Pope in Brazil
17 May 2007 by jimmer
1700 years of papist nonsense and you’d think they’d have something good to report. Noooooo, not yet. While in Brazil this past week Bene had this to say. “Indigenous peoples silently longing for Christianity had welcomed the arrival of European priests who ‘Purified’ them”.
Many indigenous rights groups regard the conquest as ushering in a period of Disease, Mass Murder, Enslavement, and Shattering of their culture.
The following is a report about it:
Brazil’s Indians offended by Pope comments
Mon May 14, 2007 3:15PM EDT
By Raymond ColittBRASILIA (Reuters) – Outraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict’s “arrogant and disrespectful” comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.
In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were “silently longing” for Christianity, he said.
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.
Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.
“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.
Several Indian groups sent a letter to the Pope last week asking for his support in defending their ancestral lands and culture. They said the Indians had suffered a “process of genocide” since the first European colonizers had arrived.
Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on the indigenous peoples, although some later defended them and many today are the most vociferous allies of Indians.
“The state used the Church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that … so is the Pope taking back the Church’s word?” said Dionito Jose de Souza a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state.
Pope John Paul spoke in 1992 of mistakes in the evangelization of native peoples of the Americas.
Pope Benedict not only upset many Indians but also Catholic priests who have joined their struggle, said Sandro Tuxa, who heads the movement of northeastern tribes.
“We repudiate the Pope’s comments,” Tuxa said. “To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening.
“I think (the Pope) has been poorly advised.”
Even the Catholic Church’s own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, known as Cimi, distanced itself from the Pope.
“The Pope doesn’t understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible,” Cimi advisor Father Paulo Suess told Reuters. “I too was upset.”
In my opinion the Pope and all the churches have lost any relevancy that they had. The 21st century finds us caught between the ways of superstition and the ways of reason. The churches fail to realize that the indigenous rituals of worship are no less meaningful than a Sunday worship sevice. Yet the leadership of such churches have diminished and demonized those very rituals while carrying on with their own. We as Atheists are often dismissed as being hateful and angry. The truly hateful and angry people however have assembled themselves against any and all forms of ritual that they find offensive and have gone so far as to murder and kill the people who engage in such practices. They wilfully lie about it as well.
The Pope just confirms that to me when he goes out and rejects, offhand, any other way of living. Which includes living by the advances of science. Considering this Pope’s anti-family planning agenda and nonsensical attacks against contraception, is it any wonder that so many have had enough.
We often hear about the genocides of atheists Stalin And others. What the religious leave out is that the genocide that was conceived of by 14th century European Popes and Kings is still going on. A unified world politic with world wide religious approval. What could be more hateful than denying the poor a means of rising out of poverty. They are kept in check by superstition of religion or by brute force of government. And no the Papacy has never apologized for their tacit approval of Hitlers Holocaust. So how can we expect any good to come from a class of people who will not recognize the mistakes of the past and work to correct them. We can’t.
To learn more about the “Pillar of Shame” go here:
http://www.aidoh.dk/art_and_events/pos/brazil/ukposbrazil-parliamentletter.htm
17 May 2007, on 2:50 pm
Well, for hundreds of years various acolytes and choirboys have been crying out for man-boy sodomy, and courageous Catholic priests have been willing to step up to the plate.
So sure, the Nazi Pope’s declamations make perfect sense in that context. Right? Right?
Catholics. Bleh. A pox on all of them.
17 May 2007, on 5:00 pm
Well… what can one come to expect really?
The church has downplayed all its wrong doings since it day one. The catholics even down play the Inquisition claiming that they never killed millons of people.
What really gets me with the catholics is how much they have changed through out history. For example killing people who tryed to translate the bible then later accepting it.. Its funny how religion eventully with much kicking and screaming adapts and change to fit the current society of the time.
This is proably why they try to downplay the ruthless slaughtering that they have done as people today aren’t as accepting to religous murders.
17 May 2007, on 5:13 pm
Exactly. This is now my favorite blog.
