Audio only:
In this episode Trent addresses whether it is bigoted for Christians to convert “savages”.
Transcription:
Trent:
It isn’t politically correct to call groups of people savages, but I care about being correct not politically correct, and in today’s episode we’ll see why it was necessary for Christians to extinguish savage evils and the barbaric people that still need to be evangelized today. Now, if you’re my age, the word savages probably makes you think of English settlers and Pooh Hatan Indians singing about each other being savages in the 1995 film. Pocahontas. But Pocahontas is wildly inaccurate and is part of a modern propaganda campaign to teach the myth of the noble savage. This is the idea that indigenous peoples are inherently good, peaceful, and live in harmony with nature, whereas European culture is inherently evil, exploitative and materialistic. The myth was propagated by accounts like those of the 18th century explorer, James Cook, who said of Australian aborigines, they live in a tranquility which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition.
The earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life. They covet not magnificent houses, household stuff, et cetera. This is ironic because nine years later a group of Hawaiian natives killed cook while he was trying to kidnap their chief in retaliation for the Hawaiian stealing one of cook’s boats in the animated Pocahontas film, the English colonist leader John Ratcliffe, is a cartoonishly evil villain obsessed with gold, who becomes the victim of a righteous mutiny that sends him back to England to be tried for his crimes. However, the real ratcliffe was at worst, a poor leader who tried his best in 1610 after a lack of supplies resulted in 90% of the colonists dying. Ratcliffe went to the Po hatan Indians to trade for food, but was instead ambushed and had his skin fla off with muscle shells. His friend George Percy, described his death this way by women. His flesh was scraped from his bones with muscle shells and before his face thrown into the fire. And so for want of circumspection, he miserably perished. A few months ago, vice president JD Vance made a point about savagery in the Americas and how Christianity helped extinguish it.
CLIP:
Settlers came to the new world, they found very widespread child sacrifice. There is a reason why Christian civilization ended the practice of child sacrifice all over the world, and it’s one of the great accomplishments of Christian civilization.
Trent:
Critics are saying this was a flat out lie, but there are several reports of human sacrifice taking place in North America before Columbus, such as a mass grave of sacrifice. Teenage girls at Mound 72 in the huge city of Kochia Vance also said the new world, not North America specifically in central and South America. Human sacrifice was well-documented both in the archeological records and in written sources as can be seen in pictures of child sacrifice victims. This makes the ending of the awesome 2006 film Apocalypto even better as it portrays the arrival of Spanish missionaries as a saving grace against the film’s blood thirsty indigenous antagonists. Historically, Christian missionaries and rulers were crucial in stamping out barbaric violations, human dignity that occurred in non-Christian cultures. This included rescuing children left to die in the wilderness in ancient Rome, the binding of women’s feet in East Asia, and the practice of sat or burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre in India and Christians still do this when it comes to modern savage practices like the killing of fetal and infant girls in China and India. However, academics often romanticize indigenous cultures and as a result ignore their more unsavory aspects. Historian Mark Vander Lock said that for tribes like the Sue and Pawnee, the taking of a scalp of a woman or child was considered honorable because the signified that the scalp taker had dared to enter the very heart of the enemy’s territory or consider this woman who recorded a video at the ink and ruins in South America.
CLIP:
This reminds me of exactly what happened in Teno Chilan. When Cortez laid eyes on that city for the first time, he wrote in his diary that the temples were grander than anything he would’ve seen in Seve. Yeah, you’re telling me the Spanish saw this and they said, nah, inferior.
Trent:
Ah, yes, the glorious capital of the Aztec Empire, 10 land, the Spanish Explorer and non Cortez had this to say about the people who lived there. They have another custom, horrible and abominable and deserving punishment in which we have never before seen in any other place, and it is this that as often as they have anything to ask of their idols in order that their petition may be more acceptable, they take many boys or girls and even grown men and women, and in the presence of those idols, they open their breasts while they are alive and take out the hearts and end trails and burn the said end trails and hearts before the idols offering that smoke and sacrifice to them. Some of us who have seen this say that is the most terrible and frightful thing to behold that has ever been seen. And here’s that same professor doubling down on her praise of South American culture saying, yeah, well human sacrifice isn’t that bad.
