Sunday April 10, 2022
The world changed last Friday. Pope Francis asked Canada’s indigenous peoples to forgive his church.
News coverage, generally, focussed on the reactions of indigenous leaders. That’s understandable, given their repeated demands for an apology.
“This moment… reflects the determination and courage of many that kept up the fight over the years,” former national chief Phil Fontaine commented.
Indigenous leaders have kept the residential school issue before the public. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Justice Murray Sinclair heard more than 6,500 testimonies from survivors. Ground-seeking radar identified close to a thousand bodies buried in unmarked graves on lands around those schools. Court cases documented physical and sexual abuse.
So we were kept well informed about the need for an apology.
But we have not heard how – or if – theological understandings have been changing in the Vatican.
And that, to my mind, is the overlooked news from the papal apology.
A key sentence
Three-quarters of Pope Francis’s speech to the 200 or so indigenous representatives seated with him just rehashed known history.
One section broke tradition: “I…feel shame,” the Pope admitted. “I feel shame – sorrow and shame – for the role that a number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had in all these things that wounded you, in the abuses you suffered and in the lack of respect shown for your identity, your culture and even your spiritual values. All these things are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“For the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart: I am very sorry. And I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon.”
To me – an outsider, a non-Catholic – those are the key words: “I join my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon.”
Traditionally, Catholics came to their Church to confess their sins, and to seek forgiveness.
With his words, Pope Francis turned that tradition upside down.
He asked the laity to forgive the Church.
It is an astounding reversal of roles.
The Body of Christ
From what I can read and comprehend, Catholic tradition presumes that the Church (with a capital C) cannot do wrong.
If the Church is the “body of Christ,” and if – for reasons too complex expound here –Christ himself must be sinless, then the Body of Christ must also be sinless.
The wording of Pope Francis’ “confession” – perhaps deliberately – does not deal with the implications of his statement.
When he said, “I am sorry,” he could be speaking as St. Peter’s successor, the embodiment of the Church as a whole. Or he could be speaking as an individual, finally aware of the suffering inflicted by some of his Church’s members.
Similarly, he might be apologizing for the actions of a small group of people serving on behalf of the whole Church –who, charitably, might have resented being sent to remote and isolated corners of Canada, performing tasks they had not asked for, without adequate financial or moral support, taking out their frustrations on the children in their charge. Or he could be apologizing for the institution itself, of which he is titular head.
Authority to discriminate
Jeremy Bergen, associate professor at Conrad Grebel College in the University of Waterloo, noted a significant omission: “The Pope did not acknowledge that the church as an institution embraced assimilationist policy in its decision to run the schools [for the Canadian government]. The Catholic Church as an institution was an agent of harm. But Pope Francis avoided saying this.”
Indeed, it could be argued that a decree by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 set the stage for residential schools – among other evils. Alexander’s document Inter Caetera, which means “among the others,” commonly called the Doctrine of Discovery, divided the new lands discovered by Columbus the year before between Spain and Portugal.
It also specifically authorized Europeans to colonize, convert, and enslave the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
The French and British used Alexander’s authorization within North America, as justification for taking over indigenous territories and forcibly assimilating “pagan” peoples into a Euro-Christian culture.
They conveniently ignored another papal decree known as Sublimus Deus, 44 years later, which defined native peoples as rational human beings with rights to freedom and property, and prohibited slavery.
I’m pleased that Pope Francis broke with tradition by offering a personal apology to his indigenous visitors. I’m disappointed that he didn’t acknowledge the extent to which his Church helped to establish the climate that made his apology necessary.
*******************************************************
Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
********************************************************
Your turn
The primary focus of last week’s column was (I thought) the slowness of institutions like the military (also police, etc.) to change. Most of you got that.
Kim MacMillan: “Cultures change very slowly and almost not at all in response to edicts from above. There is another factor at work in jobs like the military and the police. Both institutions are founded on potential of and training for violence, even if the hope is that it will be used in the service of peace. It’s not a surprise that it will attract the hyper-masculine, though I would not suggest that all soldiers and police officers are that. But it is about force, since they are called the police force and the armed forces. I do not at all condone misogyny and I think we have no choice but to use the law and policies to deal with it. Sometimes I think it’s unfair to ‘throw the book’ at someone who is the product of living their whole life in that culture -- not that it sounds like the book was thrown at Vance…”
Isabel Gibson also agreed: “Yes, it takes time to change institutions.
“Yes, male/female sexual impulses are, on average, different. Simplistically, at least, the differences are driven by our different biologies in which male genes are rewarded for pursuing quantity in partners, females for pursuing quality. But how those basic impulses translate into behaviour is not as clear or as straight-line as we might like. We can and do override our impulses frequently.
“For me the tipping-point factor is power differentials. Most men can't help but bring physical-power advantages to interactions with most women; men in senior positions bring additional institutional-power advantages to all their dealings.
