The Hindu basis of Mahayana Buddhism

Alan Watts (alanwatts.org, "Mythology of Hinduism," Part II), Pacifica Free Speech Radio Los Angeles (KPFK.org); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Brahminical/Hindu (Avalokitesvara) influence on Kwan Yin, a Buddhist Bodhisattva (Bouddha aux Mille Bras, Wat Laem Suwannaram, Koh Samui, Thaïlande (Micky75017/flickr)

The mythological (comprehensible) versus the metaphysical (ultimate): How we tell the story matters. The divine couple on Earth, the dark-skinned lord Krishna and radiant Radha, like Shiva and Shakti/Parvati, Brahma and Prakriti...

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Who were the "Hindus"?

Former British Episcopalian priest, Californian Zen teacher Alan Watts gives the second of a remarkable concise explanation of Hinduism, the Eastern Philosophy on which Mahayana Buddhism is based. The Brahmins co-opted the Buddha's new message, the Buddha-Dharma, and subordinated it to the the old Vedic "eternal" (sanatan) law or message. But few Mahayana Buddhists are aware of the fact that so much of what we consider "Buddhism" is actually counter to what the historical Buddha Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama) taught. They are perfectly in line with the old view of the theistic cosmos and it's operation. Those who do know think, then, that the Buddha was an avatar, an incarnation of the God Vishnu, as Brahmins insist. And all religious roads by different means aim and arrive at the same place.

They do not. What the Buddha taught veered away from the Vedas, the ancient Indus Valley Civilization's "Knowledge Books," the sacred texts of modern India. As part of the wandering ascetic (shraman) movement, the Buddha rejected the Brahmins' religion and the temple priests' empty rituals. Why? Prince Siddhartha, who was neither a Hindu* nor a Brahmin. He was a Scythian and categorized by Brahmin caste members as a warrior (kshatriya), but this does not mean he or his clan were part of "India."** Indeed, there was yet no "India" and no "Hinduism" but only feuding states, loosely affiliated kingdoms, and clan-held territories (janapadas), which Emperor Asoka would later unite into something one could call a unified single land. In this ferment, a young Prince Siddhartha went from his cosmopolitan crossroads (rich Bamiyan, Afghanistan on the Silk Route) to the ancient city of Varanasi and the Kingdom of Magadhi, into what is now Bihar (named after the many Buddhist Viharas that later dotted the land after the wandering ascetic Siddhartha became the Buddha in Budh Gaya, the Awakened One in "Awakening Grove," now Bodhgaya.

AUDIO (Archive.KPFK.org)

Available for 59 days beginning: Sunday, January 18, 2015 8:00-8:30 am (KPFK).

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Central Asian/Indo-Scythian Buddha, Gandhara

Alan Watts does not talk about the geopolitical history and setting as to how it came to be that Buddhism was subsumed. He is merely teaching the core elements of Hinduism, which Mahayana Buddhists will recognize as strangely being our own ideals.

The Buddha offered nirvana as a remedy to samsara. Mahayana Buddhists like Brahmins (we loosely call Hindus as if they represented the true religion of India) before them said, "Nirvana is samsara."

If this is all a game, a divine drama, a play (lila, like "lilt" Watts comments), then there is nothing to worry about. The goal can be to awaken from the round, samsara, or one could simply go along playing forever because one is eternal.

The atman (self, soul) is Brahman (the Ultimate Reality). This is exactly the way people talk about emptiness and nirvana, as if nirvana were our True Nature, our Buddha Nature, and Bodhicitta something always at hand which we are not realizing. It is all very seductive and leads away from the historical Buddha's message of awakening as quickly as possible, final liberation, realizing that we are not eternal, but that the impersonal and painful process will continue to roll along for as long as we are ignorant. Awaken.

The Truth would set us free...if only we will make efforts to realize it now.

