Junípero Serra: A Sorry Saint

Even though he has little name recognition in most circles, this article is about a man of considerable importance in the history of California and of marked religious interest since he was canonized by Pope Francis five years ago on September 23, 2015. 

Who Was Junípero Serra?

Miguel José Serra was born in November 1713 on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea. When he took his vows to become a Franciscan priest in 1737, Serra took the name Junípero, which was the name of one of St. Francis’s devoted friends.

From his childhood, Serra dreamed of becoming a missionary. After teaching philosophy for several years in Spain, in 1749 he finally was able to make the 6,000-mile trip to Mexico and to begin missionary work there.

On December 15 of that year, Father Serra and another priest started walking from the coastal city of Veracruz to Mexico City, some 260 miles away. On the journey, he was bitten by a mosquito and his left foot became infected. He suffered for the rest of his life from that malady.

Serra spent 38½ years as a missionary in Mexico, Baja California, and in what was then known as Alta California. He died in what is now Monterey County, California, in August 1784 at the age of 70.

The Noble Junípero Serra

Serra’s main claim to fame is as the founder of nine “missions” along the coast of California, from San Diego de Alcalá (in 1769) in the south to San Francisco de Asís (in 1776) on the north. The current cities of San Diego and San Francisco, of course, grew out of Serra’s missions.

In 1769, it is estimated that there were around 300,000 Native Americans in what is now California. Through the indefatigable efforts of Serra and his co-workers, about one-third of those became Roman Catholics.

Because of his meritorious missionary work, Serra became the first Hispanic person to be canonized—by the first Hispanic Pope in the first canonization mass held in the United States.

Even though he was a Franciscan priest and missionary, Serra is sometimes called “the father of California” (see here, for example). Pope Francis has said that he sees Serra as “one of the founding fathers of the United States.” Many Californians through the years have agreed.

As you probably know, each state chooses statues of two of the most important persons in their states to stand in the U.S. Capitol Building. California’s statues are of Ronald Regan and the noble Junípero Serra.

The Ignoble Junípero Serra

There are many who disagree with Serra’s adulation, however. At the time of his canonization, there were serious protests in California, especially by Native Americans. Serra’s statue in a city park in Monterey was decapitated at that time. 

Interestingly, in sympathy with the protests against Confederate statues this year, Serra’s monuments again became targets of protest. On June 19 activists pulled down a Serra statue in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and the next day, a Serra statue in Los Angeles was toppled. 

A 9/29/15 New York Times article frankly states, “Historians agree that [Serra] forced Native Americans to abandon their tribal culture and convert to Christianity, and that he had them whipped and imprisoned and sometimes worked or tortured to death.”

Ten weeks before Serra’s canonization, Pope Francis publicly apologized for the “grave sins” of colonialism against Indigenous Peoples of America. But that did not keep him from following through with his making Serra a saint.

Although there is much to admire about Junípero Serra, it was probably a mistake for him to be canonized—but since he was, it is fitting to call Serra a sorry saint.

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Dan Horan is a Franciscan priest and a theology professor whom I cited at some length in my August 25 blog post. On July 8 he had a thought-provoking article largely about Serra in the National Catholic Reporter, and I recommend the careful reading of that perceptive article titled “The preferential option for the removal of statues.”

Holy Troublemakers

The Honorable John Lewis, the noted civil-rights leader who served in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death earlier this year, tweeted in June 2018, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Rep. Lewis is not included in Daneen Akers’s 2019 book published under the title Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, but perhaps he will be included in the second volume already planned. 

Introducing Holy Troublemakers

Some of you may know of Mike Morrell. He was the sub-author of Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation  (2016). Among the many hats Mike wears, he curates the Speakeasy network, which is a collective of bloggers, who among other things review books.

I have received and reviewed a few books for Speakeasy, and that is how I came to read Akers’s book about “holy troublemakers.” I didn’t know when I requested it that it is a book for young readers, but the stories of 36 “troublemakers” were of sufficient interest to this old man, although I didn’t need the 16-page Glossary at the end.

Akers’s attractive book tells the story of a wide variety of people, beginning with Alice Paul and ending with Wil Gafney. (After a bit I caught on that the people are introduced in alphabetical order by their first names, and later I found out that Rev. Gafney is a former student of Thinking Friend Michael Willett Newheart, a former student of mine.)

Some of the “holy troublemakers” and/or “unconventional saints” included are some of my favorite people about whom I have written about in this blog—people such as Francis of Assisi, Florence Nightingale, and Gustavo Gutiérrez.