“Taking at face value all the reporting about Vance, I'd say he violated the law, societal standards of decency, military standards of conduct, and his own marriage vows. I'd also say that the Canadian Armed Forces -- knowing the exact same things about people and power that I know -- failed as an institution. They can't make people behave well, but they can put in place systems that push back faster and more effectively.
“It takes time, and it is time.”
Vera Gottleib got right to the point: “What is with you men??? Can’t you keep your fly zipped up?”
Several writers told me I was wrong about how long women have been part of our armed forces.
A writer identified only by a coded name: “You are incorrect about the Armed Forces. Women have been part of it for a very long time. I originally joined in 1981. We were limited to around 20 or so non-combat trades at that time. Women make up a little over 15% of the forces and this has not changed since I had joined.
“Quite frankly I prefer it to be a macho organization. I want men who can kill people and fight for their country. We don’t need people whining about feelings. This has no place in the military.”
JD Thomas: “The RCAF had airwomen (called WDs) in the early fifties as well as some officers, usually in admin, plus, of course, the commissioned nurses. The female officers also acted as unofficial counsellors to the female ranks.
“In the mid-sixties, I had three female officers in various sections of my administration purview. plus the nurses.
Tom Wolf: “Your assertion that ‘the Canadian Armed Forces were exclusively male until 1989 is categorically and laughably incorrect. For many decades there have been females and female officers prior to then. The information that you found “somewhere” likely said that in 1991 females were allowed into trades and classifications in the ‘combat arms’ (i.e.. warfighting) that they had previously been prevented from joining.”
JT: Tom is correct. I Googled for females in Canada’s armed forces, and either Google misunderstood my question, or I misunderstood Google’s answer. There have been women in the armed forces since at least 1939; restrictions on their roles ended in 1989.
Tom continued, “It is too bad that you undermined an interesting view of the difficulty of transforming male-dominated organizations. I remember the uproar in the late ‘80s about how women could not be in the combat arms because they couldn’t do the job physically, the male co-workers would be too distracted, too difficult to provide separate bathroom facilities, and that male co-workers would focus less on the mission and more on protecting the females…all nonsense but well entrenched!!! When I served in Afghanistan in 2009, I never heard a word about any of that junk and worked with some spectacularly capable females (and others!). Having said that, I certainly agree that organizations (male-dominated or not) are resistant to change and that male-dominated ones like the army are likely most resistant to change.”
Others letters chose to focus on the justice, or lack of it, in the trial and sentencing of Gen. Vance.
Tom Watson: “I'm not clear how you plead guilty to a crime and end up without a criminal record.”
Steve Roney: “It seems to me there is something wrong with how we are looking at the General Vance affair. It takes two to have sex. This was a longstanding consensual relationship. Why is it all his fault, and the other party a victim?
“The argument, no doubt, is that there was an imbalance in power. He was illegitimately trading power for sex. But why is this wrong, yet it is okay to trade sex for power, as the woman was doing? Why is one immoral, and the other admirable?
“Vance was more likely trading power for intimacy, for an emotional bond, for the illusion of being loved. And how much power did he actually have over his ‘victim’ in the relationship? Given that the present society always blames the man, the woman had absolute control: if she did not get what she wanted out of the relationship, she could blackmail him at any time. As, it seems, she ultimately did. Apparently, she was recording his phone calls for this purpose.
“While paternity tests show that one of Brennan’s two children is Vance’s, these same tests show that a second, that she claimed was his, was not. In other words, we also discover she was not being faithful to the relationship, and was trying to get him to pay support for a child who was not his.
“Apart from who is to blame, or more to blame, in this case, this is all a good illustration of why it is best to avoid sexual entanglements in the workplace. Traditionally, we did this by segregating the sexes. Now by integrating the sexes in the workplace we have opened a hogshead of worms.”
Duane Martin has done extensive research about male/female abuse. He has the statistics to prove that women are just as likely to abuse men (in a variety of ways) as men are to abuse women. I can’t include them all here. I also feel that I can speak, as a male, about male abuse; I would find it harder to speak, as a male, criticizing female abuse.
Duane wrote, “We never hear about male side of the coin in the main stream media despite their relevance and importance to the welfare of boys and men. Your articles tend to be favourable towards women and unfavourable towards men. The one sure thing that life has taught me in my 75 years is that there are good people, and there are bad people, and gender has nothing to do with it.”
Finally, Mirza Yawar Baig focused on the language issue. He listed some other elements of language bias: “White money vs black money, black sheep, dark horse, darkness of misguidance and light (white?) of guidance, dark despair, dark thoughts, black mark, black market, white knight in shining armour – these are all as old as history. About the only positive black thing in our highly racist English language is to be in the black in your account books. And the opposite of that should be white, right? Wrong. It is red.”
******************************************
TECHNICAL STUFF
If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the ‘Reply’ button.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedges-unsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.
You can now access current columns and seven years of archives at http://quixotic.ca
I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
And for those of you who like poetry, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)
********************************************
PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns