Pope Francis – mackaycartoons

Thursday June 3, 2021

June 10, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 3, 2021

The Catholic Church must atone for its role in residential schools

According to the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, the remains of 215 children have been found in the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. It’s grotesque, heartbreaking but — if we’re honest — not completely surprising. As we peel away the layers of lies and myths surrounding the treatment of Indigenous people in this country, few horrors seem impossible.

June 1, 2021

Residential schools and the damage they caused still form an open wound, and while apologies don’t fully heal, they do at least help begin some sort of closure. Which is why the reluctance of the Roman Catholic Church to show official and public contrition is so painful. This B.C. school was run by that church from 1890 to 1969, when the federal government took charge. It was closed nine years later.

The Catholic Church wasn’t alone in the residential school affair, but it is it alone in refusing to fully acknowledge its crimes. In 1986 the United Church stated, “We imposed our civilization as a condition of accepting the gospel. We tried to make you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made you what you were. We ask you to forgive us and to walk together with us in the Spirit of Christ so that our peoples may be blessed and God’s creation healed.”

Seven years later, Archbishop Michael Peers, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, issued a profoundly moving document: “I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God … I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.”

Toilet paper apologies

Such apologies were requested in the 94 recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Pope Francis personally to make such a statement when the two leaders met. Indeed, the House of Commons voted by a margin of 269-10 to formally invite the Pope to reconsider his reluctance.

Francis has said that he takes the issue “seriously,” but that “after carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the bishops of Canada, he felt that he could not personally respond.” In 1991, the Canadian Bishops said, “We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced” at the residential schools, and two years later added that “various types of abuse experienced at some residential schools have moved us to a profound examination of conscience as a Church.” But that’s it, and it’s just not enough.

One of the central obstacles is that a church already mired in legal and financial troubles regarding abuse cases is frightened of the repercussions that might follow after a formal apology regarding residential schools. It’s already been asked to honour its financial obligations under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and to raise $25 million for Indigenous healing, as demanded in the residential schools settlement of 2007. That simply hasn’t happened.

October 23, 2020

While Pope Francis is progressive on many issues, he’s been worryingly opposed to acknowledging the church’s failings. In 2017, for example, he refused to apologize for the church’s history of sexual and physical abuse of children in Chile, and only changed his position after enormous public pressure.

Beyond the financial and legal consequences, there is also the issue of the church’s reputation. While many Catholics, and many leaders within the church, are ashamed at the very idea of the residential school system, conservative elements within the church see it more as a noble effort that was badly handled than an ideal that was flawed in itself. They are tired of what they see as apologizing for well-intended failure as opposed to immorality, and still look to their missionary work as important and ethical. That is where they are so out-of-step with other churches, and public opinion.

It may well take a new Papacy to change all this, and a Pope with the courage to ignore both the more traditional elements in his church, and his financial advisers who are terrified of prolonged compensation battles. That’s tragic not just for the victims of the residential schools, but for the message of Christianity as well. (Michael Coren, iPolitics)

Friday October 23, 2020

October 30, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 23, 2020

Pope Francis should have a talk with Amy Coney Barrett about same-sex marriage

Pope Francis’s call for civil unions for same-sex couples is a welcome departure from the Roman Catholic Church’s long reluctance to embrace everyone as children of God regardless of their sexual orientation.

September 21, 2013

The pope’s remarks in the documentary “Francesco” reverberated everywhere as a major contradiction to the Vatican’s stance that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” the pope said in the documentary aired this week, in which he emphasized his views that gay people are children of God.

The puritans within the Catholic Church immediately asked for clarification, though Pope Francis was pretty clear that the marriage of gay people should be recognized under the law.

October 9, 2014

What Francis didn’t say is whether the Vatican will finally recognize and embrace gay people’s marriage just as it does with the union between a man and woman. That would be revolutionary.

It’s thrilling to hear the pope open his arms to everyone as children of God and lending support for same-sex couple civil unions.

It isn’t enough to settle the conflicting views of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics who look to the Vatican for guidance over morality, which they in turn use to sponsor, promote or oppose laws governing us here on earth.

October 3, 2013

But it is an important statement at a moment when many people in America are genuinely worried about the future of gay marriage and LGBTQ rights when the ultimate arbiter – the U.S. Supreme Court – will soon be packed with conservatives.

Those conservatives on the high court – and especially Amy Coney Barrett, the Catholic judge soon to be confirmed to the Supreme Court – should heed the pope’s advice.

