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Oppression Then and Now: a reflection on Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas OP (1484–1566)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
The Las Casas Memorial Lecture given in London and Glasgow in November 1990.
It is difficult if not impossible to live hopefully the fulness of human life without men and women of vision. But the term ‘vision’ is, perhaps, too often carelessly used.
Vision is concerned with a better possible future. And it depends upon both imagination and creativity. Yet those who possess it, or are considered to possess it, must be inhabitants not only of what is possible, but also, and more importantly, reflective upon, sensitive to, critical and understanding of, their past and present. Indeed, it is their very rootedness in and conversation with both past and present which essentially ratifies any claim to vision. A paradox rests, therefore, in the fact that men and women of vision, though about a future, are only about that future because of their critical understanding of a past and a radical belongingness to and immersion in a present.
The woman and man of vision are, to be sure, creative and imaginative. But they are, more often than not, wholly unconscious of being people of vision. Dominic and Francis, for example, turned out to be men of vision not because they saw a new future, but heard the cry of a present demand and measured it against a past. For us, then, the men and women of history whom we perceive or name people of vision become ‘classical symbols’ in our understanding of and quest into the complicated and demanding questions of our own times.
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- Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. SCM Press 1981. p. 102.
2 Imperial Spain 1469-1716, Penguin Books 1963, p. 62.
3 Quoted in Stephen, Neill, A History of Christian Missions. Penguin Books 1971, pp. 170fGoogle Scholar.
4 For a development of this theme cf. Enrique Dussel, Ethics and Community (Liberation and Theology Series), Burns & Oates 1988, chapter 20.
5 Quoted in David Englander et al. ed., Culture and Belief in Europe 1450–1600, Basil Blackwell 1990, p. 321.
6 Ibid p. 329.
7 Quoted in Juan Friede & Benjamine Keene ed. Bartolomé de las Casas in History: Towards an Understanding of the Man and his Work, Northern Illinois University Press, pp. 53f.
8 Cf. Friede & Keene, op. cit., for an historical review, and cf. Gustavo, Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History. SCM Press, p. 218Google Scholar fn. 58.
9 Friede & Keene, op. cit., p. 30.
10 ‘The abolition of Indian slavery was not achieved in a day, and it was tragically to be accompanied by an increasing importation of negro slaves, whose fate disturbed the Spanish conscience much less than the Indians’ (J.H. Elliot. op. cit.). I mention this point because there has always been a debate about this and Las Casas’s role and attitude. Las Casas actually admitted a neglect in this regard. Cf. Friede & Keene, op. cit.: ‘In a work of his maturity. the fruit of long toil and meditation, following a passage in which he criticises his earlier decision, he writes that “the blacks have the same right to freedom as the Indians”. Elsewhere he declares himself “not sure whether his ignorance and good intention will excuse him before God’s judgment seat.” ’ Cf. G. Gutierrez, op. cit.. p. 218 fn 62.
11 Friede & Keene. op. cit., p. 34.
12 G. Gutierrez, op. cit., pp. 195, 196.