FOOTNOTES: *There was no "Hinduism" and would not be until Adi Shankara was to create it many centuries later by gathering disparate religious beliefs from all over India and systematized them into one coherent religion. One of the reasons he felt compelled to create a national religion is because of the success of the foreigner, the Buddha, and his Dharma. Shankara and others wanted their own native religion, Vedic Brahmanism, back. Of course, this was not the native religion of wildly free and open India which had long been famous for housing all kinds of views and practices. But as Shankara was a Brahmin and the Brahmins had long ruled, their high minded, written doctrines -- from the defunct Indus Valley Civilization -- was held up as the core values with other popular movements, such as Buddhism, welded onto it, even if they seemed or were in fact contrary to it. The foreign prince from the wild and lawless, uncivilized frontier land to the west was subsumed into the new Hinduism by simply making his a Hindu god, a mere avatar/incarnation of one aspect of the Triumvirate God (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva). By subordinating Buddhism, Shankara effectively destroyed the Buddha's liberating message and the path to enlightenment and nirvana, replacing it with the mishmash of visions and fragments provided by seers (rishis) and poets (writing slokas, verses, hymns to Brahma) and commentators (there is a long tradition of commenting in India).

**"India" is a name given to the post-Asoka subcontinent. At the time of the Buddha the region, with different borders, was called Jambudipa, which means "Rose Apple Land." The Buddha was from the "Middle Country," which was Central Asia, west of today's northern India. But the Buddha came to live in Bihar and Magadha, and the Scythians later followed him and expanded their territory (janapada) into those lands. India did not extend to include Gandhara, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the other stans that run down from Ukraine to the Indus River. Rather, Shakya Land (roughly Indo-Scythia, Sakastan, or Greater Afghanistan, which the Shakya Clan held from three capitals, including Kapilavastu, modern Bamiyan, Afghanistan) extended its influence into what we now call India by following the footsteps of their spiritual prince and taking over those lands as their own for a time.

It is not easy to find an accurate history, for it is buried in India-glorifying and Jonesian histories. See a Non-Jonesian view at ranajitpal.com and cursory overviews of ancient territories on Wikipedia.

Conscious Life Expo 2015, Los Angeles (Feb. 6)

Wisdom Quarterly; ConsciousLifeExpo.com

The Expo comes to LA from Feb. 6-9, 2015, LAX Hilton (consciouslifeexpo.com)

The What's Next Panel: A Call to Action
A sample panel at this year's Expo in Los Angeles

How can each of us impact the "web of life" in our own world? How can we thrive within, deepen our connection, and flow toward the emergence of a glorious shift?

Join this stimulating panel for an interactive dialogue between exemplary luminaries who are leveling up their personal and professional lives by taking bold action steps globally.

Sharing their insights and lifelong experiences, they will illuminate the path for the "seekers" to discover one's true place in the "bigger Planetary picture."  Bring an open heart and imagination and resolve to live the question, "WHAT'S NEXT?" 
 

Moderated by Lisa Garr, host of KPFK’s “The Aware Show”

Lisa Garr (also seen on Gaiam TV) created America’s  top-rated "The Aware Show" broadcast throughout Southern California on Pacifica Free Speech Radio (KPFK.org) and listened to by hundreds of thousands globally via Google Hangout. Garr interviews leading life-style experts and authors on natural health, personal growth, and spiritual consciousness. Garr also hosts "Being Aware" on Hay House Radio, "Gaiam Inspirations" on Gaiam TV, as well as guest hosting the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast.

Ven. Khen Rinpoche Tsetan is a Gelugpa Buddhist monk from Ladakh, India. At 15, he walked with his father over 800 miles from Ladakh to Shigatse, Tibet to enter the renowned Tashi Lhunpo Monastery. In 1995, Rinpoche founded The Siddhartha School in Stok, Ladakh (Buddhist India near Kashmir, high in the Himalayas bordering Tibet). In July 2005, the 14th Dalai Lama appointed Rinpoche to be the head abbot, or kachen, of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in southern India. Khen Rinpoche has been teaching in the United States for over 30 years.

• SiddharthaSchool.org

Thom Hartmann is an internationally-syndicated talk show host [and nominally Left blowhard] reaching over half a billion homes.  A New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, Hartmann and his wife, Louise, started a community for abused children and The Hunter School, a school for autisitic and ADHD kids in New Hampshire. He initiated international relief programs on four continents and the largest community for abused children in the entire country of Israel. His latest book is The Crash of 2016.

