Given that CHamoru's - already an ethnic minority in their own land - are aborting their children at many times the rate of other ethnicities, Bevacqua's abortion advocacy equates to a push for the self-extinction of the very people he portends to champion.
But beyond Bevacqua's historical contortions of abortion, there is the fact that the Catholic Church and its missionaries were not one and the same with the Conquistadors and in fact were often their antagonists.
The excerpt from the 18th century Jesuit historian's journal as set out in a previous post relative to Bevacqua's twisted history is an example. Let us examine it again here:
[T]hey cannot abide the yoke of the Spaniards because of their great pride and haughtiness, and that they would like to live as they did in the past, in freedom and [following their] barbarous customs. Because of this, many hang themselves and others kill themselves [each other?]…The women, likewise, purposely sterilize themselves; or if they conceive, they find ways to abort, and some kill their children after birth in order to save them from the subjugation of the Spaniards.
The very large diminution of population comes from the subjugation imposed upon them by the force of arms. As lovers of liberty they could not tolerate a foreign yoke. This became so painful for them that, not being able to free themselves of it, they preferred to lose their lives by hanging and by other desperate means. The women purposely sterilized themselves, and they threw their newborn children into the sea, convinced that an early death would free them of travails and a painful life…[in death] they would be fortunate and happy. Subjugation was so despicable that, for them, it was the ultimate and most deplorable calamity.
Other than referring to Chamorro customs as "barbarous," the Jesuit priest (Joannis Joseph Delgado) is blatantly critical of "the Spaniards." Given that Delgado himself is a Spaniard, it is clear that there is a separation between the Church and the Crown.
Delgado speaks of "the yoke of the Spaniards, of their "great pride and haughtiness," and of "subjugation" by the Spaniards of the Chamorros that is "despicable...a deplorable calamity." The whole tone of Delgado's entry is one of lament.
Delgado's lament is consistent with the official Catholic Church position relative to the colonization and evangelization of "the Indians of the West and the South" as promulgated in the papal bull Sublimis Deus - On the Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians by Pope Paul III in 1537.
Writing more than two hundred years before Delgado recorded his observations in Guam, Paul III characterized the mistreatment of "the Indians" as the work of Satan:
"The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith."
The pope then goes on to declare:
"Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters...the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect."
Certainly excesses and cruelty existed but it cannot be said by the likes of Bevacqua and others that this was the will and intent of the Catholic Church. It was not.
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Listen to Bob Klitzkie on Tall Tales address this HERE
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