The Catholic Church spends a great deal of time and money feeding the myth that its cultural importance was predestined and inevitable. I’m glad that people in Latin America–most of whom are themselves Catholic–are voicing their opposition to the Pope’s outright attempt to hijack history for the glory of the church.
17 May 2007, on 5:43 pm
Thanks so much for posting on this, jimmer. Welcome, mcd!
This Pop seems to have his head stuck in the sand (or somewhere else far more unpleasant) to an almost unbelievable degree, and if he’s making these statements based on others’ advice, the people he’s surrounded himself with are just as bad! I tend to suspect, given his well-documented narrow-minded hard line on doctrine, that he’s so arrogant and thinks he knows so much more than everyone else that he dispenses with advice and puts his own foot in his mouth.
Which ultimately can only be a good thing, I hope. Unless he does something smart like canonize John Paul and a few other saints. Sadly, this always seems to placate the sheeple for another ten years of misery…
17 May 2007, on 6:47 pm
And no, the Papacy has never apologized for their tacit approval of Hitlers Holocaust.
I am not surprised that they have tacitely approved of Hitler. They openly supported Franco (the Spanish dictator until 1975). Heck, thanks to their cooperation they shared in the power!
17 May 2007, on 7:21 pm
The pope is most certainly out to lunch, but the people in Brazil who are criticizing him just want their own brand of bullshit to be supported.
It’s all about locals (natives) controlling their own bullshit religion. Does it make a difference if they’re catholic or something else? I don’t get why we should empathize with the natives when they’re just as screwed up as the the pope.
17 May 2007, on 10:20 pm
Yes, the arrival of the missionaries and soldiers was cause for gala celebrations.
17 May 2007, on 10:27 pm
kratsman
My point exactly. They both share common ground in that they ritualize something that is nonsense. I was getting at the idea that the Popes have been around 1700 years and they have nothing to add to current 21st century progress. They in fact willingly hold all their people in check. The people are not free. The government and the churches of all stripes share the blame and the power and the profit. Hand in hand they keep people uneducated or undereducated and in poverty. Think in terms of what the churches could do with all their resources.
Just because someone has superstitious beliefs has no bearing on my empathy. If anything I empathize more with them for being superstitious and subject to other’s superstitious nonsense. It is a matter we can remedy by our own endevours at being outspoken about our own nonbelief as well as the wrongs of the religious.
18 May 2007, on 8:54 am
I´ve often heard that the worst genocides of all were not done by the spanish Royals and the religious leaders, but by the spaniards who stayed in South america and waged independence wars against spanish monarchy. Apparently the King and Queen tried to put some limits to the abuses that spanish colonists were making, and some prominent religious figures too (Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernardino de Sahagún). Nowadays the descendents of those colonists show a great animosity against all things spanish, forgetting that it was precisely their ancestors who performed the worst abuses, often against the wishes of the Spanish Kings or religious figures.
That´s what I´ve heard from someone who knows quite a bit of history. I don´t know how accurate is this view. Perhaps Stardust could shed some light into all this.
18 May 2007, on 10:26 am
That´s what I´ve heard from someone who knows quite a bit of history. I don´t know how accurate is this view. Perhaps Stardust could shed some light into all this.
Abooga, Maybe you are confusing me with Eve…she would be much more qualified and knowlegable to respond to your comment.
18 May 2007, on 11:40 am
Abooga, I feel obligued to mention that what the Spaniards did with the Indians in the South is not that different from what the Americans did witht he Indians in the North.
My world history teacher in grade 10 told us that it was the conquistadores getting out of control against the wishes of their monarchs, but I took her teachings with a grain of salt. She seemed to always paint an image where Spain looked nicer.
In any case, describing it by saying that the natives were longing for Christianity is quite disgusting, just what you can expect from the pope.