After all, it’s what America wants.

Most Americans – 70% – support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marrylegally, according to the American Values Survey released this week. Twenty-eight percent oppose it.

Democrats and independents overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage, 80% to 76% respectively, while 50% of Republicans support it, the survey showed.

That tells me same-sex marriage has a good chance of remaining the law of the land. But just in case, Pope Francis should invite Amy Coney Barrett to the Vatican for a chat.

Good Catholics listen to the pope, right? (Arizona Republic)

“I wasn’t planning to feature more Pope/Civil Union cartoons, but Graeme MacKay (Hamilton Spectator)captures some relevant matters here. The obvious one is the absurd hypocrisy of accusing Democrats of bigotry for opposing Barrett’s nomination on religious grounds, given that their presidential candidate is a devout Catholic, and I did get a chuckle.”

Thursday, October 9, 2014

October 8, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, the Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, October 9, 2014

Pope gets crash course in joys of sex

Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops from around the world got an unexpected lecture on the joys of sex, from a Catholic couple brought in to talk about what makes a marriage last.

Ron and Mavis Pirola, parents of four from Sydney, Australia, told a Vatican gathering of some 200 prelates that sexual attraction brought them together 57 years ago and that sex has helped keep them married for 55 years.

“The little things we did for each other, the telephone calls and love notes, the way we planned our day around each other and the things we shared were outward expressions of our longing to be intimate with each other,” the couple said in a joint statement to the closed meeting late Monday.

“Gradually we came to see that the only feature that distinguishes our sacramental relationship from that of any other good Christ-centred relationship is sexual intimacy, and that marriage is a sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse.”

The audience of celibate men was a bit taken aback.

“That’s not what we bishops talk about mostly, quite honestly,” a sheepish British Cardinal Vincent Nichols told reporters Tuesday. “But to hear that as the opening contribution did, I think, open an area … and it was a recognition that that is central to the well-being of marriage often.”

Francis called the two-week meeting of bishops to try to figure out how to make church teaching on a host of Catholic family issues — marriage, divorce, homosexuality and yes, sex — more relevant to today’s Catholics.

Several of the bishops complained the Vatican’s own teachings on sexual matters are often impenetrable to ordinary people. The Vatican’s main document on sex, the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, lays out the church’s opposition to artificial contraception with complicated moral theological arguments and 41 footnotes.

The Pirolas told the gathering that they occasionally read church documents on family matters, “but they seemed to be from another planet, with difficult language and not terribly relevant to our own experiences.” (Source: Toronto Star)

Saturday, September 21, 2013

September 21, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, September 21, 2013

Pope Francis blasts abortion as part of ‘throw-away culture’

Pope Francis offered an olive branch of sorts to the doctrine-minded, conservative wing of the Catholic Church on Friday as he denounced abortion as a symptom of today’s “throw-away culture” and encouraged Catholic doctors to refuse to perform them.

Francis issued a strong anti-abortion message and cited Vatican teaching on the need to defend the unborn during an audience with Catholic gynecologists.

It came a day after he was quoted as blasting the church’s obsession with “small-minded rules” that are driving the faithful away and urging it to focus instead on being merciful and welcoming — an interview that has sent shock waves throughout the church.

Even before the interview was published, conservatives had voiced disappointment that Francis had shied away from restating church rules on such hot-button issues as abortion, homosexuality and gay marriage. Francis explained his reason for doing so in the interview with the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, saying church teaching on such issues is well-known, he supports it, but that he doesn’t feel it necessary to repeat it constantly.

He did repeat that message on Friday, however. In his comments, Francis denounced today’s “throw-away culture” that justifies disposing of lives, and said doctors in particular had been forced into situations where they are called to “not respect life.”

“Every child that isn’t born, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord,” he said.
He urged the gynecologists to abide by their consciences and help bring lives into the world. “Things have a price and can be for sale, but people have a dignity that is priceless and worth far more than things,” he said. (Source: CBC News)

FEEDBACK

This cartoon was featured on Yahoo! Canada News, with a bit of discussion on its Facebook Page. Lots of likes and a few comments were left in its link on Cagle Cartoons. It also showed up on a blog called the American Catholic. A positive letter was printed in the September 24th edition of the Hamilton Spectator: “With regard to Saturday’s editorial cartoon featuring the Pope, a big bouquet to Graeme MacKay for a witty, timely, insightful comment.” – Keith Moody, Binbrook