A Stumbling Block

This book presents the work and thought of Bartolome de Las Casas, taking into account his hunger and thirst for justice for the peoples of the New World, discovered and dominated by the Spanish. Las Casas defends the right of Amerindian peoples to live in freedom, to resist Spanish rule, to respect and preserve their own cultures, to respect their religiosity and to preserve after conversion the elements compatible with Christianity, to reject a Christianity preached in the shadow of arms. The defence of these rights and of the unity and equality of the human family makes Bartholomew de las Casas a "forerunner" both of the Second Vatican Council and of the post-colonial and globalized world of our time. Bartolome de Las Casas has become an important figure in the history of the church and of humanity and in the history of literature and of art. Las Casas, who called himself 'a Christian, a religious, a bishop, a Spaniard' (Las Casas, In Defense, 21), - note the sequence is above all else, however, a 'prophet' in the biblical sense of the word: one called by God who persistently-conveniently as well as inconveniently-reminds his contemporaries of the demands of the word of God in the face of the injustice which causes the suffering and misery of one's neighbor. Many such witnesses have been officially recognized and canonized by the church. Others, though, have been covered with the cloak of slander to this day; they are still waiting for us to muster the courage to pull off this cloak and to incorporate their irksome witness into the prophetic tradition of the Church.