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer.  A number one New York Times  best selling author four times over, she published A YEAR OF MIRACLES: Daily Devotions and Reflections in 2013.  In 2014, she  deeply impacted political consciousness by running for the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1989, she founded Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in Los Angeles and founded the U.S. Department of Peace Campaign, a grass roots campaign. Williamson serves on the Board of Directors of the RESULTS organization, working to end the worst ravages of hunger and poverty throughout the world.

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Environmental film activist Leila Conners is founder of Tree Media, created to support and sustain civil society. She co-directed the award-winning documentary The 11th Hour and Urban Roots. Conners directed and launched Green World Rising -- short film series on climate change with Leonardo DiCaprio and Thom Hartmann. Tree Media works with the Council on Foreign Relations, NASA, RAND, Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, Norman Lear, and PBS. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Currently, Conners is writing and directing her films We the People 2.0 and Into Eden about how we can change our society and ourselves in the face of disintegrative forces that threaten our biosphere. More

(Victory Over Violence) Solutions at the 11th Hour (1/7)

The Siddhartha School Project with Khen Rinpoche (siddharthaschool.org)

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Some of the exciting speakers at this year's Conscious Life Expo MORE

We are being led to war by our own propaganda

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

"Charlie is here" to serve as part of the pretext for WW III battles by the West (CO).

Supporters of a Pakistani religious group Fidaiyan-e-Khetm-e-Nebuwwat protest USA, France, and Israel, represented by flags, and chant slogans equivalent to our, "What do we want? - Respect! When do we want it? - Now!" during a demonstration against caricaturing sensitive religious matters by the West, such as the French magazine Charlie Weekly, in Karachi, Pakistan, Sat., Jan. 17, 2015. Hundreds of supporters were brought out in the Pakistani port city in defense of the beloved Prophet Muhammad as precious to Muslims as the Prophet Jesus (Isa) is to Christians and Moses is to Jews (AP).

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This is how "empire" gets done

How do you manufacture consent?

In brief, we (our military "psy ops" and spying agencies) create fictitious "enemies" out of real people and then go to war against them. In the process, groups like the CIA, NSA, mainstream media, and military propagandists "manufacture" our consent. Sex may grab quick attention, but it is FEAR that sells war, fear that pays for munitions, fear that gets us to go along with whatever our vicious -- greedy, angry/aversive, deluded -- leaders say. Islam is not the problem, nor are stage managed "terror" attacks that have us waging a global war on a tactic. 

It's unwinable by design, and it is the perfect target for war profiteers because it is endless. We would always be fighting, like the time we had the War on Drugs while the CIA was bringing in drugs, taking the profits to fund their exploits in Central America, and then jailing a select group of Americans who got caught with even the tiniest amount of anything labelled illegal. Now the most deadly and illegal thing to get caught with are prescription drugs without a prescription, a felony.

We said that madness had to stop, but we're willing to let this nonsense stand? Irony: Let's fear the backlash from satire. (Never mind that it's fake! It's a pretext used to deploy plans for war and attacks. It's not what's happening). Good idea; George Carlin and Lenny Bruce would be proud of after all they went through. "They hate our freedom," and that's why they blow up our buildings...unless it's Timothy McVeigh, he's cool because he's one of us. Oh, Kim Jong Un is mad about "The Interview," attack! Oh, Muslims are mad about a video up on YouTube for months that they hadn't noticed before. Yeah, look, we can prove it, because we got some guys to march in a rally with signs printed in English and they stepped on a flag!

Oh, those jihadists are mad about French cartoons after more than ten years, attack! (The real reason for the staged "attack"? So the French government could approve of war without too much backlash from those darn peace activists. It worked; they voted 488 to 1 to back our U.S. military-industrial complex's bombing of more parts of Africa than we were already busy destabilizing! (Hey, and look, the Chinese have jumped into the fray, too, by deploying a battalion with drone and surveillance support to "protect their interests," that is, their financial investments just like we do all the time!)

Oh, Islamists hate French deli slices, attack! Oh, two guys shot at a Belgium SWAT team sneaking up on them with guns, lock down the country, then help America attack! Greece sniffed out some "terrorism," attack! All of Europe is under attack, attack! Come on. Who could believe any of this false alarm news all over TV and NPR? If you can, then read about Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four about how to successfully run an authoritarian state. It's the same thing all over again.

