http://counterpunch.com/Ask Pope Benedict
When Does Genocide Purify?
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This time around, Ratzinger/Benedict's bile was directed not at liberation theology, but squarely at the historical memory of the serial genocides -- probably the most destructive in human history -- inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. On the last day of his visit, in the city of Aparecida, the Pope "touch
on a sensitive historical episode," in the blandly understated language of an Associated Press dispatch (May 13). In other words, he ripped the bandages off a still-suppurating wound. According to the official text of Benedict's comments on the Vatican website, the Pope declared that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean" were "silently longing" to receive Christ as their savior. He was "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it ..." Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an "adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures "fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."
So there we have it. The invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population, was something the Indians had been pining for all along. They weren't just "asking for it," as sexist cranks depict women as complicit in their own rapes. They were actually "longing" for it, since salvation and "purification" came with it.
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Benedict's astounding comments attracted barely a flicker of media attention in the West -- almost all of it on the wire services, and some of it problematic in itself. A May 13 Reuters dispatch noted blithely that, contrary to Benedict's claims, "many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide." This is rather like writing that "many Jewish groups believe that the Nazi Holocaust brought Jews enslavement and genocide." The reality exists independently of the belief. As blogger Stentor Danielson points out: "In the real world, it's a basic historical fact that the Indians were enslaved. It's a basic historical fact that entire tribes were wiped out. The reason 'many Indian groups believe' these historical facts is because people like Reuters' craven reporters won't admit when there's a fact behind the claims."
Indian organizations and spokespeople expressed outrage at Benedict's statements, calling them "arrogant and disrespectful." Sandro Tuxa, leader of a coalition of Indian tribes in Brazil's impoverished northeast, declared: "We repudiate the Pope's comments. To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening" (Reuters, May 14).
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religiously insane old white neo con/nazi
but that's alright. let him keep on opening his mouth and writing. each time he shows the world what he really is.