h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and just to go off on another tangent, picked up this from Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D809D115-1128-4092-9BA6-30F716C56052.htm

basically saying that the indigenous tribes had been purified by the RC church since the landings in 1492 and that the indigenous peoples "had welcomed European priests after conquest" and that "the peoples of the Americas had a "silent longing" for Christianity and welcomed European priests' arrival"

Not perhaps the most advisable speach the Pope has ever made.

I'd be a little sceptical about journalistic spin there. The phrase:
"It is very important to me that my children not be exposed to this,"
can be taken various ways. It doesn't necessarily imply an objection to homosexuality per se. In fact - if that *was* the guardian's objection, I'd warrant he'd have been a bit more explicit - and the news source would have been able to use a juicier quote.

I've not seen it, only read the novella it was based on. Hey - it *does* feature alcoholism and marital infidelity! Things you might legitimately not want your children exposed to at too early an age.

This pope is obviously an idiot who knows nothing of the history of this hemisphere (the one I'm in) or of his church.

What with one thing and another...he does seem like a most exceptional dimwit, doesn't he?

at the risk of inducing the innevitable reversion of the thread to Hitler --

The Pope's comments in Brazil rank right up there with Holocaust denial. He merits the severest of censure.

However...just to be marginally revisonist...while the atrocities of the conquistadores are undeniable, far more South Americans were killed by germs - principally measles - than by guns or steel. In Jared Diamond's book ('Guns Germs and Steel' ), he reports the estimate that by the time Cortes arrived, the Inca empire was down to 1/3 of its population and was in a state of collapse. Similarly, the Mississippan civilisation, now thought to be of equal sophistication to the Aztec or Incan, was probably wiped out just before the Europeans arrived in their territory.

Of course disease was the biggest killer. But there is far more to Western Hemisphere indigenous history that Conquistadors and plague. The Pope, in his description of indigenous 'longing' ignores, for example, the genocidal Indian Wars in the U.S. and the (Church run) residential schools in Canada which left entire nations stripped of their language, their culture, their livelihoods, their families and left them with nothing but a religion that had betrayed them and an endless cycle of addiction and abuse.

The legacy of the Conquistadors and the plagues are the dim (but still palpable) background to the clear and immediate damage that the coming of Europeans and their churches has done to indigenous people alive today. The Pope's words do not simply betray the memory of victims five centuries dead: they betray some of my friends and neighbors and some kids in my daughter's class at school.

He's made a mess.

Well, indeed. I was merely reinforcing your assertion that a comparison with the holocaust wasn't particularly useful.

Yes, these things are worth remembering, in the context of the Catholic church. A big thing for this pope in particular is the notion of the church as the foundation of European civilisation - the best civilisation there is - to be defended against the alien forces of Islam, Marxism, whatever (although their defence against Nazism was far from robust). It's worth asking if European civilisation - specifically of the brand promoted by the church - has always been wholly beneficial to those it conquered.

<>

It's an easy answer, though. No. Not even counting the millions killed deported from their land, seen their culture vandalised and destroyed, but still no. As a brief example
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19426033.600-aboriginals-out-of-africa-too.html

'Aborigines still suffer from diseases long eradicated in developed nations, such as leprosy and tuberculosis. Average life expectancy in some areas is as low as 33 for Aboriginal men,...'

The timing of this news is rather ironic for me as the novel I'm reading at the moment is 'Porcupines and China Dolls' by Robert Arthur Alexie. Alexie is a member and former chief of the Teetl'it Gwich'in Nation in northern Canada and is a survivor of the residential schools. His novel is a harrowing exploration of the survivors' experience.

I highly recommend it. Sadly, the book doesn't seem to be widely known or distributed. http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/search?keywords=porcupines%20and%20china%20dolls&pageSize=10

"This pope is obviously an idiot who knows nothing of the history of this hemisphere (the one I'm in) or of his church.


He's an idiot if he thinks you are gonig to buy that line but that he said he doesnt mean he actually thinks it does it now. Your conclusion is just one of many obvious answers, the one Id go for is that he is a revisionist liar who is doing his best to halt the secular drift in Latin American.

Aside frmo the Vaticans plane which seems to be a Saint for every village from Tierra del Fuego to New Mexico the Pope has joined called for an amnesty on illegal immigrants. This sits nicely alongside policies which welcome defectors from the Anglican/protestant movement who are unhapy with the ordination and equality offered to homosexuals.

Bums on seats is the name of the game.

'Bums on seats is the name of the game.'

tragically, for too many indigenous children, their experience of the church has involved bums in other places than seats.

>>'Aborigines still suffer from diseases long eradicated in developed nations, such as leprosy and tuberculosis

I heard that reported on the radio the other day. I remember yelling "Jaysus ---king christ! Why are people dying in a 1st world country from diseases that can be treated with very simple drugs?" And the imprisonment and death in custody rates of aboriginal males are monstrous.

Still, help is at hand:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6631551.stm
That should help a whole bunch.

I can think of one or two other books I'd prefer to see translated into Kriol...

otoh, this observation by Asimov provides a glimmer of hope: "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived"

Kurt Vonnegut took over from Asimov as president of the American Humanist's Association. He started his eulogy at Asimov's memorial with:
"Isaac's in heaven now..."



Just think of what the efforts of 100 linguists could do in terms of providing literacy education for Aboriginal Australians.

I remember reading about the opening line of that eulogy as a moment. I damn near choked on my coffee!

I don't think the Pope has anything to apologise for. The speech wasn't at all pejorative. The full text can be found on the Vatican website, at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070513_conference-aparecida_en.html

The quotations in the report were a bit garbled, but I think the third paragraph of the speech is probably the one that provoked the controversy:

"Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel. In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment."

He continues, Ultimately, it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love.

It would be nice if he recognised at roughly this point in the speech that the blessings of Catholicism, for which the South Americans has been unknowingly longing, were spread at the point of the sword, and that the 'diversity of expressions' were hardly respected at the time.

He may be saying that the blessings of Christianity were worth the suffering. You may agree. He may be right. But it would be a little less disingenuous if he acknowledged that the suffering did occur.

TRiG.

And, in a virtual simulpost with Trig . . .

Suppose a representative of some religion -- the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for example -- were to knock on the door of some church in Europe -- in Wittenburg, perhaps -- and announce:

'what would the acceptance of our faith mean for the nations of Europe? For them, it would mean knowing and welcoming our God, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich Catholic religious traditions. Ours is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also would mean that they would receive, through our rites, the divine life that will make them children of our God by adoption; moreover, they would receive our Holy Spirit who will come to make their cultures fruitful (since they are unfruitful cultures now), purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that our God has already planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Truth. In effect, the proclamation of our faith does not at any point involve an alienation of the European Catholic cultures, nor is it the imposition of a foreign culture. Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.

And the first thing well do to help you along is burn your books and kill your priests. Then we'll take your kids away and beat them if they speak their language and force them to say our prayers.'

How would Mr. Ratzinger react to such a statement?

As Trig suggested, it's what he ignores that is offensive. His speach is a continuation of the attempted erasure of indigenous history and culture.

The founder of the moral majority died, and not a peep about it?