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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)

Wednesday September 5, 2018

September 4, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 5, 2018

As crisis envelops Catholic Church, is Pope Francis facing a ‘watershed moment’?

ROME For some, the accusations sending tremors through the Catholic Church are a concerted and dubious attack by ultraconservatives on Pope Francis. For others, the accusations are a credible attempt to expose the depths of the Vatican’s struggle to deal transparently with sexual abuse.

March 1, 2016

But at the centre of the divided church is Francis, whose reputation is being challenged by the unverified accusations that he and other Vatican higher-ups had known for years about the sexual misconduct allegations against a now-resigned cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

One week after the release of a scathing 7,000-word letter from Vatican ex-ambassador Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Vatican watchers say Francis — who has yet to directly address the veracity of the accusations — is facing the greatest challenge of his papacy.

Some Catholics have criticized him for what they describe as an insufficient response to the crisis. A few bishops have suggested that he call an extraordinary meeting to address sexual abuse in the church. And he faces pivotal decisions about whether to release abuse-related documents or green-light a who-knew-what investigation into McCarrick — with the possibility that such a probe could point fingers back to the Vatican. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Friday June 12, 2015

June 11, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 12, 2015

Harper meets pope, does not seek apology on residential schools

Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised the troubling findings of the residential schools commission with Pope Francis at the Vatican Thursday, but appeared to have stopped short of inviting him to Canada to apologize.

Instead, Harper referred to a letter sent earlier in the week to the Vatican by his aboriginal affairs minister that merely informed the Holy See of the commission.

“Prime Minister Harper also drew attention to the letter sent by Minister (Bernard) Valcourt to the Holy See regarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Harper’s office said without elaborating.

Harper’s spokesman did not respond to a request for clarification.

A separate readout from the Vatican did not mention the residential schools issue among the topics discussed.

Harper instead chose to pursue the theme that has dominated his six-day trip to Europe — his condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was at the Vatican on Wednesday for his private audience with Francis.

Harper went into the meeting facing calls to use the occasion to secure a papal apology for the church’s role in Canada’s residential school legacy.

Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, says the meeting will be a “prime opportunity” for the prime minister to raise the issue.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spoke to thousands of residential school students and documented their experiences, issued 94 recommendations last week that included a call for a papal apology on Canadian soil. (Source: Toronto Star)

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)

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

March 12, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, March 12, 2013

In final moments before conclave, Cardinal Ouellet makes a call for unity

Canada’s Marc Ouellet and the 114 other elector cardinals enjoyed their last moments of freedom and peace before they disappear Tuesday afternoon into the Vatican’s most hallowed chambers, only to emerge when they have selected the man among them that they judge best suited to guide the battered Catholic Church into a new era.

On Sunday and Monday, cardinals were spotted here and there, some scurrying across St. Peter’s Square, others celebrating masses. At least one was seen walking down the narrow streets just beyond Vatican City, apparently making a quick getaway from the whole mad scene.

The men in the elegant black cassocks, with their red sashes and red caps, are under enormous pressure because there is no obvious front-runner to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who shocked the world when he announced his retirement on Feb. 11, the first pope to do so in almost 600 years. It is likely that some of the cardinals – 24 of whom were appointed just last year and are only now connecting names with faces – still have little idea whom they will endorse.

Cardinal Ouellet was seen in public no fewer than three times since Saturday, twice moving through the vast St. Peter’s Square, where he reportedly elicited little attention, and at Santa Maria in Traspontina church Sunday night, where he celebrated mass before a throng of photographers – but said nothing to the media. Even though the church is no more than a 10-minute walk from St. Peter’s Basilica, he arrived by car. (Source: Globe & Mail)