In graveyards, we find graves. In graveyards near or within the grounds of a residential school, we will find children. The older the cemetery, the more children due to the prevalence of disease. The overcrowding, remoteness and lack of government funding of these schools didn’t help. To say so is not to excuse the State-sanctioned cultural negation in which Catholics and others participated, nor the sexual predation and abuse of children by certain staff.

But it also cannot be said that all priests and religious were bad. To generalize like that is grossly unfair to those who did their best in an awful situation. For every story, there is another story to be heard, and it is only in hearing all the stories that we get a picture of what was going on.

Jennifer Fraser

St Catharines, Ont.

Sorry suffering

Pope Francis’ humility will be on full display when offering his apologies for the alleged complicity of the Church in the  sexual abuse of Indigenous children in the care of Catholic clergy.

Much has been written  about grave sites near or on the school properties. The information has been used to conclude they were used as the burial grounds of the Indigenous children. I have never seen any written affirmation of the forensic evidence used to reach these horrific conclusions, which raises doubts about their veracity.

The person who suffered from all this was Pope Francis who, despite his physical frailty, agreed to walk the route of humiliation, a shining example of his devotion to the man whose ineffable love he has always depended on and received in abundance.

J. E. Sequeira

Pointe Claire, Que.

What Jesus did

Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila attributes to San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone “a heart and mind of Christ” for his demand that Nancy Pelosi be denied Holy Communion for promoting grievously evil practices such as abortion.

How is it lost on them both that Jesus did not exact confessions nor withhold communion from any at the Last Supper, including Judas for being complicit in the killing of the Son of God? And did Jesus not pour out forgiveness from the Cross to the people who were in the very act of killing Him? 

So, does the Master set the pastoral standard? Or does the professed disciple?

Gilbert Bernier

Winnipeg, Man.

Mass me

Scrutinizing the cause of the present situation of the Church always leads me back to liturgy, not theology or the Second Vatican Council. 

Liturgy is meant to express theology. However, there is a disparity, even a dissonance, between the two. The right spirit of worship is gone. It is substituted by spirit of performance, much more concerned with the validity and faithfulness to the rubrics but not with who is this about. Liturgy is the Christian life lived in compact, powerful, symbolic and sacramental actions and postures of the Church in communion with Christ to give adoration to God. To the individual, it models that relationship for him. 

We have lost our sense of awe and wonder of God. We are mesmerized in seeing ourselves in the face of the priest, as if the Eucharist were merely to add to our celebration as at a banquet. The Mass has become mostly about us. 

Rufino Ty

Brampton, Ont.