Perhaps three….Bibles and Bulls and Bucking and Popes

To be truthful I am having a little difficulty tearing myself away from the Pope and his Bulls. Part of my fascination is how the Pope assumes absolute authority over everything and everyone.  We recognize that the first Pope was also the head of the Christian Church, the Roman Catholic Church that is.  We should also recognize that the relationship between the Church and State was troublesome.  We also go on to recognize that there were no human rights in the Roman State.  You know they were feeding people to Lions just for fun and that a good portion of the population were slaves.  But we know the Christians and their Roman Catholic Church were instructed by Jesus the Christ to love one's neighbour as oneself.  But how did all of this result in the major coup that caused Jesus the Christ to lose his seat and as we would say in Jamaica ‘no election no run.’  How did the Popes now ascribe the meanings they did in the presence of those instructions? And what of God?The story is that at creation God created man. Male and female he created them, to wax a little biblical.  So now, Pope Paul in a Bull called Sublimus Dei, which speaks to the enslaving and converting Indians, really needs to tell us, confirm for us, that the Indian man, created by God is ‘truly man?’  Is this validation of God’s work? Perhaps God created some un-truly men?  Or is that yes, God created man but man needs to be authenticated by another created man carrying the title of Pope to really and truly be Man? 

“We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, 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.  Sublimis Deus On the Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians 

I am now having strange visions of Indians, Pequot, Algonquins, Cherokees and others, jumping up on their horses at mid run, shouting their battle cries ready to deal with anyone and anything that stood in the way of their evangelization? Really.  Well why not?  This Bull, although too late for the Caribbean peoples they call Indians, restored humanity “truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it.”   Usually I am a praying not a betting person, but if you are game, I am willing to bet with you that the most important part of this is the Indians' desire to receive Christianity.   

So now of course the mere ‘desire’ for Christianity is enough to allow them to ‘freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved;’

Perhaps I really should not even have mentioned this one, this Bull, as there is no way it could have bucked us.  First it came too late and secondly I am very sure the Jamaican and Caribbean indigenous people had no ‘desire’ to be Christians.  I really need to leave these Bulls alone but let me just share one more thing about this very intriguing one.  So this Bull actually went on to say that if any Christian went against its dictates he/she/they would be excommunicated.  Well, one uproar ensued and the Pope, carrying the full authorities and permissions of Jesus the Christ, Peter and all his other ancestors, backed down, backed off, did not follow through, withdrew, revoked and everything else he did thereby rendering the Bulls hornless.

I cannot speak to the Pope’s, his God’s and his God’s Son’s good intentions towards my ancestors and other peoples, discovered or not yet discovered in the whole Universe.  But perhaps we need to see how those bull-bucked into the wars of conquest, colonization and slavery and then introduced, tortured, terrorized into Christianity with the Bible and the Bulls as powerful tools in the process fared or feared (?). Your choice. 

We would have realized by now that before the excitement started in our Caribbean, there was much going on elsewhere.  Ancient Rome was, to my mind, a bizarre place!  It was ruled by Emperors some of whom seem to have been mentally and spiritually, let me say challenged, to be kind and who would make some of our present world leaders look like pure, innocent little children with beatific smiles.  They are not sure but it is possible that up to a third of the population of Rome were slaves. Now please do not confuse these slaves with human beings.  Slaves, as we came to know, were property that could be bought, sold, brutalized, branded, killed, whipped and all other and as many other evils imaginable with no legal, moral or other recourse.  The situation of the enslaved was, as we know,  and even worse.  Slaves worked at both skilled and unskilled jobs in cruel, brutal, harsh conditions.  

And all of this was an integral part of existence in Rome where Emperors created their own chaos. One married his sister. Another castrated a man, had him trained to behave like a woman and married him as a replacement for his dead wife.  The man eventually took his own life.  Yet another faked his own death, came back to hear what was being said about him and then executed everyone.   The Craziest Roman Emperor ever, Nero, castrated  a boy and used him as a replacement for his dead wife.  

This is the place and the people where Jesus the Christ taught, the first Christian Church was formed,  the Bible came together as Old and New Testament and Papal Bulls were written.  This then is part of the ancestry of slavery, the institution of slavery and Christianity in which, as Caribbean people, we were forcibly invited to participate.  Now should we question our ancestors who taught us that, 'Wah gone bad a morning can’t come good a evening.’