Cassan Order
The Holy Order of Saint Bartolome de las Casas is a Catholic religious order dedicated to preaching the Catholic faith to non-human intelligences. It was founded in the Second Interstellar Period amid a realization that the Church needed an organization specifically focused on xenoevangelization in the wake of the numerous first contacts being made in that time period.
The order takes its name from Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish friar who lived during Terra's preindustrial period, when the nations of Yurop were first starting to explore and conquer the adjacent American continents. (Made possible on account of their relative technological superiority at the time.) Appalled by the atrocities and mistreatment which he saw being perpetrated upon the native American inhabitants by the European conquerors, he advocated for the rights of the indigenous peoples and the reform of socioeconomic systems which held them in a state approximating slavery. While slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans would continue for centuries after his death, his preaching to newly-discovered people was considered inspirational when it came to interactions with alien intelligences.
The Cassans are considered a mendicant order, since while they do have fixed properties such as schools, churches, and training facilities, the calling of individual Cassan friars is to travel among an alien species and preach to them. In this the Cassans face no shortage of issues above and beyond the "ordinary" ones faced by other orders in past missionary efforts on Old Terra—the appearance and customs of an alien species are often strange and sometimes disturbing to humans, with behavior that occasionally makes no sense unless considered in light of an alien psychology. The Cassans have been confronted with numerous theological questions, such as whether a non-human can be ordained to the priesthood, how the sacriment of matrimony applies to a species who reproduce asexually via binary fission, and how to baptize inhabitants of a frigid methane-based biosphere where water ice is a building material.
The order takes its name from Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish friar who lived during Terra's preindustrial period, when the nations of Yurop were first starting to explore and conquer the adjacent American continents. (Made possible on account of their relative technological superiority at the time.) Appalled by the atrocities and mistreatment which he saw being perpetrated upon the native American inhabitants by the European conquerors, he advocated for the rights of the indigenous peoples and the reform of socioeconomic systems which held them in a state approximating slavery. While slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans would continue for centuries after his death, his preaching to newly-discovered people was considered inspirational when it came to interactions with alien intelligences.
The Cassans are considered a mendicant order, since while they do have fixed properties such as schools, churches, and training facilities, the calling of individual Cassan friars is to travel among an alien species and preach to them. In this the Cassans face no shortage of issues above and beyond the "ordinary" ones faced by other orders in past missionary efforts on Old Terra—the appearance and customs of an alien species are often strange and sometimes disturbing to humans, with behavior that occasionally makes no sense unless considered in light of an alien psychology. The Cassans have been confronted with numerous theological questions, such as whether a non-human can be ordained to the priesthood, how the sacriment of matrimony applies to a species who reproduce asexually via binary fission, and how to baptize inhabitants of a frigid methane-based biosphere where water ice is a building material.
Type
Religious, Holy Order
Parent Organization
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