Catholic Colonialism


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Repositioning the Missionary


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In the vein of an emergent Native Pacific brand of cultural studies, Repositioning the Missionary critically examines the cultural and political stakes of the historic and present-day movement to canonize Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores (1627–1672), the Spanish Jesuit missionary who was martyred by Mata'pang of Guam while establishing the Catholic mission among the Chamorros in the Mariana Islands. The work juxtaposes official, popular, and critical perspectives of the movement to complicate prevailing ideas about colonialism, historiography, and indigenous culture and identity in the Pacific. The book is divided into three sections. The first, "From Above, Working the Native," focuses exclusively on the narratological reconsolidation of official Roman Catholic Church viewpoints as staked in the historic (seventeenth century) and contemporary (twentieth century) movements to canonize San Vitores, including the symbolic costs of these viewpoints for Native Chamorro cultural and political possibilities not in line with Church views. Section two, "From Below: Working the Saint," shifts attention and perspective to local, competing forms of Chamorro piety. In their effort to canonize San Vitores, Natives also rework the saint to negotiate new cultural and social canons for themselves and in ways that produce new meanings for their island. "From Behind: Transgressive Histories" shifts from official and lay Roman and Chamorro Catholic viewpoints to the author’s own critical project of rendering alternative portrayals of San Vitores and Mata'pang. Theoretically innovative and provocative, humorous, and inspired, Repositioning the Missionary melds poststructuralist, feminist, Native studies, and cultural studies analytic and political frameworks with an intensely personal voice to model a new critical interdisciplinary approach to the study of indigenous culture and history.




African Catholic


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Winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize A groundbreaking history of how Africans in the French Empire embraced both African independence and their Catholic faith during the upheaval of decolonization, leading to a fundamental reorientation of the Catholic Church. African Catholic examines how French imperialists and the Africans they ruled imagined the religious future of French sub-Saharan Africa in the years just before and after decolonization. The story encompasses the political transition to independence, Catholic contributions to black intellectual currents, and efforts to alter the church hierarchy to create an authentically “African” church. Elizabeth Foster recreates a Franco-African world forged by conquest, colonization, missions, and conversions—one that still exists today. We meet missionaries in Africa and their superiors in France, African Catholic students abroad destined to become leaders in their home countries, African Catholic intellectuals and young clergymen, along with French and African lay activists. All of these men and women were preoccupied with the future of France’s colonies, the place of Catholicism in a postcolonial Africa, and the struggle over their personal loyalties to the Vatican, France, and the new African states. Having served as the nuncio to France and the Vatican’s liaison to UNESCO in the 1950s, Pope John XXIII understood as few others did the central questions that arose in the postwar Franco-African Catholic world. Was the church truly universal? Was Catholicism a conservative pillar of order or a force to liberate subjugated and exploited peoples? Could the church change with the times? He was thinking of Africa on the eve of Vatican II, declaring in a radio address shortly before the council opened, “Vis-à-vis the underdeveloped countries, the church presents itself as it is and as it wants to be: the church of all.”




Church, State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1890–1962


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This book examines the relationship between Catholic missionaries and the colonial administration in southeastern Belgian Congo. It challenges the perception that the Church and the state worked seamlessly together. Instead, using the territory of Kongolo as a case study, the book reconfigures their relationship as one of competitive co-dependency. Based on extensive archival research and oral histories, the book argues that both institutions retained distinct agendas that, while coinciding during certain periods, clashed on many occasions. The study begins by outlining the pre-colonial history of southeastern Congo. The second chapter examines how the Church began its encounters with the peoples in Kongolo and the Tanganyika province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Subsequent chapters highlight how missionaries exerted significant influence over the colonial construction of chieftainship and the politics of Congolese decolonization. The book ends in 1962, with the massacre of a number of Holy Ghost Fathers in an event that signaled the beginning of a more Africanized Church in Kongolo. ‘The author gratefully acknowledges support from the Economic and Social Research Council in the completion of this project.’




Hindu-Catholic Encounters in Goa


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The state of Goa on India's southwest coast was once the capital of the Portuguese-Catholic empire in Asia. When Vasco Da Gama arrived in India in 1498, he mistook Hindus for Christians, but Jesuit missionaries soon declared war on the alleged idolatry of the Hindus. Today, Hindus and Catholics assert their own religious identities, but Hindu village gods and Catholic patron saints attract worship from members of both religious communities. Through fresh readings of early Portuguese sources and long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this study traces the history of Hindu-Catholic syncretism in Goa and reveals the complex role of religion at the intersection of colonialism and modernity.




