in the heart of cultures is what gives them their ultimate identity, uniting humanity and at the same time respecting the wealth of diversity, opening people everywhere to growth in genuine humanity, in authentic progress. The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture.
The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.
Act 17:22-31 So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op'agus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead."
Three comments:
Well, as a protestant I think the pope is utter humbug anyway! If I had to choose btw being a catholic and a tree worshipper, I’d choose the tree: the I at least would get fresh air :D
remember: God is in everything, including the trees: it’s a shorter route btw ourselves in the nature and the big man upstairs than inside a hypocritical church! Go take a hike in the mountain and see for yourselves!
Don't they know that they're Native Americans now?
“Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.”
This paragraph was inserted by the author, although it does not come from the “offended” people. It makes me think that this paragraph is the real purpose of the “news” article.
To these Protestant ears; it sounds quite sacreligious!
I didn't realize there were still conquistadors around today!
I'm really tired of the semi-literate making a living spouting political propaganda that barely passes for writing!
I didn't realize there were still conquistadors around today!
I'm really tired of the semi-literate making a living spouting political propaganda that barely passes for writing!
“When the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the native Indian Saint Juan Diego, she spoke these important words to him: “Am I not your mother? Are you not under my shadow and my gaze? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not sheltered underneath my mantle, under the embrace of my arms?” (Nican Mopohua, nos. 118-119)”
As an aside: Our kids, especially the 5 year old, are crazy about the EWTN cartoon story about Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe. These are available on Youtube. Now I have a few problems with EWTN, and can quibble with things said in the cartoons, but they are overall really good for kids.
Juan Diego, Messenger of Guadalupe - EWTN - Part: 1 of 4:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-lsd6uKTZ2E