Vineyards produced grapes from which wine and brandy were made. A flourishing export trade was theirs just for the making and the taking. We forget that in this milieu, the early missionaries were realists as well as idealists - they knew what they were getting into, and often it was an ugly battle between the forces of commerce, and the benevolence of the Church, fought over the innocent heads of a people too simple to resist or ultimately, to survive. And so, as we remember Blessed Junipero Serra, and the courageous brothers who came to the lands of the West, let us not be too quick to judge or accept the unbalanced judgements of others. We are all in need of God's help, and we cannot necessarily be called fair judges of that help, for sometimes it is severe, and often it is easy, particularly when speaking of history, to confuse help with tyranny.
Human history is full of error.
I have come to call not the self-righteous, but sinners. My friends, may we all be selfless-evangelizers of the Word of God, as Pope John Paul named Junipero Serra, and may we be effective missionaries in our own backyards. The work of the Holy Spirit is, as it always was, alive in the good works we do, and in the glory we offer back to God, who has conceived and continues to work out His plan for our salvation. Return to Archbishop's section . Return to Home Page of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.