Postcolonial lens: “a shared inheritance”

This final installment of Catholic Thought and Action will take up one theme—the postcolonial—from last week’s article.

To do this, it will engage three intersecting notions: the universal destination of goods, the doctrine of discovery and contemporary Native American land claims.

The first notion is a key concept in Catholic Social Teaching and the second notion was a problematic doctrine that was unfortunately part of Catholic history.

The third notion refers to legal action taken by Indigenous peoples to reacquire rights to geographical areas that they once occupied or used.

This can involve arguing in the courts for sovereignty, treaty rights or compensation pertaining to parcels of land.

What is the doctrine of discovery? It can be defined as a legal and religious concept articulated in three papal bulls: Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493).

These documents were often used by European colonial powers like England, France, Spain, Portugal,Netherlands and Germany to subjugate Indigenous peoples living in non-European territories and to confiscate their land.

The doctrine of discovery “can be described as an international law. doctrine giving authorization to explorers to claim terra nulius [i.e. a territory without master or null and void] in the name of their sovereign when the land was not populated by Christians” (Cornell Law School website).

This doctrine was eventually integrated into United States law in 1823 in the case Johnson v. McIntosh. In his decision on this case, Chief Justice John Marshall stated, “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.” This was a Supreme Court decision.

It would be erroneous to think that this case has no relevance in the 21st century. In a land claim action brought forward by the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2005 concluded that “[u]nder the Doctrine of Discovery… fee title to the land occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign—first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States.”

In March 2023, a joint statement issued by the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development—two organizations within the Catholic Church—repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Statement referenced a papal bull issued in 1537 (Sublimis Deus) by Pope Paul III that proclaimed: “We define and declare…that…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 possession of their property, even though they be outside the Christian faith; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”

The universal destination of goods—which has roots in scripture, the early Church, and Thomas Aquinas—clearly supports this papal bull.

It contends that the earth involves a shared inheritance that is meant to benefit all inhabitants.

What is at stake here is this: private property rights are always subordinate to this universal destination.