Fr. Junipero Serra takes on the Modernists

Today is the feast of Father Junipero Serra, a missionary to the native Americans in California and Mexico in the 18th century. I once had a deacon, who was part native American, tell me that he mourns on the feast days of Junipero Serra and cringes whenever he is asked to support the Serra club. It seems the deacon believed that Fr. Serra abused the natives whom he converted to Catholicism, and even that he converted the native people by force. However, Fr. Serra was instrumental in enacting legislation in California that secured for the native people a bill of rights. Does this sound like a power-hungry abuser to you? Such black legends abound about the activities of Catholic missionaries in the years of early European exploration of the Americas.

Fr. Serra's black eye probably comes from the fact that he required baptized natives to remain in the mission so they would not return to their native tribes and fall into the sins that those cultures practiced. For the modernist scholars that promote these black legends evangelization is nothing more than forcing European ideas onto the native cultures and therefore devaluing their culture. The history of Catholic missionary work is one of great respect for natural cultures, but also one of purification of those cultures so that practices such as self-mutilation, torture, sexual abuse, and human sacrifice - all of which are incompatible with living a Christian life - would be avoided. But modernists do not think that anyone has the right to tell anyone else what is right or wrong. So Fr. Serra is an abuser - not because he actually converted by force but because he converted at all.

I expect such thinking from modernists, but it's much harder to take when it comes from Catholics who have unwittingly swallowed the modernist lies. My school (named Columbus after the Knights of Columbus) even lost a financial supporter because we would not change our name. He believed that Columbus was evil incarnate. My study of Columbus tells a very different story of a man who had deep respect for the natives, but who was unable to avoid bloodshed when the Spanish people decided to make the natives into slaves.

Study the lives of the early Catholic missionaries - and even of some of the so-called Conquistadors (start with Christopher Columbus!). Use primary sources (journals, diaries, letters, etc.) as much as possible. You will find that many of these men were (imperfect) men of God who truly wanted to bring Christ's love to the furthest corners of the earth.