18 May 2007, on 12:16 pm
Regardless of the reasons it is still a european, and biblical domination worldview that led to the digraceful slaughters. It is still happening in many underhanded ways today. Economic policy that dissallows full participation in democracy. Religious persuasions and threat of excommunication to the sheep for going against the Papal decrees. The list grows as you look at the influence both politics and religion have on the lives of any people throughout the world. It matters not whether it is S. America or Saudi Arabia.
The power to influence along political lines through religious persuasion has handicapped our modern world. I point directly at the bible for the America’s but it truly has it’s start with all things coming from the sons of Abraham. Jew, Christian, and Islam. The trinity of death and ignorance.
18 May 2007, on 2:46 pm
Abooga, I know more about what happened on Hispaniola than mainland Latin America, so there could very well have been instances on the continent where the abuses occurred without the sanction of the royalty back in Spain. In regards to the church, I know very little about its role in the independence movements on the mainland, but on Hispaniola Fray Bartolome did try to improve the indigenous people’s lot–
–by bringing in African captives to replace them as slaves. His perspective was basically that the “indio” wasn’t cut out to be a slave, whereas the “negro” was. Screwed-up thinking no matter which way you pitch it, although unfortunately very much in keeping with those times, and it didn’t save the Hispaniolan natives from extinction. The African immigrants, however, thrived and eventually became free, intermarrying with the Spanish/Europeans so that the largest majority in the Dominican Republic, at any rate, is still the mixed race population.
I remember when Pope John Paul went to Mexico to canonize a couple of locals (can’t remember their names) from colonial times and set off a controversy. The two men he sainted were Native Mexicans who had converted to Catholicism, squealed to the Church about their fellows still practicing their old, forbidden pagan ways in secret, and were killed by those same fellows in retaliation for the persecution the Church unleashed against those natives clinging to their pre-Columbian ways. From the point of view of the non-Indian Catholics, they were martyrs who died for their faith; from the point of view of many Mexican Indians, both Catholic and non, they were traitors to their people. Just one example of the conflicts still ongoing in this part of the world because of colonization/imperialism (I’ll have to try to find that story).
19 May 2007, on 2:11 pm
And no, the Papacy has never apologized for their tacit approval of Hitlers Holocaust.
This is nonsense, and shows that you put your agenda above being honest. The Vatican’s “tacit approval” saved lives and allowed it to operate in fascist Italy, where the Vatican harbored scores of Jews, Allied soldiers, and others from the Axis powers. Yea, they really screwed up there.
19 May 2007, on 10:45 pm
Nick
ARe you talking about this truth:
http://www.ucgstp.org/bureau/wnp/wnp0015/roman.htm
Or this truth:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html
Or maybe thisis the truth your thinking of:
http://tinyurl.com/yqkxdx
I am being honest Nick, it is the way I am, but maybe you should be more clear and tell us what my agenda is before you make off hand statements as you have. If your a religious person you should know that I am holding you to being honest as that is the agenda you have just claimed for yourself. I never said that noone was of help but I did say that the chuirch can not be trusted when they have not admitted their own guilt in the holocaust. Those are the facts and if you can’t see that then you are not being honest and are in fact just one more of the Vatican’s apologists.
So far as your statement about the Vatican saving lives. That is just bullshit the vatican did not have a policy of intervention and in fact many of the people who took in those who were wanted were not asked or told to do so by the vatican they did it because it was the right thing to do and in many cases in spite of the religious authorities. By the way 6-10 million total number of people were executed for being born in Germany and the Vatican did and said nothing meaningful to stop it.
21 May 2007, on 4:35 pm
^ I would add that the Vatican can’t be trusted in discussing most of its history. It makes darned sure, for example, to point out that the Roman Catholic Church never killed anyone during the Inquisition, a statement that is technically true because they would hand condemned prisoners over to secular authorities to carry out the actual executions – the Vatican’s way of being able to say it had no blood on its hands.
Just like any other human organization, it casts itself in the best possible light at all possible times. If religious institutions like it were truly that much better overall than secular, they would have far more unblemished histories and better track records than they do.