Black Elk


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"This study of Black Elk, the Oglala Lakota subject of the bestselling Black Elk Speaks, challenges the assumptions of many scholars - both those who claim that Black Elk was a Lakota holy man first and foremost and those who maintain that he abandoned his Lakota tradition after converting to Catholicism." "Arguing from a post-colonial perspective, author Damien Costello deconstructs modern Western assumptions and shows that Black Elk was an active agent, and that his conversion was in continuity with the dynamics of Lakota culture and provided new power to challenge the dominance of colonialism. As a consequence, Black Elk the Lakota holy man and Black Elk the Lakota catechist remembered by his community were not contradictory but one consistent agent fighting for the survival of his people in a colonial world infringing on the Lakota, their lands, and their traditions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




An Empire Divided


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An award-winning book, An Empire Divided tells the story of how troubled relations between Catholic missionaries and a host of republican critics shaped colonial policies, Catholic perspectives, and domestic French politics in the tumultuous decades before the First World War.




Music and Meaning in the Mass


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As musicians, we routinely witness — and personally experience — the powerful influence music has over our bodies, emotions, and minds. As parish musicians, our task is to wield this power in service of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus on the altar. Indeed, your music, by speaking to humanity in a language deeper than words, can save our world by drawing souls to Christ where He most longs to encounter them — in the Eucharist. Nothing can spark and fan the flames of desire — of longing, love, awe, and reverence — quite like music can when it is skillfully directed to the task. That’s why I’ve written Music and Meaning in the Mass — to guide you carefully through the principles that help draw congregants into active participation in the Mass. Rather than advocating any particular musical style in the liturgy,




Contracting Colonialism


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In an innovative mix of history, anthropology, and post-colonial theory, Vicente L. Rafael examines the role of language in the religious conversion of the Tagalogs to Catholicism and their subsequent colonization during the early period (1580-1705) of Spanish rule in the Philippines. By tracing this history of communication between Spaniards and Tagalogs, Rafael maps the conditions that made possible both the emergence of a colonial regime and resistance to it. Originally published in 1988, this new paperback edition contains an updated preface that places the book in theoretical relation to other recent works in cultural studies and comparative colonialism.




Catholic Influence on American Colonial Policies, 1898-1904


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At the close of the Spanish-American War the United States found itself in possession of a colonial empire. The role played by the American Catholic Church in influencing administrative policy for the new, and predominately Catholic, dependencies is the subject of this incisive study by Frank T. Reuter. Reuter discusses the centuries-old intricate involvement of the Spanish crown and the native Roman Catholic Church in the civil, social, and charitable institutions of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. He explores the attempts of United States officials to apply the traditional doctrine of separation of church and state in resolving the problems of a Church-run school system, the alleged desecration of native Catholic churches by American forces in the Philippines, the native antagonism toward the Spanish friars, and the disposition of Church property in dependencies with a deeply rooted correlation between the Catholic Church and the state. Recounting the development of the Catholic Church in America, which felt responsible for maintaining the islands’ religious structure after Spanish control was removed, Reuter sees the reaction of the Church to the war with Spain and to colonial policy in the early postwar period as voiced not by a monolithic political force, but by diverse spokesmen—in particular the unofficial voice of the Catholic press. He traces the growth of the Church in the United States from a disparate group of dioceses clinging to European backgrounds, disunited by a divided hierarchy, and attacked by the wave of the anti-Catholic, nativistic sentiments of the last two decades of the nineteenth century, to a church body unified by the problems in the colonies. Catholic opinion, although not utilized to its full political potential, achieved a common focus through the formation of the Federation of American Catholic Societies and the debate in Congress over the Philippine Government Bill. This study of American and native Catholic attitudes toward the formulation of United States policy in the insular dependencies and the attitude of the United States government toward the Catholic interests in the dependencies details the interplay of personalities and organizations: Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt; William Howard Taft, civil governor of the Philippines; James Cardinal Gibbons, moderator between Catholic factions and official spokesman of the hierarchy to the Papacy and the United States government; Archbishop Placide L. Chapelle, apostolic delegate of the Vatican to the Philippines; Archbishop John Ireland, friend of President McKinley; the Philippine Commissions; and the Taft Mission to the Vatican in 1902.