• On Friday at 5:00 pm Yassamine Mather told Suzi Weissman on "Beneath the Surface" about the roots of "Islamist fundamentalism" and the MYTH that the Paris attacks were caused by outrage from the provocations of an irreverent weekly magazine and its crude cartoons.
• On Sunday (Jan. 18, 2015) at 1:00 pm, Pacifica Free Speech Radio's "Middle East in Focus" exposed how we are all being lied into war. Listen: Archive.KPFK.org

U.S. business as usual

Crude caricatures, possible satire, can offend.

Just a half century ago in the West, anyone who dared to make fun of religion or Christian/Catholic idols would have been pilloried. It would not have been tolerated. And there are still many places throughout the country where one will be attacked for insulting someone's faith or religious identity. Yet we hold ourselves up as paragons of openmindedness, secularism (like Iraqis used to), and liberalism. Actually most of our population is Puritan-leaning nominal Christians who, like many people around the world, identify with groups.
 

Hi, I'm J. Jewison, and Israel is outraged!

This is where we get our self-image and social standing. And religion is one of the most significant markers we use. Somehow, however, we are being duped to imagine that other people around the world are fanatical and unreasonable when they are just behaving normally. Someone is playing us, pitting us against one another. For what reason? Dividing people allows governments to pit populations against one another. War is profitable, very profitable, for private parties. It is a gross drain on the public, but it enriches a few, such as bankers, industrialists, Wall Street financiers, and politicians who wave the flag and tell us all the killing, drone attacks, internationally illegal assassinations, and imperialism is "moral" and "right" and done in the name of fear, our fear. Do something really radical: Love instead of giving in to hate/fear (what Buddhism calls dosa). Speak truth in a time of universal lies. After all, it is a well known fact that "Truth is the first casualty of war."

"The true story of Little Jesus," December issue of Charlie Weekly (cotocrew)

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Untouchables (Charlie Weekly)

Belgium welcomes becoming a police state overnight over some alleged discoveries of "terrorist plots"? Paris does not mind 10,000 armed police pointing rifles at anyone they want and threatening to shoot anyone they fear or misunderstand? No running! Paramilitary police will not tolerate running or any other ordinary behavior that they may feel threatened by (such as demonstrations or protests). Europe is happy to reveal how far along countries are to Orwellian-style authoritarian rule? And we will accept it out of FEAR, also known as "terror" and fear-prevention?

• The CIA's radical Islam (Saudi Arabian Wahhabism): Why do our intelligence/psyops/propaganda agencies fan the fires of racist hatred? To promote war and our U.S. war economy
• AUDIO: "Beneath the Surface with Suzi Weissman," Friday, Jan. 16, 2015, 5:00 pm
• Beneath The Surface w/Suzi Weissman Yassamine Mather on the roots of Islamist fundamentalism and the myth that the Paris attacks were caused by outrage from the provocations of an irreverent magazine. Paul Mason on Syria and the upcoming Greek Elections. 
• 2015 Predictions: BRICS and Drones may break my bones Expect vicious verbal attacks, website cancellations, takedowns, and threats of violence to emerge and a huge discussion on "freedom of speech." This is aimed at the truth movement. We may see copycats on posting murder in advance of MK-Ultra mass shootings in the Midwest. 
• We condemn anti-Islam blasphemy along with Muslims egged on and stage-managed by PR firms and CIA assets (as if street marchers would have clear signs in English and would be targeting their messages)

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  Muslims protest weekly's prophet cartoon; 4 killed in Niger 

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  Growers struggle with glut of legal pot in Washington state 

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  Phoenix woman dies after giving birth to quadruplets 

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  Suspects held in Greece as European terror crackdown widens 

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  Police: Teen sweethearts blaze trail of crime across South 

Hitler and religion: Was Hitler Catholic?

Text by apologist Dinesh D'Souza (catholiceducation.org); Wisdom Quarterly
(Monty Python's Flying Circus) Can satire go too far, or is Hitler's silliness fair game? "I am not a racialist, but -- and this is a big but..." After all, it's not the Catholic Spanish Inquisition.

No atheist: The Fuhrer (bad dictator) was a nominal Christian, but not a "real" Christian?

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Hindu-Aryan myth, Neo-Nazis

Leading atheists are arguing that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime were theist and specifically Christian.

Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great depicts Hitler as a pagan polytheist -- not exactly a conventional theist but still a theist. Atheist websites routinely claim that Hitler was a Christian because he was born Catholic, he never publicly renounced his Catholicism, and he wrote in Mein Kampf, "By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Nazi or Christian symbolism?

Atheist writer Sam Harris writes that "the Holocaust marked the culmination of...two hundred years of Christian fulminating against the Jews" and therefore "knowingly or not, the Nazis were agents of religion."

 

How persuasive are these claims? My New York Times bestseller What's So Great About Christianity has the full story and the requisite citations, but here's the condensed version. Hitler was born Catholic just as Stalin was born into the Russian Orthodox Church and Mao was raised as a [Chinese Mahayana] Buddhist. These facts prove nothing as many people reject their religious upbringing, as these three men [probably] did.

Banner of white supremacy with "Holy Spirit"?

From an early age, historian Allan Bullock writes, Hitler [like most youth] "had no time at all for Catholic teaching, regarding it as a religion fit only for slaves and detesting its ethics."

How then do we account for Hitler's claim that in carrying out his anti-Semitic program he was an instrument of divine providence? During his ascent to power, Hitler needed the support of the German people -- both the Bavarian Catholics and the Prussian Lutherans -- and to secure this he occasionally used rhetoric such as "I am doing the Lord's work."

To claim that this rhetoric makes Hitler a Christian is to confuse political opportunism with personal conviction. Hitler himself says in Mein Kampf ["My Struggle"] that his public statements should be understood as propaganda that bears no relation to the truth but is designed to sway the masses.

The Nazi idea of an Aryan Christ [rather than the North African Jewish Jesus of history] who uses the sword to cleanse the earth of the Jews [and other "undesirables"] -- what historians call "Aryan Christianity" -- was obviously a radical departure from the traditional Christian understanding and was condemned as such by Pope Pius XI at the time. [But then there was "Hitler's Pope," named Pope Pius XII, a Catholic pontiff who supported the Nazis and their worldwide imperial mission, but let's not mention him.]

I'm cool and everyone's gonna like me! (EO)

Moreover, Hitler's anti-Semitism was not religious, it was racial. Jews were targeted not because of their religion -- indeed many German Jews were completely secular in their way of life -- but because of their racial identity. This was an ethnic and not a religious designation. Hitler's anti-Semitism was secular.

Hitler's Table Talk, a revealing collection of the Fuhrer's private opinions, assembled by a close aide during the war years, shows Hitler to be rabidly anti-religious.

He called Christianity one of the great "scourges" of history, and said of the Germans, "Let's be the only people who are immunized against this disease." He promised that "through the peasantry we shall be able to destroy Christianity."

In fact, he blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity. He also condemned Christianity for its opposition to evolution.

 

Hitler lived in Argentina (FBI).

Hitler reserved special scorn for the Christian values of equality and compassion, which he identified with weakness. Hitler's leading advisers like Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, and Bormann were atheists who hated religion and sought to eradicate its influence in Germany.

 

In his multi-volume history of the Third Reich, historian Richard Evans writes that "the Nazis regarded the churches as the strongest and toughest reservoirs of ideological opposition to the principles they believed in." Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, they launched a ruthless drive to subdue and weaken the Christian churches in Germany.

 

Recognizing the absurdity of equating Nazism with Christianity, Christopher Hitchens seeks to push Hitler into the religious camp by portraying his ideology as a "quasi-pagan phenomenon." Hitler may have been a polytheist who worshipped the pagan gods, Hitchens suggests, but polytheism is still theism.

Good Pope Francis is from Argentina.

This argument fails to distinguish between ancient paganism and modern paganism. It's true that Hitler and the Nazis drew heavily on ancient archetypes -- mainly Nordic and Teutonic legends -- to give their vision a mystical aura. But this was secular mysticism, not religious mysticism. More

AUTHOR: [Right-wing Christian apologist] Dinesh D'Souza is an Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker. He is the author of What's So Great About Christianity, Life After Death: The Evidence, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, Letters to a Young Conservative, What's So Great About America, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, The End of Racism, Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader, and The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence. Dinesh D'Souza is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource Center. Visit his website here.

