After 500 years of oppression

Speaking to a continent-wide meeting of bishops in Brazil, Pope Benedict XVI said the Church had not forced itself upon the native people of the Americas. He said, "In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

It is absolutely beyond my comprehension how he said this. Spain tried to justify the Conquest--from Columbus on--by claiming it was bringing eternal salvation to the "heathens." At that time, Catholic universities in Europe were teaching that Indians were natural slaves. (They based their teaching on Aristotle in the 4th century B.C.E.) The heathens had to be subdued so they could be saved, and in the process countless Indians died while mining gold and silver that would adorn not just the mansions of Europe but also its cathedrals and shrines.

Indeed, many church leaders railed against this born-to-slavery teaching and the atrocities of the Conquistadores, most notably the Dominican bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas, who spent a half century on both sides of the Atlantic defending the Indians. Among his voluminous writings were the long "Account of the Holocaust of the Indies" and "Sixteen Remedies for the Pestilences Destroying the Indies." At one point, he wrote to The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that if the conversion of Indians to Christianity "could not take place without their death and destruction as has happened till now," it would be better "for them never to become Christians."

500 years later, today's liberation theologians have to continue to cry out for historical honesty and justice for native peoples.