The following comes from a Nov. 7 story on the website of Catholic News Agency.
A new biography of Blessed Junipero Serra, the Franciscan priest who founded many Catholic missions in 18th century California, shows “incomprehension” of its subject and wrongly minimizes his heroism, one reviewer says.
“A true image of the great missionary indeed it is, but it is an image cast in photographic negative,” Christopher Blum said of Cornell history professor Steven Hackel’s book “Junipero Serra: California’s Founding Father.”
However, Serra’s “admirable traits remain visible, even amidst the darkness of the image,” Blum said in his review, published Nov. 1 at Crisis Magazine’s website.
Blum, a history and philosophy professor at Denver’s Augustine Institute, said that Junipero Serra left behind a prestigious university chair in Mallorca for the hard work of missionary life in the New World in 1749. He founded nine missions in upper California and personally celebrated more than 6,000 baptisms and 5,000 confirmations.
“Then, of course, there is the most astonishing fact of all, that he traveled some 20,000 miles or more on foot to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the Indian tribes of northern Mexico and California,” Blum said, asking “How does one go about portraying such a life as anything other than generous and heroic?”
He said Hackel’s book minimizes Serra’s freedom and his virtues. According to Blum, Hackel speculated that Serra chose the priesthood to leave a life of “filth, disorder, disease and hunger” and that Serra’s commitment to personally administer baptism shows a “desire for absolute control.” Serra’s habit of traveling on foot was to show his humility as part of the “theater” of popular missions.
Hackel writes that Serra, who suffered from a life-long injury to his leg, “probably took some satisfaction in how the source of his discomfort was so visible to others.”
To read the original story, click here.
…yet another Catholic hero hijacked by the academia that neither understands, respects, or desires to know anything of the theological realities of priesthood, sacrifice, or the transcendence of God Almighty.
“A desire for absolute control,” seems to aptly describe the very people intent on bringing down God Himself. As if by autopsy they could understand completely the workings of the Body of Christ.
Such institutionalized ignorance is a cross to be sure.
Well, more revisionist history. 1st, Serra’s injury wasn’t “life-long”: at age 29, Serra actually was stung, according to the better biographers I have read, by what many think was a brown-recluse type of spider after he landed in Veracruz (some mistakenly call it a snake), because his leg seemed to show nerve damage and lack of sensation for the rest of his life, conditions similar to the effects of brown-recluse spider venom. But better, what person would want to escape a life of “filth, disorder and disease” to set out for exhausting labors at the age of 58 (FIFTY-EIGHT, that is) to become president of a nearly collapsing mission chain, after the suppression of the Jesuits. Yes, he sure chose an easy life, that Serra.
After reading the entire book review, I believe the author, in his final paragraph, makes a poignant observation;
“It will take nothing less than the patience of a Junipero Serra to convince such an author, and such a culture as ours, that the love of God and neighbor is not just another post-modern stance, but the deep, calm reasonableness of holiness,” Blum said.
Living within a reasonable distance of San Juan Capistrano Mission where the late Fr. Harry Marchosky celebrated the Mass of St. Pius V and the Norbertines continue those Masses, I am only to aware of the attempt of the history revisionist to paint Blessed Fr. Juanipero Serra as a mean slave master. Did he enforce necessary discipline on the Juaneno Indians? Yes, was it necessary, YES!
Do many ancestors of those allegedly oppressed Juaneno Indians love and respect the memory of Blessed Fr. Serra, YES! Do some who are miscreant Juanenos abhore him, yes! Does that make him a not good and holy Missionary, NO!
It is only too easy to attack the reputation of a person after they are dead and can’t defend themselves and their honor!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.