Church History Apologetics: Blessed Junipero Serra

It's the third Monday of the month, so I'll be talking Church History Apologetics with Matt Swaim on the Son Rise Morning Show during the last national segment on EWTN: after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central news break with Annie Mitchell. We'll discuss the controversy over Blessed Junipero Serra and Spanish colonization in California.

Pope Francis will canonize the Mallorca-born missionary priest when he visits the United States in September this year. There has been some controversy about this because some people accuse Blessed Junipero Serra of abusing the natives in California while establishing the missions. The first thing to establish is that critics are chronologically confused, according to Professor Ruben Mendoza of California State University, Monterey Bay, in this National Catholic Reporter article:

The professor has been involved in research and conservation projects at several California missions founded by Serra. He said many of the Spanish missionary's critics are confusing the impact of Spanish colonizing and missionary activity on the native communities with what happened after California became a U.S. territory in 1848.

"A decimation of the Native American population," Mendoza said, occurred "in the period after 1850; Serra had no connection to that phenomenon. Those who criticize Serra the most tend to conflate the American period with that of the missionaries."

Another major objection to Serra's canonization involves reports that Native American adults at his mission were beaten.

"There is no documentation that Serra himself abused any Native American," Mendoza said. "The system under which he operated did use corporal punishment, but that was also used for transgressors from all walks of life, including soldiers."

Mendoza supports the canonization and said he believes it "has much to offer the peoples of Latin America, especially those of us of Mexican-Indian heritage who currently live under a shadow of doubt and denigration."

Just as with St. Thomas More during the Wolf Hall controveries, I've seen some articles with the headline or comment: "Saint or sinner?" and the answer, just as with St. Thomas More, is: both! Sainthood does not mean that the canonized confessor or martyr was perfect or never sinned; it means that the Church has determined that the confessor practiced the theological virtues heroically and that, by evidence of both devotion and miracles through the intercession of the saint, the Church is certain that the confessor is in heaven. Everyone in heaven is a saint, canonized and recognized by the Church or not; that's one reason we have the glorious feast of All Saints Day.

As the head of the Knights of Columbus noted, these attacks on Father Serra are part of the "Black Legend":

The “black legend” is a term historians use to explain a propaganda war of English speaking nations against Spain. It originally arose when Spain had a vast empire and England was competing with Spain.

We all know, for example, the story of the Spanish Armada trying to invade England. It has come down through history as a prejudice against Spaniards as being unusually cruel, unusually greed, unusually untrustworthy. . . .

The presumption of the black legend is that the Indians — the native peoples — were treated cruelly, maybe were tortured, were exploited. When the fact of the matter is, what drove and motivated Junípero Serra and the other missionaries was the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe, that these people have dignity. When she appeared to Juan Diego, she said: “Am I not your Mother?” Did she not come with their appearance, as one of them. She also said: “I have the honor to be your mother.”

Disciples of Our Lady of Guadalupe understand that she is coming out of respect. And therefore, evangelization does not mean domination; it doesn’t mean exploitation. It means bringing the Gospel to people and cultures that you respect.

And Carl Anderson notes that it was the State of California, in the days of the 49ers, that abused the natives:

And that’s the key to understanding Junípero Serra. In fact, many of the horrible things that people want to say occurred under the Spanish missionaries actually occurred after Spain and Mexico were driven out of California. It is during the gold rush — in 1849 and 1850 — that you see the suppression of the Indian people, i.e. the natives of California. . . .

You even have the governor of the time saying the Indians must be exterminated. There was no thought of treating the native people with the kind of respect and multiculturalism that Junípero Serra wanted. The governor stated this quite clearly and used the word ‘extermination’, so it’s very clear what was going on.

The Black Legend is one of those sloppy, easy ways to think (or not think) about history, using some simplistic, generalized framework to sort out the heroes and the villains. We know that history is more complex than that but this propaganda device is hard to dislodge from popular culture.

A final aspect of this issue is the statue of Blessed Junipero Serra in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection (pictured above/public domain)--there was a move to have it replaced with one of Sally Ride, but that has been put on hold, at least until after Pope Francis' visit. St. Damien of Molokai, the Leper priest, is the other Catholic saint depicted in the hall. Do you know which historic figures represent your state? Perhaps I'll quiz Matt on who represents Ohio!

Can You Spell I-R-O-N-Y? Blessed Junipera Serra

From First Things, author Stephen Schwartz places the controversy over the upcoming canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra in context, noting that the moral outrage may be misplaced:

Here in California, the Pope’s intention has reignited an old controversy. Serra has been accused by self-appointed representatives of Native Americans of “genocide.” Most of this polemic is carried out in the media and rests on thin documentation. These allegations of cruelty, exploitation, and mass murder against Serra and other Franciscan and Jesuits in the Californias—Lower and Upper, Baja and Alta—echo Protestant anti-Catholic bigotry, which dominated the United States during the early period of independence. Once California became the object of a Gold Rush, Easterners had every incentive to deny the rights of the colony’s Spanish and Mexican residents, as they did later in acts of violence against “Chilean” and Chinese miners, followed by long-lasting prohibition on other Asian immigrants.

If we wish to study the history of violence against the Indians, we should turn to that later episode, the 1849 gold rush. It’s a history San Franciscans take pride in, even having a football team bearing the 49er name. Meanwhile, the newspaper for which I worked from 1989 to 1999, the San Francisco Chronicle, refuses to print references to the Washington Redskins football team. The editors argue that the name is racist, and the newspaper refers to the franchise only as “the Washington, DC football team.”

Avaricious pioneers like the 49ers committed far worse depredations against the natives than did the missionaries. Two anthropologists, Lowell J. Bean and Sylvia B. Vane, wrote in the 1978 edition of the Handbook of North American Indians: 

Some native Californians were Christianized only by force, [but] others accepted the new religion apparently because the Spanish demonstrated possession of kinds of power that appeared desirable. The acceptance of Christianity did not mean that native religious systems disappeared. Native religious ceremonies persisted alongside Catholicism, often tolerated by the priests under the guide of ‘secular’ events, but sometimes carried out secretly. The extreme decrease in native population in the last part of the nineteenth century and the concomitant ‘melting pot’ philosophy on the part of the Anglo-Americans were more destructive to native religious systems than Catholicism.

It is true that some California natives resisted the missionaries; for example, in 1775 the mission at San Diego was destroyed in a revolt by nine Indian villages. The attackers killed a Mallorcan priest, Fr. Lluís Jaume Vallespir. Serra appealed to the Spanish authorities to spare the perpetrators, however. This call for mercy was successful, and the insurgents were pardoned.

Blessed Junípero Serra stands for a period in history that is unknown by most Americans. How many people could even answer the question of the origin of the name “San Francisco”? Let us hope that his canonization will inspire further and deeper discussion of the arrival of Christianity to the American West.

To paraphrase Pope Francis, "Who is the San Francisco Chronicle to judge?" Seriously, the same trend is popping up in headlines re: Father Serra as for Thomas More during the airing of Wolf Hall: Saint or Sinner? 

When the Church beatifies or canonizes any man or woman, we do not declare that he or she is perfect according to whatever secular standards apply at the time. As G.K. Chesterton wrote "There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means a man who really knows he is a sinner." (from "The High Plains" in Alarms and Discursions a collection of essays Chesterton wrote for the London Daily News from 1901 to 1913).