Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The modern-day progressive Catholic Church in Latin America came into full life in the 1960s, but to fully understand its nature and development one must briefly review the history of Catholicism in the southern region of the western hemisphere. When the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella realized that in October 1492 Christopher Columbus had encountered a world previously unknown to Europeans and populated by countless inhabitants who were ignorant of Christianity, they thought they were the recipients of an urgent mandate from God. Granada had fallen just months earlier in January, thus completing a 500-year Reconquista , a crusade to drive the Muslim “infidel” from the Iberian Peninsula. Two months later, on March 30, the two monarchs had put the finishing touch on the Catholic “purification” of Spain by issuing a decree ordering all Jews to be baptized or face expulsion. Thus, it seemed to Catholic Spain that all the signs were there. Spaniards had just completed one historical epic with the conquest and Christianizing of the Iberian Peninsula, and they were now convinced that it was part of God's divine will that their nation embark upon a similar mission in America. Ferdinand and Isabella based their plan for the New World on the traditional medieval model. The warrior class would conquer and subjugate the indigenous population, while the regular clergy (religious orders) ... log in or subscribe to read full text