“Debate has intensified in recent months over Juan Diego, who some believe never existed. Several Mexican priests unsuccessfully petitioned the Vatican to delay the canonization because of the doubts.”
Now I have heard many reasonable alternative explanations of the VoG … including outright fraud before. But I had never heard that Juan Diego had not EXISTED before.
What is the Straight Dope, Where is this coming from?
Is there credible evidence that the man himself was manufactured out of whole cloth (so to speak).
I know there is a good chance that this will end in GD, but I’d love to know what the basis of the priests claim was first.
I will walk gingerly on this one since I am a Mexican agnostic who sides on the non-existence of the VoG and Juan Diego . .so o o o let me just state that this has not been the first time that this issues has come up in Mexico. As a matter of fact, the Guillermo Schulemburg Prado, the retired Abbot the Tepeyac Temple (where the VoG is venerated) who was there for 33 years, has cast a shadow on the existense of both. Still, this has been more of an internal debate in the Vatican. Nevertheless, the arguments against seems to be lack of historical documents before and after the apparition of the VoG. If you know Spanish, here are good links to article about the issue:
As someone who’s in love with both the Goddess and the Blessed Virgin Mary, it doesn’t matter to me exactly who la Virgen de Guadalupe is, Tonantzin the Sky Goddess or Mary the mother of Jesus; either way, she’s a beautiful blessing to humanity. The story of Juan Diego works as myth, and so its basis in historical fact is not so important to me.
The opposition to the canonization of Juan Diego is at LEAST as much political as religious or historical.
To latter day Mexican radicals, Juan Diego represents a ernicios myth, by which white Spanish colonizers replaced indigenous pagan religions with Christianity. Moreover, in their minds, tehe Juan Diego of legend was a meek, humble man… which means he was supposed to be the colonizer’s ideal Indian- one who did as he was told without question.
So, whether he existed or not, the legend of Juan Diego, as it has come to be known, drives Mexican radicals nuts. Small wonder they’d rather dismiss him as colonialist propaganda.
This is kinda a hijack, but it should be noted that parts of the Catholic Church have made mistakes like this before. Here in New Orleans, unlike anywhere else, there’s a saint who many people believe in … who absolutely didn’t exist. I believe they call him St Expedite or something along those lines.
The best way to see the whole deal IMO is to consider it a tale of historical fiction; that is, the characters were real but the actions were changed or invented. There is no doubt about the historical nature of the priests and the locality; I think that Juan Diego is the only doubtful character in the whole deal. That is because there was no need for a specific native to encounter the virgin: he was an archetype.
Just to show how unreliable the thing is, it is important to keep some things in mind:
Before the discovery of the Americas, the temple of Guadalupe in Spain (!) was constructed in 1338, to honor a dark skinned virgin image that was found in the bank of the Guadalupe river. And yes, she had first rights to the name Guadalupe.
The Aztecs worshiped Tonantzin, the mother of all gods, in the hill of Tepeyac; that is the location of the current church of the lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. The Catholic Church must think that that is just pure coincidence. :rolleyes:
Remembering how the church changed local gods and goddesses to Christian saints and virgins thought Europe, after Rome converted; it is obvious that that system was employed in America during and after the conquest.
And the image that is worshiped now, is not the original! So much to the affirmation that Juan Diego did present the picture to the priest!
Also reports from the era mention that the indian Marcos Cipac painted the original image
And regarding Juan Diego: In 1996, the Vatican ousted Guillermo Schulenberg after serving as Abbott of the Guadalupe Basilica for 33 years. The reason was that he publicly doubted the existence of Juan Diego! Schulenberg believed that creating the myth of La Virgin was justified because it won an entire nation for the Catholic religion.
You’re answering a GQ post, GIGObuster, not with specific evidence, but with arguable points of debate. And you’re offering up fallacious points, to boot.
Obvious to whom? This is a good example of Dicto simpliciter.
If the “image” you’re referring to is the tilma that hangs in Mexico City… what is your cite for the claim that it’s not the same garment Juan Diego was wearing?
Cite? Cite? Cite?
If you’re going to treat this as a debate, then offer up some reasonably neutral sources for your otherwise gratuitous assertions.
A bit too convenient that his native name translates to something kind of grandiose and designed to reinforce credibility. Then again, there apparently do exist clues to a real, live Juan Diego.
