magarnicle
The counter-argument is that the models might make business ideas just as fungible as anything else.
Imagine the first third of The Matrix was cut and you just start with Morpheus explaining it all to Neo. That's Inception. And on top of that, it's not even a particular complicated idea: it's just Russian doll dreams.
https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/the-woman-who-saved-star...
While it might be true that "Missionaries bring aid because they bring the Gospel" to some degree, it is also true that the Gospel brings aid. It is the message that generates the desire to help people.
Your accusations of "assimilation" are just too simplistic. Take, for example, bible translation. In Australia, Anglican missionaries did not put much effort into translating the bible into indigenous languages as the had essentially hooked their mission projects up to the assimilatory 'White Australia' policy of the government. BUT that was in stark contrast to their actions in the rest of the Pacific, where they put great effort into translating the bible into native languages.
> Whatever Catholicism they appropriated will inevitably erase and obscure their culture and identity
This again is just completely dismissing the agency of the converted people. Not to mention easily observed cultural particularities across the world. For example, I experienced a group of Solomon Islanders praying. In my Western culture, we would pray one at a time, but they all prayed out loud, all at the same time. Western values of a particular view of orderliness hadn't overridden their culture.
> I'm more willing to believe the word of a native over a Christian missionary, all else being equal.
Fair enough. I do not deny at all the paternalistic, violent, coercive and assimilationist past (and still present) actions of the church. It is shameful and inexcusable. But I don't for a minute admit that this is because the church was being faithful to it's mission and founder. It's because it wasn't being faithful to the message that it perpetrated these crimes.
But again, it is reductionist to say that this is the only experience. Australian Indigenous culture, Maori culture, traditional PNG cultures are still alive and well, and Christian members of these people groups still choose to be Christian. A simple appeal to "power imbalances", "assimilation", "indoctrination" etc. to explain why they remain so is to rob them of agency.
You've used "never" and "always" as if Christianity, Christian missions, and the cultures they try to reach are a monolith and the same everywhere. You've also insisted that any aide must only be to strengthen the power of the missionaries, and has nothing at all to do with the character of the very message itself.
You've also underestimated the agency of indigenous cultures and their ability to appropriate Christianity, so much so that some Tiwi Islanders (islands to the south of PNG) insist that they converted the Catholic church when it embraced them (https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/publications/going-...)
But...why? If they are just saying that, why is that indefensible? The villagers' are free to reject that message (or a more accurate version of it), as are you or anyone else.
So yeah, there's a base unit of meaning which is well beyond one or two verses (something I wish the church would learn).