Abstract
Objective: To investigate the cultural and theological presuppositions that have influenced the attitudes of Catholic missionaries towards Australian Indigenous people.
Methods: Analysis of missionary literature and Papal missionary encyclicals.
Findings: ‘Charitable institutions’ such as hospitals, orphanages and schools, were seen as instrumental to the diffusion of Catholicism. In extreme cases, this brought an interpretation of disease as a ‘providential gift'. More often, it fostered the idea that spiritual rewards — better achieved in an ‘artificial’ context of isolation — were more important than the fulfilment of material needs. Missionaries decided priorities in advance, in accordance with the assumption that ‘savages’ were children, and had to be treated as such.
Conclusions: The Vatican has recently reaffirmed the superiority of Catholicism over other religions. There is a need for the Catholic Church to move towards a greater acceptance of religious pluralism.