On March 30, 2023, it was reported that the Vatican rejected the infamous Doctrine of Discovery.  As stated by ABC News,

“The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ the theories backed by 15th-century ‘papal bulls’ that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.

A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, ‘did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples’ and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”

I mentioned the Doctrine of Discovery in one of my previous posts.  The above statement indicates that the doctrine was revoked in response to demands made by “Indigenous people.”  This is a reference to a visit to Canada last summer by Pope Francis during which two Indigenous women were displaying a large banner that said “Rescind the Doctrine of Discovery,” a demand their people had been making for decades.

Tim Perron provided useful background information on the role of the Catholic Church on this issue.  In an article published on October 24, 2022 in the Jesuite magazine America, Perron notes the following:

“During the period that Saint John Paul II was pope from the late 1970s through 2005, he apologized and asked forgiveness for the history of Christian slave-holding and for the injustices inflicted by colonizing Christians. In the same spirit, Pope Francis traveled to Canada this past summer in order to ask forgiveness from native peoples for the sins committed against them by Catholics. He did this most especially for the activities of Church-led boarding schools that were initiated by the Canadian government in the 1880s. These schools functioned as institutions of assimilation to European Christian ways of life while also stripping away the cultural and religious traditions of native children.”

According to Perron, while the nuns, brothers and priests who ran the schools may have had good intentions,

“the overall aim of these schools undercut the Gospel message, and ironically, even the long-standing Catholic position that the parents are the primary persons responsible for making decisions about the education of their children. The boarding schools came into the spotlight in the media sparked by the recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at one of these residential schools. Unmarked graves were discovered at several other boarding schools in the past.”

Perron’s article explains, from the Vatican’s perspective, the technical difficulty associated with the idea of rescinding something called the Doctrine of Discovery:

“While the church has no formal doctrine by the name of the ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ it does have documents (called papal ‘bulls’) that were issued by popes (mostly) in the 1400s dealing with European exploration of lands beyond Europe’s borders. The most well-known of these bulls mediated the dispute between Spain and Portugal over which areas of the globe were open to each for exploration and ‘discovery’ of new lands. The pope assigned a certain portion of the world to Spain and another to Portugal referred to as the ‘papal donations.’ The papal bulls in which these ‘donations’ are articulated are the roots that many today point to as the very foundation of the ‘Doctrine of Discovery.’”

It is baffling that these popes felt empowered to make such donations of lands that were already occupied by other people.  Perron explains that there has been two ways of understanding the meaning of the donations:

“For example, the king of Spain argued that the pope granted full rulership over the lands ‘discovered.’ Others have argued that what the pope intended was to grant either Spain or Portugal the rights to engage and evangelize the peoples there.”

In support of the second possibility, Perron mentions two separate bulls in which Pope Eugene IV demanded, in 1434, the freedom of slaves from Portuguese raiders of the Canary Islands (off the West Coast of Africa).  In 1435, this pope issued a document called Sicut Dudum declaring that “those who have ’deprived the natives of their property, or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery, sold them to other persons, and committed other various illicit and evil deeds’ against the natives should ‘desist’” or be excommunicated.

However, no matter how the papal bulls were interpreted, it remains true that they had real consequences.  In addition to the crimes perpetrated by colonists against native populations, the European colonies, when they became nations, used the bulls to decide on issues of land rights of Indigenous people.  Perron writes:

“In the United States, the 1823 court decision Johnson v. McIntosh wrote into law justifications for colonizing land, much of which was land inhabited by natives. The chief justice, John Marshall, cited a 300+ year-old papal document (Inter Caetera, from 1493) as a justification for the court’s decision.”

The fact that the United States was, at the time, a mostly Protestant nation with no warm feelings for Catholics did not keep Marshall from using Catholic documents to disenfranchise natives.  Even though Perron does not discuss it, it is useful to add here that the 1493 bull is presented by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History as the primary document representing the Doctrine of Discovery.  A post on the Institute’s website states the following:

“The Papal Bull ‘Inter Caetera,’ issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands discovered by Columbus the previous year. It established a demarcation line one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands and assigned Spain the exclusive right to acquire territorial possessions and to trade in all lands west of that line. All others were forbidden to approach the lands west of the line without special license from the rulers of Spain. This effectively gave Spain a monopoly on the lands in the New World.”

In other words, the Portuguese “discovered” the African continent and then went all the way to India.  The pope gave them a monopoly over Africa and Asia.  The Spanish “discovered” the American continent and the Pope gave them a monopoly over the so-called New World.  The post gives more details about the authority given to the “discoverers”:

“The Bull stated that any land not inhabited by Christians was available to be ‘discovered,’ claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that ‘the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.’”

Clearly, according to the bull, non-Christian, non-European nations were “barbarous” and had no right to exist.  In fact, an earlier papal proclamation issued in 1455, in which the papacy was granting the Portuguese a perpetual monopoly in trade with Africa, clearly shows that the Europeans considered the people in the “discovered” lands subhuman as seen in the following abstract from the document:

“to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit.”

These words describe the authority given to the king of Portugal over non-Christian people, including Saracens (Muslims).  They are enemies of Christ who must be invaded, sought out, captured, vanquished, subdued, dispossessed of lands and properties, reduced to perpetual slavery and used for profit.

