Am I Not Your Mother?

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Christopher Columbus died in 1506, still convinced that the lands he had seen on his voyages west from Spain were islands just off the east coast of Asia. By this time, however, other explorers were beginning to suspect something else: that they had come upon a continent hitherto unknown to anyone in the “Old World”, with peoples hitherto unknown. Some came to these lands with the idea of bringing the Catholic faith to these peoples. Others had visions of wealth and fame for themselves and for Spain, and sought to exploit the native peoples for these purposes. Soon, there were debates in the Spanish universities over the question of whether these “Indians” had souls. Some, like Bartolome de las Casas, forcefully defended the native peoples. Others argued that, since these peoples could not be traced to the three sons of Noah, they could not be truly human and therefore did not have souls.

This was not some merely academic dispute. If these native peoples were seen as not truly human, therefore any Christian notions of love or human dignity did not apply to them. They could be exploited without any qualms of conscience. 

In the meantime, Spanish (and soon Portuguese) missionaries labored among the native peoples of Mexico and South America, but could make little progress at first. This was the case for about twenty years in Mexico when, in 1531, a native who had converted, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoazin, happened to be passing by a hill at Tepeyac when the Virgin Mary appeared to him. She appeared wearing clothing and symbols drawn from both Catholic and native American traditions, and assured Juan Diego that he and his people were indeed her children and under her protection. She appeared to Juan Diego four times, culminating with the appearance that led to the finding of roses in winter and then the imprint of her image on his cloak.

The most astonishing result of these appearances was the speed in which the native peoples of Mexico, now embraced by the Virgin Mother, in turn embraced the Catholic faith. They did so in spite of what they sometimes suffered at the hands of the Spanish, believing that they now had an advocate in heaven who sang of how the lofty would be deposed and the lowly raised up. Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe has grown and spread ever since.

Did these native peoples have souls? Were they fully human? It seems that Our Lady chose to enter the debate and settle it. It is interesting to see how her appearance can be seen as an act of what we would call social justice, rooted in the teachings of the Old Testament prophets and in Our Lady’s own Magnificat. It is also no great stretch to see how the blossoming of social justice teachings in the Church, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891 and continuing through Pope Francis’ Laudato Si in 2015, are part of the flowering of the seed that Mary herself planted in the Americas.