Title:
Discerning sanctity: De Smet and the ethics behind the Jesuit mission to the Lakota Sioux
Author:
Benjamin P. Horgan
Thesis Advisor:
Robert T. Pomplun
Degree Granting Institution:
Loyola University Maryland--College of Arts and Sciences
Place:
Baltimore (Md.)
Publisher:
Loyola University Maryland
Date Created:
2016
Type of Resource:
text
Genre:
thesis
Language:
eng
Format:
application/pdf
Physical Form:
electronic
Digital Source:
born digital
Abstract:
As the Catholic Church spread to the North America, missionaries were called to discern the sanctity of native peoples and their traditional religions. The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, was one of several religious orders that accepted Native Americans as worthy recipients of the Gospel and established missions to promulgate the Catholic faith among various tribes, including the Lakota Sioux. Historian Ross Enochs, author of The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux: A Study of Pastoral Ministry, 18861945, asserts that the Jesuits built their mission to the Lakota by adapting the content of Catholicism to the form of traditional Lakota religion and culture. This thesis offers a critique of Enochs's assessment by examining the Jesuits' evolving discernment of the natural and supernatural qualities of traditional Lakota religion and culture. In contrast to Enochs's argument, this thesis contends that the Jesuit missionaries such as Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., utilized the natural aspects of the Lakota culture to enhance the individual's susceptibility to and belief in Christianity. The first chapter surveys the history of the Jesuits' discernment of the sacred and profane within Lakota culture and religion. The second chapter illuminates the Jesuits' formation in Aristotelian virtue ethics as the primary instrument used in the missionary discernment of the natural and supernatural virtues of the native peoples. This thesis closes with a third chapter proposing that the Jesuits' discernment of Lakota virtue leads to three distinct missionary outcomes: cultural adaptation, dogmatic accommodation, religious inculturation.
Subject:
Electronic dissertations
Degree:
Master of Theological Studies
Level:
Master
Discipline:
Theology
Restrictions on Access:
Author has given permission to make this work available online.
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Identifier:
HorganBP-16