The post by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History describes how the United States made use of the 1493 papal bull:

“This ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ became the basis of all European claims in the Americas as well as the foundation for the United States’ western expansion. In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held ‘that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.’ In essence, American Indians had only a right of occupancy, which could be abolished.”

The importance of the Doctrine of Discovery in property law was seen as late as 2005 when it was cited by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in her majority opinion regarding the US Supreme Court case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.  In this case, the Supreme Court refused to restore tribal sovereignty to a land that had been repurchased by the Oneida Indian Nation 200 years after the land had been ceded by the Oneida Nation to the state of New York through a treaty.  In other words, the Oneida Indian Nation of New York now had to pay property taxes on the land to the city of Sheryll.

The 1823 US Supreme Court decision on Johnson v. McIntosh also had a great impact on Canadian property law.  In an article published on September 20, 2022 in America, Michael Swan reported that

“American legal scholar Robert Miller estimates the key 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision that entrenched the Doctrine of Discovery into common law around the world has been cited by courts in Canada 70 times and is the very foundation of property law in the United States.”

Miller teaches at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor Law School and is a leading expert on the doctrine of discovery and Johnson v. McIntosh.  Regarding property law in the United States, Swan attributes to him the following statement:

“’How do we acquire title (to property) in the United States?’ asked the law professor. ‘Either you got it from the king of England, or you got it from the king of Spain, or you got it from the king or queen of France. And you got it from the colonies and then you got it from the Continental Congress and our Articles of Confederation, or you bought it from the United States government we have now. The U.S. got it by treaties or by conquest. That is all based on the Doctrine of Discovery.’”

This, of course, illustrates how injustice against some populations becomes legalized and systemic in a given nation.  Today, there is a strong push to suppress any discussion about systemic aspects of the legal system that resulted from a history of prejudice.  The vilification of critical race theory comes to mind, along with the efforts to suppress attempts to teach facts of history that might make some groups “uncomfortable.”

Going back to the technical difficulties I alluded to earlier, Perron’s point is that bulls such as the 1493 proclamation cannot be considered Church doctrine because they have already been contested by other papal proclamations.  For example, Pope Paul III issued, in 1537, a bull entitled Sublimus Dei in which he said:

“We define and declare . . . that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”

Perron explains that the bulls associated with the Doctrine of Discovery deal with legal matters associated with the papal “donations.”  Church doctrine, on the other hand, deals with matters of faith or morals which are understood to apply generally and across historical periods.  In other words, there is no Church doctrine to revoke on this matter.  The church can “acknowledge the great harms brought upon native people” who were dispossessed of their lands.  Only the nations that made use of the papal bulls can resolve the legal issues involved.

Michael Swan reported that the Canadian bishops, after Pope Francis’ visit, were anxious to respond to the concerns raised by the Indigenous people and started working with the Vatican to produce a statement.  Accordingly, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops made the following statement:

“’Galvanized by the calls of our Indigenous partners and by the Holy Father’s remarks, Canada’s bishops have engaged and are actively working with the Vatican with the goal of issuing a new statement from the church,’ he said in mid-September. ‘We do not have a confirmed timeline for when the Holy See intends to release this statement; however, the work is ongoing, and we hope to have an update in the coming weeks.’”

According to ABC News, the final statement released by the Vatican contains the following declaration:

“The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of Indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery.’”

According to ABC News, Michelle Schenandoah of the Oneida Nation called the Vatican statement “another step in the right direction” but noted that it did not rescind the bulls.  Understandably, she thinks the next step should come from the nations involved:

“’I think what this does is it really puts the responsibility on nation states such as the United States, to look at its use of the Doctrine of Discovery,’ she said in an interview from Syracuse, New York, where she is a professor of Indigenous law at Syracuse University’s College of Law. ‘This goes beyond land. It really has created generation upon generation of genocidal policies directed towards Indigenous peoples. And I think that it’s time for these governments to take full accountability for their actions.’”

ABC News also mentioned the reaction of an Indigenous leader in Canada:

“Phil Fontaine, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada who was also part of the First Nations delegation that met with Francis at the Vatican, said the statement was ‘wonderful,’ resolved an outstanding issue and now puts the matter to civil authorities to revise property laws that cite the doctrine.

‘The church has done one thing, as it said it would do, for the Holy Father. Now the ball is in the court of governments, the United States and in Canada, but particularly in the United States where the doctrine is embedded in the law,” he told The Associated Press.’”

According to ABC News, the Rev. David McCallum, an American Jesuit who has worked with Indigenous people in the Syracuse area and was consulted during the drafting of the statement, said:

“So now for the church to not only acknowledge the damage, but also to repudiate the whole mindset of cultural superiority, of racial superiority to, in a sense, renounce that whole way of thinking and say that forever forward the church wants to be an active ally in protecting Indigenous human rights along with all human rights, I think it’s a big statement.”

The Catholic Church under the leadership of Pope Francis is doing, on this matter, what a Christian Church is expected to do and providing a moral setting that should guide the actions of national governments.  The papacy provided leadership in spreading the evil associated with the doctrine of discovery.  We should be encouraged that the papacy is providing leadership to repudiate it.