--- Bosco - Goanet Volunteer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:44:38 +0530, Ivo Souza > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dear Friends, > > Let us be more careful when talking about the > 'crimes' of the people of the > by-gone centuries. It is difficult to assess their > thought patterns and > beliefs. With the lights that we have today we > cannot condemn the people of > yesterday. It is unfair and uncouth to call > St.Francis Xavier a 'murderer'. > We have to understand him. There is a lot of truth > in what he has written in > his letters. There is also misunderstanding on his > part as far as the > Eastern beliefs are concerned. Let us act positively > to do away > superstitions and live in the light of reason and > faith... > Ivo Dear Ivo, Over the centuries, the Church has been very strong about condemning people as "heretics" and ex-communicating them as well as putting them through the tortures of the Inquisition. It's hardly credible for any churchman to ask others not to condemn an important church figure for real or imagined offences! Secondly, lots of people are products of their times: Hitler was a product of his age. Should we call him a great man because he commissioned the design and production of the Volkswagen which has become a useful and popular product even though he murdered 6 million Jews? Are the Gospels "the lights" of one's yesterday or of one's today? Do the Gospels change with every age or is the message of love and tolerance the same for everyone, regardless of the age one lives in? Thirdly, a man or woman is considered truly "great" if he or she goes against the popular tide and keeps his or her true principles. There were great missionaries who believed in the equality of the native peoples and condemned force conversions as being against the spirit of the Gospels. One such near-contemporary of Xavier's was Bartolome de Las Casas, the Dominican missionary who defended the equality and rights of the native Indians of the New World. There has been a lot of propaganda and hype about Xavier and we Goans have not really examined the facts until now. You can't expect us to keep calling him great when he was a zealot who didn't believe in religious freedom. Filomena
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