Infallible Madness

It seems this is a 'shut the fuck up!' kind of day.

Thats what i get for reading newspapers, which is not a regular thing for me.

In my last post i offered the sentiment to the Anglican theologian Dr. Turnbull.

So remaining centered, not seperating or taking the moral high ground, calmly wondering how it could have possibly seemed like it was a good idea to say what he said, i'd like to offer a 'shut the fuck up!' to Benedict as well.

Reading Eamonn McCann's article in the Belfast Telegraph, i have discovered that the indigenous peoples wiped out during the european colonisation of Latin America had been asking for it. In fact, "longing" for it.

So Benedict explained during a papal address in Brazil on May 13th.

"the nations of latin america and the caribbean had been silently longing to receive Christ as their saviour" long before the arrival of the europeans.

Christ had been "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking without realising it".

The colonisation of the continent was not so much a conquest as an "adoption" of the indigenous peoples.

The colonisation "did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it an imposition of a foreign culture".

The effect of the extirpation of ancient religions and the forced conversion of whole peoples had been to make their cultures "fruitful" by "purifying them".

How many of the millions, who died in the religiously inspired genocide which followed the conquest, felt more fruitful i wonder? How many of the few enslaved survivors felt purified i wonder?

Sandra Tuxa is the leader of a coalition of indigenous tribes in northern Brazil and a lay catholic activist. She described Benedict's remarks as
"arrogant and disrespectful... to say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening."

The international press, when they bothered to pick up the story, have tended to be astonishly apathetic. Reuters offered the following bland explanation,
"Many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide."

This is the equivalent of remarking that many Jewish groups believe the Holocaust brought them enslavment and genocide.
Anyone crass enough to refer to the Nazis' Final Solution in these terms would immediately be excluded from respectable discourse as an Holocaust denier.

The Pope however is immune from any such judgement. Maybe its an infallibility thing.
Or maybe the forest tribes of Brazil just don't qualify for consideration in this context.

Maybe the logging companies currently scything through the forest peoples could consider hiring chaplains to explain that the Ha-ha-hae, the Rio Parde, the Arara, and the Macuxi have, all unknownst to themselves, been silently longing for such adoption down the years and can now consider themselves purified.


But this isn't about religion, christian or not. Its about power.
I think of the minister at the Congregational Church near me, the Rev. Lewis.
I think of Brother David Steindl-Rast who i met in the U.S.A.
These men are examples of living Christian compassion.

Why is it the lunatics who always get into power?
Or does their power make them lunatics?