Stupid things religious people say

[A. Secular Human]

"Colonization was a good thing. It saved people from their barbaric religions by bringing peace in the form of Christianity."

Another edition of Quotes By Popes

May 23, 2007
Pope’s remarks called revisionism

Pope Benedict XVI’s declaration in Brazil that colonial-era evangelization in the New World did not represent “the imposition of a foreign culture” has ignited criticism from indigenous representatives and the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia.

Indigenous groups from Chile to Mexico have condemned the remarks as a revision of a history marked by massacres, enslavement and destruction of native cultures.

“The proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture,” Benedict said.

The people of the Americas, the pope said, had been “silently longing” for Christ “without realizing it,” and willingly received a Holy Spirit “who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them.”

The pope’s analysis didn’t mention the widely acknowledged violent side of the conquest, a theme that is at the heart of a resurgent indigenous movement in Latin America.

Credible modern accounts of the conquest include reference to the often barbarous treatment Spanish and Portuguese overseers inflicted on native populations.

“Surely the pope doesn’t realize that the representatives of the Catholic Church of that era, with honorable exceptions, were complicit, accessories and beneficiaries of one of the more horrible genocides that humanity has seen,” said an Ecuadorean-based association of Quechua Indians, one of South America’s largest indigenous groups.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called publicly on the pope to apologize.

“How can he say that the evangelization wasn’t imposed, if they arrived here with arms and entered with blood, lead and fire?” Chavez asked a radio and television audience recently.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl...visionism/

Christian Evangelism:  Destroying ancient civilizations since 0000.