Faith In The Wilderness - The Story Of The Catholic Indian Missions

Faith In The Wilderness The Story Of The Catholic Indian Missions
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Authors: Format: ISBN: H x W x D: Manufacturer: Date: Pages:	Margaret R Bunson, Stephen Bunson, Soft Cover 0-87973-745-X 10" (25.4 cm) x 7" (17.7 cm) x 0 3/4" (1.90 cm) Our Sunday Visitor 2000 271

General Description:

Margaret Bunson
Stephen Bunson

The New World was not a desolate landscape but the homeland of a vast native population. The arrival of the white Europeans signaled the end of the Native American lifestyles and trible aspirations in many regions. Explorers, adventurers, military expeditions, and colonists swarmed over the land, but they were followed by a different breed of men and women - human beings who envisioned America with eternal connotations that had nothing to do with metallic treasures or hoarded estates. This is their story.

A riveting blend of history, anthropology, and ethnology, Faith in the Wilderness chronicles the courage and dedication of the many men and women who sacrificed their lives to bring the Gospel to the Native Americans.

Interweaving threads of courage, endurance, and lasting devotion with the darker stiches of mistreatment, political rivalries, and hatred that marked so many interactions with the native peoples, authors Margaret and Stephen Bunson restor a long-overlooked and vastly misunderstood part of American history to its rightful - and righteous - place.

Once you've read this book, you'll never look at American history the same way.

Introduction to Saints in the Wilderness by Archbishop Chaput:

God gives each of us a great many gifts in the course of a lifetime, and among those I hold most dear are two: my vocation as a Catholic priest, and roots as a member of the Potawatomi people. Reading this wonderful book by the Bunsons reminded me of just how blessed I am.

It was common in the years immediately after the Second Vatican Council to reexamine and criticize much of the Church's traditional missionary effort. Purifying memory and confessing past sins is a good thing, as Pope John Paul II has so eloquently preached throughout his pontificate, especially in preparing for the Great Jubilee. History has certainly been marred by those missionaries who failed to live up to the dignity of their calling.

Bu focusing on the errors of history can lead to its own strange kind of forgetfulness. It can also be a form of injustice when the great achievements of the missionaries in North America is woven together from the hundreds of smaller but very moving stories of missionary women and men who lived and died, preached and taught, century after century, to bring Jesus Christ to the native peoples. And in witnessing the Gospel, it was missionaries, above all who spoke up in defense of native peoples' rights.

Jesus Christ is the meaning of history – the Redeemer of all peoples and all nations in every age. My family owes our faith, and I owe my priesthood, to missionaries who loved the Potawatomi people enough to commit their own lives to service in a strange land among foreign people. Was their sacrifice worthwhile? Beyond any doubt it was. The Church is, by her nature, missionary – and for every missionary who stumbles, ten or twenty others succeed in living the Gospel authentically and leading others to Jesus Christ. So the kingdom is built. Margaret and Stephen Bunson deserve the gratitude of all American Catholics for helping us remember the past... and for telling the history of the Catholic Indian missions with compassion and truth.

+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

Archibishop of Denver.

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