The book also includes many people whom I learned about for the first time, such as Ani Zonneveld (a Malaysian Muslim), Irwin Keller (a Jewish rabbi), and Lisbeth Melendez Rivera (a Puerto Rican active now with Rainbow Catholics).

As described on the HolyTroublemakers.com website, “Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints is an illustrated children’s storybook featuring the stories of people of diverse faiths who worked for more love and justice in their corner of the world, even when that meant rocking the religious boat.”

Introducing Akers

Many of the people introduced in this book grew up as conservative Christians, as did author Akers herself, who says on page two that she “grew up in a deeply loving family with five generations of roots in a conservative Christian denomination,” which I found out elsewhere was the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Akers quite apparently grew into embracing a broad ecumenical religious worldview and a warm, accepting attitude toward other people, especially those who suffer discrimination or societal mistreatment.

As we are informed on the website, Akers’s book “emphasizes the stories of women, LGBTQ people, people of color, Indigenous people, and others too often written out of religious narratives.”

Two-thirds of the people introduced in Akers’s book are women, and just over half are people of color. Moreover, even though she is a white Christian, Akers includes Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists in her book—and also a chapter on Valarie Kaur, a remarkable Sikh woman.

At least ten of the 36 troublemakers/saints are LGBTQ people, and six or more others are allies. Akers informed me that there are so many profiles of LGBTQ holy troublemakers and unconventional saints in the book because that's “a demographic that's too often been excluded from religious narratives.”

Recommending Akers’s Book

This book may have too much emphasis on LGBTQ people for it to be broadly recommended. On the other hand, maybe for that very reason, it needs to be recommended for a wide reading public. After all,

LGBTQ LIVES MATTER

In particular, I especially recommend this book to two types of families: to those who have family members or close friends who are LGBTQ—and to families who harbor negative feelings toward LGBTQ people.

The book is a bit pricey, but it is a beautifully done and valuable book. It could certainly be a good investment for parents to purchase and to read/discuss with their children over 36 days. 

Saint Teresa: The Good and the Questionable

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was given that name at the time of her birth on August 26, 1910. Most people around the world, however, have for decades known her as Mother Teresa.

On September 4, this coming Sunday, during a canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis will declare Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

By many people, though, Mother Teresa has been thought of as a saint for a long time. Back in 1975 the cover story of the December 29 issue of Time magazine was titled “Living Saints.” Mother Teresa’s picture was on the cover of that issue.

As a Protestant, it is not hard to understand the meaning of “saint” in the popular sense, such as that term was used in the Time article. But people being saints in the Catholic sense is a little more difficult—especially when it involves their veneration, which we Protestants sometimes incorrectly think is the worship of saints.

Recently, though, in commenting on the legacy of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson wrote, “The canonization of Kolbe makes me think that the Church’s singling out of certain saints has real value in challenging the rest of us to live our faith.”

Or, as it is sometimes said, saints are special people who by their lives help us to understand God better. Accordingly, by looking at Saint Teresa’s loving service to the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta we should be able to understand God’s love better.  

When she was 40 years old, Mother Teresa was given permission by the Pope to begin a congregation called Missionaries of Charity. From their small beginning in 1950, that group grew into a large worldwide organization.

Because of their meritorious work, starting in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then expanding to many countries, Mother Teresa became known around the world. As one indication of how esteemed she became for what had done through the years, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

There are some questionable aspects of Mother Teresa’s life and work, however. For example, I have serious misgivings about some things she has said—such as her extreme words opposing abortion. In her Nobel Lecture she declared that “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.”

In that speech Mother Teresa went on to assert that abortion “is a direct war, a direct killing—direct murder by the mother herself.”

Highly questionable statements!

Mother Teresa’s greatest strength was the loving service she provided for the sick and the dying who were living in poverty. Perhaps her greatest weakness was lack of action—or even talk—regarding the causes of poverty. She did a marvelous job of taking care of victims; she did little in seeking to reduce the number of victims.

To her credit, in her Nobel Lecture Mother Teresa reported that she and her co-workers were teaching “natural family planning” to “our beggars, our leprosy patients, our slum dwellers.” Elsewhere she claimed that such teaching given to three thousand families was “95 percent effective” (No Greater Love, pp. 127-8).

Still, how many more unwanted pregnancies might she have prevented if she had been willing to teach and provide the means for “artificial birth control”? She could not do that, of course, as a Catholic.

But no one, not even a saint, is perfect, and Mother Teresa did demonstrate great Christian love throughout her lifetime. So please rejoice with me this weekend as Mother Teresa is canonized, publically acknowledged as a saint.