Archbishop Miller and Bishop Nguyen of Kamloops have both come out with eloquent authentic, sincere apologies for the victims of the Kamloops Residential School.
In contrast, the Pope’s statement, after a long silence, seems wanting in spontaneity and authenticity. Expressing “sorrow or regret” while showing sympathy is not the same as an apology. An apology is a regretful acknowledgment of an offence or failure. It accepts responsibility. That is missing from the Pope’s recent statement.
When Jesus asked us to go out and evangelize, clearly he never meant this to include force, taking children away from parents and taking away Indigenous language and culture. In Matthew 10:14, Jesus tells us to shake the dust from our feet where not welcomed.
While many in the Church including lay members, parishes, Catholic schools and bishops are taking genuine steps of reconciliation with our Indigenous people, the apology and true reconciliation must come from the Pope, given that he is the official head of our Church.
Surely silence and hesitant delays are not the will of the Holy Spirit nor in the teachings of Jesus Christ. This is hurting not only the residential school victims and families, but also the integrity and credibility of our Church. It is deeply embarrassing and contrary to true faith.
I urge all Catholics across our land to write the Holy See, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Catholic media in a clear voice requesting the needed papal apology on our soil sooner rather than later.
Oscar Raasveldt
Port Coquitlam
I am a parishioner of St. Augustine’s in Kitsilano. It was vandalized on the evening of June 12, with “Murderers,” “Release the documents,” and “215” spray painted on the front door. Orange papers with “The Catholic Church murders babies” and “The government is responsible too” were plastered on the windows.
When I arrived for the 9 a.m. Mass on June 13, I was initially shocked. Then, I was deeply saddened. What was spray painted and plastered on the walls of the church was true.
The church must bear the condemnation, and condemn along with it too. It is good to condemn those who perpetrated the heinous crime of the residential school system and all the crimes of neglect and abuse that occurred within it. I hope the vandalism does not illicit anger against those who committed the vandalism. I cry with the same cry of justice in my prayers. It is a deep and abiding cry for justice for righting wrongs – for the action of reconciliation.
Indeed, let us pray and let that prayer become our very action.
Ian Kent
Vancouver
As a Catholic I have a major problem asking my Church to apologize for the deaths and burials of those poor Kamloops children.
Responsibilities lie with the governments and with those responsible for funding and for shovelling the graves. The unpaid sisters who volunteered at the schools were there to help children have better lives in their futures.
Pat Cash
Delta
The discovery of those graves added another tear-filled and heart-breaking chapter in the sad history of Canada’s residential schools where the sole aim was to get the “Indian” out of the child. Each grave contained the body of a child – as well as the broken heart of a mother. Each death told a story of suffering, illness, humiliation, and separation from family, terrifying and alone.
Some of the graves told stories of attempts to escape only to die a horrible death from the bitter, extreme cold. The heartbreak over the deaths of these children is more intense because their lives were tragically cut short because their art, culture, and religion were considered inferior to that of the white man. They were even forbidden to speak their own language.
For more than 100 years, governments have been complacent, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cries, pain, heartbreak, anguish, untold sorrow, and mourning for the missing children. It is difficult NOT to remember the words of a bloodied and abused Christ to the women of Jerusalem as he carried his heavy cross to Calvary to be crucified, “Weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children.”
No government for over a century took any action and, as such, John A. Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, and others should be given a failing grade. All those and “great Canadians” have done is to give billions of dollars to the Indigenous people and tell them to keep out of our faces.
Leslie Michael
Maple Ridge
I am a Catholic mother of five. In my 20s, my encounter with Christ changed the course of my life. When I became a mom, I was moved to help shape my culture and actively tried to do so. It is inconceivable to me that other mothers would have had their children ripped from their very arms in the name of this culture, in the name of Christ.
The Catholic Church I love is filled with sinners of which I am one. The hearts of priests I know are broken over the sex abuse scandals and the wicked cover-ups that followed. Now this. Indeed, it is a white martyrdom that confronts them. Still, I am united with them in the words of Peter to Jesus “To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
You and I, our cultures are so different. Under proper circumstances, whittled down to the core, motherhood would unite us. The evil of all this robs us of that. I don’t want evil to prevail.
So this mom, this Catholic, this Canadian, united with so many priests, bishops and parishioners across the country, begs your forgiveness. We apologize. Your precious children deserved to remain with you. Period. They also deserved to know the love of God from the Catholics they encountered. We failed them and you.
Johanne Brownrigg
Ottawa
The discovery of remains at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School has attracted attention across the country and around the world. The following two letters are reprinted from The Catholic Register in Toronto.
I find it very difficult to listen to our prime minister, who seems to divert blame onto another institution to apologize and make reparation when it is comfortable to do so. I did not hear him apologizing for the government’s slow response to the National Inquiry on MMIWG or the integration of the TRC, with only eight of the 94 TRC calls to action implemented.
Cardinal Thomas Collins’ statements and his Mass of June 6 gives again his forthright apology, seeking reconciliation and repentance for past wrongs, without diminishing the evil and the abuse which can never be rationalized against Indigenous peoples, as well as explaining the progress the Church has made in specific areas with Indigenous people in the spirit of forgiveness, repentance and reconciliation and apology.
I did not hear any such hopeful statements from the PM and I believe his diverting blame only to the Catholic Church is comfortable for him; he does not reflect on his own government’s policies of colonialism as well as the slow response of implementation of the two very prominent Canadian concerns for Indigenous people.
Rose Galbraith
Hamilton, Ont.
I am a Catholic mother of five. In my 20s, my encounter with Christ changed the course of my life. When I became a mom, I was moved to help shape my culture and actively tried to do so. It is inconceivable to me that other mothers would have had their children ripped from their very arms in the name of this culture, in the name of Christ.
The Catholic Church I love is filled with sinners of which I am one. The hearts of priests I know are broken over the sex abuse scandals and the wicked cover-ups that followed. Now this. Indeed, it is a white martyrdom that confronts them. Still, I am united with them in the words of Peter to Jesus “To whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
You and I, our cultures are so different. Under proper circumstances, whittled down to the core, motherhood would unite us. The evil of all this robs us of that. I don’t want evil to prevail.
So this mom, this Catholic, this Canadian, united with so many priests, bishops and parishioners across the country, begs your forgiveness. We apologize. Your precious children deserved to remain with you. Period. They also deserved to know the love of God from the Catholics they encountered. We failed them and you.
Johanne Brownrigg
Ottawa
