Junipero Serra: “Is he saint material?” asks the Sun in its Sept. 3 cover story, “Mission to sainthood.”
What a fitting question for Santa Maria, the most venerated Saint, Mother of God, and home of the Saints! But is a saint, as the subtitle suggests, and the church and history experts quoted in the article state, merely: a “Man of his time?” The most shocking thing documented was the fact that Serra urged a parishioner to flagellate himself to death. Is this behavior that we should encourage? Don’t we expect a saint to be more like a spiritual Superman than Joe Everyman? Rather than someone who encourages penitents to beat themselves to death?
According to a pro-Catholic website, the church already has “over 10,000 named saints.” Why is it intent on adding Serra to that list? Because a large number of these so-called saints either never existed, are reputed to have done miraculous deeds (that never occurred), or have been so phony that they caused the Catholic Church embarrassment. The Catholic Church was forced to institute more careful procedures before adding saints. For example, the famous St. Christopher was recognized to be a false saint, and his cult was suppressed. Even the Buddha was made into a Catholic saint and had to be excluded. For the first 1,000 years of Christian history, persons were “recognized” as saints in a haphazard, willy-nilly manner. “Canonization, the process the Catholic Church uses to name a saint, has only been used since the 10th century.” This procedure is claimed to be, like the Pope, “infallible and irrevocable.” However, the example of St. Simon of Trent demonstrates that this is palpably false.
In 1475, Christians accused Jews of having kidnapped, crucified, and drained the blood out of a Christian toddler, St. Simon of Trent, in order to use his blood to make their Passover meal. The Jews were tortured until they admitted their guilt. He was then venerated as a miniature Christ and martyr, after which hundreds of miracles were attributed to him. In 1588 Pope Sixtus formally declared Simon a martyr and saint. After the Holocaust, the Vatican eliminated him from its recognized saints! The entire “blood libel” legend was absurd from the start, but he was venerated for about 500 years. Staunch Catholic websites nevertheless continue to defend the historicity of such “miracles.” To deflect criticism from such well-documented anti-Semitic defamation, the Catholic Church co-opted a Jewish Christian named Edith Stein. Pope Saint John-Paul II canonized her as a saint in 1998—and that saint-making included a list of so-called miracles.
This is because a miracle is required to make a saint. The Catholic Church claims that such miracles prove “that the person is in heaven.” Thus the “miracle must take place after the candidate’s death and as result of a specific petition to the candidate.” Thus, Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II after he was credited with the miraculous cure of a nun in St. Louis suffering from lupus. Ironically, Ernestine de Soto, a direct descendent of the Chumash victimized by Spanish state religion, now credits Serra with a miracle after utilizing one of Serra’s bones in intercessory prayer.
The pope’s decision to declare Serra to be a saint is a sincere but cynical exercise in public relations. Quintessentially, it’s an all too human decision to manipulate public opinion using allegedly divine means. The Sun’s Sept. 3 article frames the debate as if one of two polar opposites was the issue: Saint or Hitler? To simplify good and evil down to caricatures is misleading. His apologists set a low standard for sainthood; they concede that he may have had a misapprehension of God’s cause, that he was complicit in a brutal colonization system, but that we should not judge him by any transcendental moral standard because he was merely a “man of his time.” They imply that because Serra was not responsible for all the cruelty (he was merely a cog in the machine), by default he should be considered a saint. To plead that he opposed the systematic rape of native women is good, but does it make one a saint? No doubt he had a sincere interest in Indian souls, but so did the Spanish Inquisitionists—they burnt heretics’ bodies to save their souls! As the Grand Inquisitor said: “There are three powers, only three powers on earth, capable of conquering and holding captive forever the conscience. … These powers are miracle, mystery, and authority.”
In sum, Serra’s canonization, following his beatification decades ago, must be viewed in a much larger context. Often the victims of religious genocide beget offspring that become incorporated into the very religion that raped and pillaged their ancestors. For example, many of the violent Muslim extremists living in Pakistan and India are descendants of polytheists slaughtered by Muslim invaders centuries ago. Ernestine de Soto and the alleged miraculous healing of her daughter are a perfect example of this.
Hundreds of such miracles have been debunked; this does not deter religious authorities from creating more saints, more miracles, and more believers. The magician James Randi proved on national TV on the Johnny Carson Show that a faith-healer named Peter Popoff was faking miraculous healings (via getting confidential information from a hidden electronic transmission device in his ear, which his wife secretly got from those waiting to be healed). He debunked Uri Geller. Yet the faithful, yearning beyond measure for miracles, either never doubted or accepted their rehabilitation.
Thus, Serra has been reduced to a symbol: A symbol of a magical, miraculous mystery to some; a symbol of colonial conquistadors for others. Saintliness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholders.
Don Casebolt is a resident of Santa Maria who studied biblical Hebrew and theology for five years in the U.S. and Germany. Send comments to clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 10-17, 2015.