CLIP:
I’ll die on this hill. I’m specifically talking about the Inga here. We’re not talking about the ika. That’s a whole separate type of sacrifice if we’re just looking at to want to ens sue you, the chua people of the in and empire, they practice sacrifices like most other civilizations throughout history did in times of crisis, so famine, natural disasters
Trent:
Except Christian cultures. When Christians experienced famines or other crises, they did not sacrifice people to Jesus because Jesus is the only sacrifice that we need.
CLIP:
Sacrifices were volunteers from the elite class because they believed that the elites were closer to the gods and could therefore appease them better
Trent:
Children. It was the children of the ink and elite who were the sacrificial victims.
CLIP:
Also in terms of sacrifice. They were kind about it, hear me out, because unlike the ika, when you’re ripping out, still beating heart out of someone’s chest, the Inca would intentionally use coca leaves and would use chicha and would drug up the sacrifice and then leave them on a mountain, a cold mountain, to be exposed to the elements, which if you’re a volunteer sacrifice where you’re heavily drugged before you die,
Trent:
Actually that was only in very cold areas. In other cases, the children were bludgeoned, buried, alive or suffocated to death. And even if that were true, it’s still savagery and the world is a better place when these cultural elements are banished from the face of the earth. After a group of people embrace Christianity or at least Christian principles,
CLIP:
The fact that a lot of people are commenting, oh, but the sacrifice is again indicative of the fact that you have received a quite white education because you are knowing them for the bad things that they have done and not all of the wonders that they accomplished.
Trent:
I bet this teacher would say European fascists like Mussolini were evil for slaughtering thousands of innocent people and not give them credit for the good things they did, like getting the trains to run on time. No Mussolini’s trains being on time was probably fascist propaganda and is solely being used here for humorous rhetorical purposes. Now, many liberals scoff at the idea of calling groups of people savages because they have bought into a cultural relativism that says No culture is morally superior to any other culture, but this is self refuting because they have no ground to say that for example, a traditional Catholic culture that seeks to evangelize barbaric people is morally inferior to their relativistic culture. Plus, what do you do when two cultures interact with each other? This is why I appreciate the following quote, attributed to a 19th century British general disputing the practice of saee or widow burning.
He said this, the burning of widows is your custom prepare the funeral pile, but my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them and confiscate all their property. My carpenter shall therefore erect Gibbs on which to hang all concern when the widow is consumed, let us all act according to national customs. However, the critics do have a point in that some calls to civilized savages are rooted in the racist idea that skin color determines moral worth. Any group of people who are not enlightened by the gospel or do not remain in God’s grace after receiving the gospel can succumb to savage tendencies. Julius Caesar recorded how Celtic people engaged in human sacrifice through things like setting people on fire and giant wickerman and the fair-skinned redheaded vikings not only practiced human sacrifice, they brutally pillaged seafaring communities including Christian monasteries like Lindas Farn.
So moral savagery is not unique to skin color or ethnic heritage. Canada has a higher white population than the United States, but they engage in a kind of human sacrifice through their assisted suicide program. Medically approved manslaughter is now the cause of death in one out of every 20 deaths in the country. It’s also wrong to say a group of people are savage merely because they’re less technologically developed. As you can see in films like What is a Woman when it comes to basic human truths, rural African, that mock transgender ideology are the enlightened ones compared to many affluent white cultures that mutilate people’s genitals and so would be the real savages. What ultimately matters is not your skin color or having a certain kind of food dress or level of technology. What matters is being united to the person of Jesus Christ. That’s why Colossians three 11 says here, there cannot be Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, cian, slave freeman, but Christ is all and in all that means during the age of exploration, some natives may have been more united to Christ through following their God-given conscience than some con or explorers who ignored their consciences and brutally oppressed them.
This was why heroes like Servant of God, Bartholomew Dela CAAs fought for the rights of native people. And while it is true, indigenous people used cruel punishments that violated people’s dignity, which was one reason some Europeans claim they weren’t fully human. European Christians also engaged in barbaric rituals that violated human dignity. This includes inflicting punishments like drawing and quartering, which involves cutting off genitals and disemboweling the victim while he is alive, then beheading him and cutting his body into four pieces. This is why the catechism of the Catholic Church says, in times past cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order often without protests from the pastors of the church who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. And that in recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person.
