THE ESTEEM OF OTHERS

Here are two rather off handed quotes on non-religious websites by visitors to Mexico.

This quote from a mountain biking website. The particular article is about biking in Baja California.

Here’s what the author has to say about the Jesuits.

Loreto nestles against the ocean beneath a western skyline of jagged desert peaks. It's a quiet town where dogs sleep in the shade and kids cruise the cobblestone streets in low-slung Chevys. Loreto's significance in Baja dates back to 1697 when Jesuit explorer Juan Salvatierra founded the Mission Nuestra Senora de Loreto and gathered the indigenous peoples to convert them to Catholicism...or else.

Over the years the Jesuits came and went along with other religious explorers, ravaging the native population under the guise of Christianity. Today, Loreto is a hub for outdoor enthusiasts who fly in from Los Angeles or drive the Trans Peninsular Highway 1 to fish, kayak, snorkel and mountain bike.

Or from another site belonging to folks just vacationing in Mexico

He's referring to a high-walled compound that clings to a steep street. The wall itself is old and multiply-patched and rubbled with talus -- unwedged stones and broken bricks -- at the base. We follow it around a corner to an entryway.Beneath its wide gate are wrought-iron letters that spell MUSEO DE LA INQUISICION -- Museum of the Inquisition.

Nick explains the Inquisition as the Catholic Church's office for orthodoxy, a small army of fervent priests who tortured "confessions" of heresy from Jews and intellectuals and native Indians, then meted out grisly punishments. The Inquisition was especially bad in the New World, where distance from Spain gave rise to terrible atrocities. He describes an unfathomable laundry list of horrors, including the immolation of entire Indian families at the stake. Meanwhile I'm thinking of the paradoxical Jesuit friars, who built the majestic University of Guanajuato -- and also the torture chamber for the local Inquisition.

Inside the mood is spooky and grim. We clack across wooden floors in near-darkness, moving from one display case to the next. Holding hands we stare down at backlit antiquities that are terrifying in their mundaneness. A parchment letter of execution in swooping script. Bibles fashioned into torture devices. The broom used to sweep up bone chips and blood. Neither of us says a word.

The showpiece display is a recreation of the actual torture chamber. We grasp the iron bars and peer into the dismal stone room, decorated with a torture rack and skeletons in rags and guttering electric candles. I try to imagine what kind of person would equate this depravity with God's work. A monster. A blind believer.

Are these just mistaken perceptions? Or is there a history that’s hard to live down?

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