- Feb 5, 2002
- 166,683
- 56,300
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
Every year on this date—the feast of the North American martyrs—I find myself asking the same sort of questions. Were those Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century guilty of proselytism? Did they respect the indigenous cultures? Would St. Jean de Brebeuf have asked for a blessing from an Iroquois shaman? How would St. Isaac Jogues have responded to the veneration of the Pachamama?
We revere the missionary martyrs, who willingly gave their lives in an effort to bring souls to Christ. But today we shy away from the work they set out to do. Were they wrong, or are we?
When Catholic leaders apologize for a failure to respect indigenous cultures, are we apologizing for these martyrs? If so, why do we keep their names on our liturgical calendar? And if we are not apologizing—if we really do honor their work, seek their intercession, and believe that they won the most precious of victories—why are we reluctant to imitate them?
For the Jesuit martyrs, missionary work was not just a matter of life and death; it was about something still more important, about salvation and damnation. So they could endure torture and death, secure in their belief that what they offered the Native Americans was worth the price—a price that they themselves were ready to pay, for the sake of people who scorned them. They could accept living in primitive conditions, forsaking the comforts of their native France, in order to win the confidence of these people. But they could not accept the primitive native religions.
Continued below.
We should apologize to the North American martyrs
We revere the missionary martyrs, who willingly gave their lives in an effort to bring souls to Christ. But today we shy away from the work they set out to do. Were they wrong, or are we?
When Catholic leaders apologize for a failure to respect indigenous cultures, are we apologizing for these martyrs? If so, why do we keep their names on our liturgical calendar? And if we are not apologizing—if we really do honor their work, seek their intercession, and believe that they won the most precious of victories—why are we reluctant to imitate them?
For the Jesuit martyrs, missionary work was not just a matter of life and death; it was about something still more important, about salvation and damnation. So they could endure torture and death, secure in their belief that what they offered the Native Americans was worth the price—a price that they themselves were ready to pay, for the sake of people who scorned them. They could accept living in primitive conditions, forsaking the comforts of their native France, in order to win the confidence of these people. But they could not accept the primitive native religions.
Continued below.
We should apologize to the North American martyrs