Being a savage just means you’re far from God’s grace and that can happen to anyone, which is why even the church has had to reflect on her customs and practices and the effect they have on the dignity of the human person. Jesus has clear that someone who follows him must love his enemy and show mercy to others. Mercy does not preclude just punishment, but it does preclude Christians from relishing in cruelty. For example, Protestant pastor Dale Partridge posted a picture of arena’s rusko right before she was stabbed to death, and next to it he posted a picture of a man with a stake driven through his body. With this message, bring back impaling for violent criminals. In the comments, many self-professed Christians praised doing this to criminals, to which I would say, if you think Jesus Christ would see no problem with guiding a pole through a man’s anus along his spine, past his vital organs and out his mouth so that he slowly dies over the course of a few days, then your God is not Christ the redeemer.
It’s Vlad the Impaler partridge at least does not endorse impalment for execution, just for displaying the body. But most people would still consider this savagery at home with heartless, pagan, not merciful Christians, we should practice justice not vengeance and pray for repentance like how St Theres of laue whose prayers for the repentance of a triple murderer were answered when the murderer kissed a crucifix shortly before his execution, and in some cases the savagery I see among Christians is not even towards an evil act like murder, which is at least understandable. Instead, it’s savagery towards moral goods like adoption. A few weeks ago, Protestant lay elder Alex Copeman, shared a photo of his adoptive black son turning 13. This photo has been viewed over 13 million times with tens of thousands of people, including self-professed Christians, denouncing copeman as an evil race trader and levying many brutal cruel insults against him and his son.
Pope Xi warned that a person who turns race into an idol like this is far from the true faith in God or considered this self-professed Catholic on X. With over a hundred thousand followers telling Lila Rose to shut the F up, you insufferable be. I cover this more in my episode, how being base can send you to hell, but the behavior of self-professed Christians who delight in wrath, cruelty, and hatred for others reminds me of Paul’s warning to Timothy about those who are inhuman, implacable, slanders propagates fierce haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen, with conceit lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. Notice Paul is warning about people who like to claim to be religious and look religious, but inside are cruel and merciless and contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these self-professed Christian savages end up in hell, but they think hell is actually heaven because their only companions will be ethnically similar bigots who spend all their time miserably ranting about how bad heaven, which they call hell is because it’s racially diverse and the overabundance of joy there is to them fake and gay. But I don’t want these people to go to hell. I don’t want anyone to go to hell because one Timothy two, four says, God desires the salvation of all people. Some people get mad when I critique fellow Catholics or Christians, but it would be unloving if I gave those people a free pass just because they’re on my team. The only team that matters is the body of Christ. And so I don’t care about offending people on the left by saying all people, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and animus and isolated jungles must join this mystical body of Christ to be saved.
And this can be done without annihilating the neutral or good aspects of their cultures which can be retained. This can be seen in the wide variety of ways the Catholic faith is lived out around the world. Pope St. John Paul II said, the church must make itself all things for all men. Bringing today’s cultures together with sympathy. There still are mils and mentalities as there are entire countries and regions to evangelize, which supposes a long and courageous process of enculturation so that the gospel may penetrate the soul of living cultures, respond to their highest expectations and make them grow in the dimension of Christian faith, hope and charity. So I don’t care about people on the left who would call this ethnocentrism and I don’t care about offending people on the right by admonishing members of the body of Christ who have separated themselves from the body through sin.
Even if that sin is popular in some dark corners of the internet, it’s one thing to be a little rough around the edges to reach people on the margins like making a heavy metal version of, oh, come Emmanuel. It’s another thing to just slap a Christian name tag on moral filth and try to defend it by saying it’s just a joke. And look, I know that without God’s grace, I would be a savage or at best, a nice person who is good at aping a Christian charity until my soul is exposed by the gaze of the Almighty on the day of judgment. The savages the church must convert today can be found in every place, every culture, and within the pews of our own churches and even in the mirror. We look at each morning when we let our guard down and the devil gets a foothold. Savages are just people who have fallen under the power of the devil and must be freed from his grip through the sacraments God gave us so that through faith we are united to Christ and can have eternal life with him. Thank you so much for watching and if you like this content, please support us@trenthornpodcast.com. And if you want to meet me and 30 other Catholic creators, get your tickets today for our conference on April 11th in Dallas, texas@conferenceoftrent.com. Thank you so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.