To a degree I can go along with GIGObuster’s first point, in that what we probably have are real people, in a real place and time, being associated with happenings and deeds that may have become widely changed in the retelling. Mexican news sites I’ve visited, and articles from the second quited site, which discuss the flap in the 90s when then-Abbot of the Guadalupe Basilica Guillermo Schulenburg made his controversial declarations, quote Church officials as saying that the Guadalupe Marian apparition is NOT an article of dogma and belief in it is up to the individual faithful. Interestingly, Schulenburg said that beatification just recognizes that there exists a veneration of a saintly person and that miraculous phenomena (e.g. healings) are associated with that veneration. He apposed actual canonization, though.
As to the transposition of a preexisting Marian form (Guadalupe), it would not be unusual for the Spanish missionaries, when adapting to whatever folk devotion developed locally, to call it whatever was closest to one they knew from back home and was already in the calendar: e.g. a black Mary could be translated as O.L. of Monserrate, a medium-dark skinned Mary as O.L. of Guadalupe. Really the title of the Mexican patroness should be O.L. of Tepeyac, but that the “Guadalupe” term just stuck because that’s what was familiar to the Church.
About Gigobuster’s first point (that the europeans altered indiginous gods to fit their Christian religion), he probably didn’t give a quote cause it’s a fairly widespread idea.
Just look up ANYTHING about New Orleans Voodoo. No, it’s NOT about people making dolls to harm others or that sort of Hollywood nonesense, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself. The religion came from Africa to the Caribbean via slave ships, but the slaves were all expected to be Christian. They noticed that many of their gods were similar to Christian saints, so they worshiped images of the saints to throw off the slave owners… while really worshiping Voodoo gods. For example, a slave owner might see their slave worshiping the virgin Mary, but in reality the slave was honoring Ezili, the god of love, beauty, sensuality, and luxury.
It’s very believable to me that the same type of thing happened in other parts of the colonies - and with natives rather than slaves.
A “milpa” is a cornfield. I had no idea that cornfields were being analysed in connection to Saint Juan Diego.
I think you might be refering to the “tilma”, but this just goes to show how credible your post is…
Fallacious points Briker? Well I grant you that I did not point to cites but the simple reason was that I knew most of the info but unfortunately, most of it is in Spanish and I mostly typed my post by memory but as the memento movie showed, you can not trust your memory 100%. Plus doing the translation is a chore, but for all the rest of the board members it is worth it:
What is notorious about this site is that it is indeed for the Spanish faithful but they do not ignore the Guadalupe in Mexico: they actually claim it is indeed the same virgin!! (The dark skin was one of the clues to them)
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/elsentinel/comunidad/orl-spanelchurch18051802may18.story
MÉXICO – “The indigenous artist Marcos Cipac of Aquino disciple of the college of San Jose de los murales painted the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe by a request of the second archbishop of Mexico”
That text was written by father Manuel Olimon Nolasco one of the faitful that question, along with Guillermo Shulemburg, the existence of Juan Diego
Other Mexican priests sent a letter to the Vatican complaining that:
“The canonization will put into judgment the credibility and prestige of our church to witch we belong and love”
Other testimony the author points to is that the image has no supernatural origins: it was a human work painted over cotton acording to a cientific analysys done in 1982 by a group of technicians in the art of conservation.
That points to the reasons why I know is not the original painting:
From the book the myth of the Virgin of Guadalupe by Rius:
Backing all that is the detail of the crown. It seems the old image had a crown but the new one didn’t!!
I absolutely contest the claim that in 1895 the image was “switched” by Father Antonio Plancarte, or indeed by anyone. What evidence does Rius offer in support of this theory? And does it make sense that, after pulling off a secret switch, the conspirators would forget as basic a detail as a crown?
Contemporary sources, including the writings of Ana de Cristo and the preserved Totonac oral tradition of Andrew Zozocolco (the Escalada Codex), both provide detailed descriptions of the image. Both are pre-1895; neither describes a crown. Odd that they would omit that detail, while providing painstaking descriptions otherwise, eh?
I don’t dispute the existence of a Spanish Nuestra Señora de Gaudalupe. What I dispute is the automatic assertion that the previous appearance casts doubt upon the later one. There are numerous instances of claims of Our Lady’s appearance; many are similar to each other. This is not evidence of either geniune supernatual apparitions or unimaginative retelling.
Simialrly, the forced (or voluntary) retirement of Schulemburg has absolutely no evidentiary value to the question of either Juan Diego’s historical existence, or to the authenticity of the tilma.