The Catholic Church & Native People

I had promised in an earlier post to write a bit about the Catholic Church & Native people, so here goes...

Earlier this month, I met an amazing man.

He's native, from New Mexico, raised Catholic, but with a strong adversion to the Catholic church- not Christianity mind you, just Catholicism.

You see when he was a little boy he was taken from his family to be raised by the church.

His take of the church was one where the church played the role of oppressor, conqueror and intolerant judge and jury- a church which demonized his ancestral traditions and robbed him of the chance of growing up with his family.

The night we met, I listened intently to the stories he told, horrified that the church had affected him and those in his life the way that it did. & yet, I was not surprised.

Although hearing it directly from this man's lips made it different, perhaps even more confronting, I was clear that this was the tradition and history which has haunted the institution called the Catholic church.

I remember a few years ago when I participated in a Hispanic Leadership Summit in San Antonio, visiting the old missions (now parks), reading the signs and the stories of the missionaries and the native people and sitting under the shade of trees reflecting on the trail of tears that native people have shed everywhere.

Although I am Hispanic, Mexican and Guatemalan, I am clear that my being such makes me both Native and European. I am, undeniably indigenous. I am, conqueror and conquered. And so, sitting under those trees in San Antonio such sadness filled me. It struck me as so sad that the beatiful ideal and vision which Jesus preached could create an institution that in its flawed humanity could do so much harm.

And though Catholic, my take on the church is as follows- it is flawed, for it is human, and like any other human institution, just like government, just like business, just like anything- absolute power can corrupt absolutely.

What's inpsiring to me though is what lies on the other side of that, what is possible when we as humans strive towards goodness, godliness, perfection- when institutions do this.

In my opinion that's the opportunity that each and every human being has every moment in life and also the opportunity that all institutions have (b.c they are when you boil it down in the final analysis, human).

We are falible, and at points we will fail, that is undeniable. It's what we choose to do in the face of that failure that is most telling.

With regards to what's transpired between native people and the Catholic church, I think there is a terrible failure that must be acknowledge, mourned for and tranformed. That white men came and in the name of God and Christianity destroyed families, cultures and nations is unacceptable. And in that famous tradition of asking, "What would Jesus do?"

I don't think he would have done that.