To say this is a challenging summer for Catholics and their Church in Canada is putting it mildly. But where there is challenge, there is also opportunity and it’s vitally important that it is seized.
There are now a number of Catholic initiatives to raise money for residential school survivors and Indigenous communities. The Catholic bishops of Saskatchewan have launched a fundraising drive and there is a lay-led initiative to do the same. At least two dioceses which never operated residential schools — Calgary and Toronto — have announced that they will be raising funds.
Pope Francis has sent a message to those who attend the Latin Mass. In essence he has said: We do not really want you. It is time you went away. It is time to give up your “divisive” ways.
Following more than a month of gut-wrenching developments, the winds of change are starting to blow across Canada, bringing with them fresh energy and commitment to reconciliation.
Some may take Michael Crummey’s brilliant 2019 novel The Innocents as a piece of nostalgia for a lost way of life in Newfoundland’s outports. But The Innocents offers insights much greater than the nostalgic pacifier Make Newfoundland Great Again. It depicts an unrelenting struggle for survival by two children left orphaned when their parents and baby sister die within a matter of months.
In 2018, American Catholics experienced their “summer of shame” — first the revelations about Theodore McCarrick and then the Pennsylvania grand jury report on priestly sexual abuse. Given the media reach of the United States, the shame spread around the world. Soon Pope Francis announced a global summit on sexual abuse for February 2019. From that emerged some key reforms for episcopal accountability.
Shared responsibility
Canada’s Catholic bishops need to apologize for the Church’s involvement in residential schools, but not because of public pressure or demands by the Indigenous people of Canada, or requests by the prime minister, or even by the Parliament. Rather the bishops need to apologize in order to exemplify the virtue of solidarity, one of the most revered principles of Catholic social teaching.
“As Minister of Health, I am proud to present Health Canada’s Second Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying (2020).”
Although I don’t feel qualified to speak to the ongoing revelations of life and death at Canada’s residential schools, I would still like to weigh in, and to express my sorrow.
There are some days it is harder than others to get up the energy, and indeed the courage to make the trip downtown to the Church on the Street, and this was one of them.
Forgive me for regarding with a somewhat dry eye my fellow Canadians’ umbrage gusting to apoplexy over the infamy of Indian Residential Schools, and Catholic blame for same.