RAPE me: Pope to make missionary a "saint"

Seth Auberon, Xochitl, Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Steven W. Hackel; Alex Cohen and A Martinez, Take Two (SCPR.org, KPCC FM, Jan. 16, 2015); CBC News

Let's rule the world from this balcony on this square. Oh, and make a saint in California. Pope Francis and white labcoat clad priests hold a Nuremberg-style Hitler rally in St. Peter's Square, Holy See, independent in the center of Rome (Osservatore Romano/Reuters).

 
Catholic clergy sex crimes lead Twin Cities archdiocese to file for bankruptcy

Elizabeth Mohr, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jan. 16, 2015

Uncuff me! Those kids were asking for it!

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court Friday morning.

The move wasn't unexpected. Archdiocese officials had said in recent months that they were considering bankruptcy, after news of a $9.1 million operating deficit for fiscal year 2014 and expectations of more lawsuits by people who say they are victims of clergy sexual abuse, in addition to the more than two dozen that have already been filed lawsuits.
 

God sends storm to ruin Pope's Asia trip (AP).

Bankruptcy protection will put any current lawsuits against the archdiocese on hold, including three sex abuse trials that were slated to begin at the end of the month. However, new claims can be filed while the bankruptcy case is active.

In November, the archdiocese said its operating deficit can be partly attributed to $4.1 million spent to address allegations of clergy sexual abuse since May 2013, when a three-year window opened for abuse victims to file claims that were otherwise barred under the statute of limitations. More 

When we molest, we need to not get caught.

• Archdiocese bankrupt, sex abuse suits on hold... Archbishop John Nienstedt discussed the Archdiocese's bankruptcy filing during a news conference at Monsignor Hayden Center in St. Paul today. [We're not trying to evade paying out claims for molesting kids. We just want to be more fair in the distribution of money to innocent victims we raped and to their lawyers.]

Controversial California missions founder Junipero Serra to be made a Catholic "saint"

Mission San Antonio de Padua in Monterey County, California has a statue of Father Junipero Serra outside, a Catholic European imperialist who used religion to conquer local Native Americans and forcibly convert them to Christianity (mlhradio/flickr.com).

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Dunbar-Ortiz (beacon.org)

The Catholic Church may have a new Saint to pray to. Pope Francis announced Thursday that he will canonize Father Junipero Serra, the founder of California's missions.

The Pope said the canonization -- the formal elevation of a person to sainthood -- will take place in September when he visits the United States. Junipero Serra is a controversial figure, though, for his role in evangelizing the West -- a process that some say began the decimation of the Native American population. For more, Stephen Hackel joined Take Two. He's a Professor of History at UC Riverside and the author of Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (see below). More + AUDIO

COMMENTARY
Fr. Serra beat and coerced the Native Americans the way he would his own children -- which likely included sexual molestation and emotional and physical abuse, like the gruesome documented torture (see below) of Catholic and other Christian missionary who came alongside European military forces that came to invade, occupy, ethnically cleanse, and eventually steal everything in sight claiming "the land was empty" as a legal doctrine. Fr. and future "saint" Serra's goal was to force Native Americans convert to Christianity in general and missionary Roman Catholicism in the vein of Emperor Constantine:

Junipero Serra: California's Founding "Father"

Steven W. Hackel (Hill and Wang/us.macmillan.com)

This is a portrait of the [invading Catholic] priest and colonialist who is one of the most important figures in California’s history.
 

In the 1770s, just as Britain’s American subjects were [according to our founding myth] freeing themselves from the burdens of colonial rule, Spaniards moved up the California coast to build frontier outposts of empire and church.

At the head of this effort was Junípero Serra, an ambitious Franciscan who hoped to convert California Indians to Catholicism and turn them into European-style farmers.

For his efforts [in the service of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire and its incarnation as Roman Catholicism], he has been beatified by the Catholic Church and widely celebrated as the man who laid the foundation for modern California [for occupation and takeover by the European invaders].

 

But his legacy is divisive. The missions Serra founded would devastate California’s Native American population, and much more than his counterparts in colonial America, he remains a contentious and contested figure to this day.
 

The Holy Roman Catholic Church's priesthood demands tribute, such as the sodomy of its subjects, preferably boys but girls and Natives will also do in a pinch, and we will glorify our mysteries and traditions in "stained" glass for all to see. Face the truth and the lawsuits.

