Friar’s Corner: Spanish spread of the Catholic faith
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of us as we celebrate our 4th of July.
I am going to step aside from my “new flight plan,” to give you this “side-bar.” We hear so much these days about “black lives matter.” What about the other thousands of lives that are murdered each day in our “Hitler Death Camps,” that is the “Planned Parenthood clinics.” Here in the USA and around the world, helpless lives in the wombs are being sucked out or dismembered, sacrificed to demons.
Satan’s plan for earth is to have a one-world government and economy with God out of the picture. He and his other demons and their human disciples want to destroy the human race. Jesus is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in His kingdom.
Eagle’s eye view
Here is a very quick eagle’s eye view of Spain and the spread of the Catholic faith in this hemisphere. Mary, Martha, Lazarus and their friends left their Jerusalem estate and went to France, the oldest daughter of the Church, as it has been called. James, the brother of John, and two disciples went west to bring the faith to Spain. Six hundred years later, the Muslims destroyed much of Christianity in Spain for about eight hundred years until faithful Catholics in the north were able to drive them out.
The educated world believed the world was flat with a dome over the land and the water. (See the map in the early part of your Bibles.) Columbus came along to prove their belief wrong and that the world was round. He left Spain in 1492 with three ships, sailed West and didn’t “fall off the plate.” Some Franciscan priests sailed with Columbus. They went to all the Islands around Florida and first settled at Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, in 1573. The evangelization of our East coast was 195 years before the West coast.
At its high point, the Spanish Crown authorized the Franciscan Friars of the East to serve 26,000 Indian converts and 70 friars served in 40 missions along the Atlantic coast in the 17th century (1655). Later coming up from Mexico along the 650-mile coast of the Pacific Ocean, 60 friars were serving 18,000 Indian converts in 21 missions, now major cities on the California coast. So the friars brought the faith, along with better agriculture and domestication of animals, to help improve the Indian lifestyle. The friars often had to stand against the soldiers and others who were abusing the natives and stealing their resources and wealth. It has been observed that the continental US was home to some 400 separate Indian nations and tribes. We white people from Eastern Europe have stolen their land and killed many of their people. Justice??
Spanish missionaries
So Spain brought the Catholic faith to the central islands around Florida, the East coast almost up to New Jersey, Mexico, Central America, most of South America and along the West coast of California. As Spain was doing that, the Jesuits of France went to New France, now New Orleans.
Also, the King of France sent the Ursuline Sisters from Paris to educate the French soldiers’ children and natives by opening up education. They still have there the oldest consecutive Catholic school in the US. The French also went to northern Canada.
Glory to God for such abundant blessings. We are 13 years short of two thousand years of belonging to the church that Jesus Christ directly founded and commissioned to spread throughout the world.
This was only a bird’s-eye view. May the love of Jesus powerfully draw you, your family, friends and parishes into the heart of His great love for us as His brothers and sisters in such a large family. I hold all of you in my arms of prayer each day asking God to bless you more. As we celebrate our 4th of July have much peaceful love and joy in Jesus. Together in prayer, we shall not let the satanists destroy our country.
+ Father Bob Hilz
fbhilz@gmail.com
(© 2020 Father Bob Hilz