 
Steven W. Hackel’s groundbreaking biography, Junípero Serra: California's Founding Father, is the first to remove Serra from the realm of polemic and place him within the currents of history.
 

Born into a poor family on the Spanish island of Mallorca, Serra joined the Franciscan [monastic] order and rose to prominence as a priest and professor through his feats of devotion and powers of intellect.

But he could imagine no greater service to God than converting Indians, and in 1749 he set off for the New World. In Mexico, Serra first worked as a missionary to Indians and as an uncompromising agent of the INQUISITION.

He then became an itinerant preacher, gaining a reputation as a mesmerizing orator who could inspire, enthrall, and terrify his audiences at will. With a potent blend of Franciscan piety and worldly cunning, he outmaneuvered Spanish royal officials, rival religious orders, and avaricious settlers to establish himself as a peerless frontier administrator.

In the culminating years of his life, he extended Spanish dominion north, founding and promoting missions in present-day San Diego, Los Angeles, Monterey, and San Francisco.... More

Church's violent SEXUAL abuse of children in North America
CBC News (May 16, 2008/Jan 07, 2014, CBC.ca)

An estimated 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit, and Métis children were forced from their native communities and tortured in residential schools. (Library and Archives Canada/PA-042133).

 

The abuse of Native Americans and First Nations people in the USA and Canada was not limited to Catholic missionaries; other invading Christians also raped, tortured, and emotionally abused children, such as the Anglicans and United and Presbyterian churches. (Granted the priests and nuns did not limit their abuses to Natives but also molested European children as they were able).

  
What went wrong?

Help. It's still happening along the west coast.

Residential schools were established with the assumption that aboriginal culture [Native Americans living in tune with nature for thousands or tens of thousands of years] was unable to adapt to a rapidly modernizing [invaded, enslaving, Europeanized] society.

It was believed [by no one in particularly and everyone in general] that native children could be successful if they assimilated into mainstream [French colonized] Canadian society by adopting Christianity and speaking English or French.

Students were "discouraged" from speaking their native languages or practicing their traditions. If they were caught [behaving like First Nations people], they would [be dealt] severe punishment [including but not limited to RAPE by frontier priests and nuns, beatings, kidnapping, forced relocation, isolation, torture, deprivation of culture, and on occasion a brutal death].
 

Papa, the priests won't rape us, will they?

Throughout the years, students [were forced to subsist] in substandard conditions [apart from their families and communities] and endured physical and emotional abuse. There have also been convictions of sexual abuse.

Students at residential schools rarely had opportunities to see examples of normal family life. Most were in school 10 months a year, away from their parents; some stayed all year round. All correspondence from the children was written in English, which many parents could not read. Brothers and sisters at the same school rarely saw each other, as all activities were segregated by gender.
 

"No one remembers Armenia" (AH)

According to documents obtained by the CBC, some schools carried out nutritional experiments on malnourished students in the 1940s and '50s with the federal government's knowledge.
 
When students returned to the reserve, they often found they didn't belong. They didn't have the skills to help their parents, and became ashamed of their native heritage.

The skills taught at the schools were generally substandard; many found it hard to function in an urban setting. The aims of assimilation meant devastation for those who were subjected to years of abuse. More

Life and [Horrible] Legacy of Padre Serra

Fr. Ed Benioff, LA Archdiocese at Cathedral

(AirTalk, SCPR.org, Aug. 30, 2002/WQ) Part of the dedication of Los Angeles' new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (website/facebook) includes a relic of Father Serra, destined for the altarstone.

Inspired by this event, guest host Patt Morrison talks about the life, legacy, and canonization process of Father Junipero Serra, who came to Alta California [upper part of the state above Mexico, which is called Baja California as the whole state was once Mexico until the U.S. military annexed it as their own] in 1769 to establish the [imperial] mission system.

Joining Morrison are Richard Boudreaux, Mexico City Bureau Chief for The LA Times, Richard Carrico, adjunct professor at San Diego State University's Dept. of American Indian Studies and Father Joe Scerbo, a Franciscan friar of the Atonement on the pastoral staff at Mission San Juan Capistrano. More