Non Est Veritas
"Guilt which remains guilt is dangerous.
It will become too heavy a burden sooner or later,
and may in the end result in blaming the victim…
We must help our students transform their sense of guilt
into a sense of responsibility, for the present and the future."
Holocaust historian Eva Fleischner
NON EST VERITAS PRESS SPECIAL REPORT. (Vatican City – 8/14/20220)
Several hundred American and Canadian Roman Catholics, booing and shouting invectives, interrupted Pope Francis’s traditional Angelus prayer on Sunday, loudly denouncing the pontiff as a heretic, Marxist and anti-Catholic because, they said, he preaches Critical Race Theory.
He responded by pointing and speaking directly to the demonstrators while quoting St. Francis of Assisi: “May the Lord grant you his peace.”
Pennsylvanian Lewis Charles Levin, spokesperson for the self-proclaimed “politically and theologically conservative real Catholics,” declared that the pope’s recent “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada “was nothing more than ‘woke’ theatre designed to make liberals feel good and the rest of us feel ashamed and guilty for being White.”
“He’s forcing Critical Race Theory into the Church and Canada,” declared Canadian Kraft Dinner. “He just wants our children to feel shame about what happened to those people.”
The irate Catholics, some of whom travelled almost 5,000 miles to express their disapproval of the pope’s “penitential pilgrimage” to meet with representatives of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, called Francis a “fake pope” displaying “fake guilt.”
“If he recognizes a ‘sin’ against the Indians in Canada, what’s he going to say about slaves in the United States,” demanded on protester. “That was years ago. Why is he bringing it up now?”
“It’s like we got rid of slavery. Why do people keep bringing up the lynchings or segregation? It’s just to make white people feel guilty – just what the pope is doing in Canada,” said an American..
You’re right. The story is genuinely fake news. We didn’t even put fake news in quotes. And, just for fun, see if you understand the jokes in the two names.
But the point is profoundly serious and especially applicable and important as we anticipate charges of “wokeness” and “teaching CRT” to take center stage during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.
We believe that people of Faith and no faith would do well to arm themselves with a sense of history in order to respond intelligently to volatile accusations of “wokeness” – if that can ever be defined – and “spreading CRT,” which has always been a law school course and was never taught in American elementary and high schools.
So, some history – and, hopefully, some understanding.
As a result of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, - the largest class action settlement in Canadian history, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to determine what happened to the 150,000 First Nation, Metis and Inuit children separated from their families and forced into 138 residential schools, 60 percent of which were run by Roman Catholic priests, Sisters and religious Brothers between 1883 and 1979. In 20115, the TRC reported, “Residential schooling was always more than simply an educational program: it was an integral part of a conscious policy of cultural genocide.”
In 1907, Saturday Night magazine reported “Indian boys and girls are dying like flies… Even war seldom shows as large a percentage of fatalities as does the education system we have imposed on our Indian wards.”
Children were stripped from their families and cultures, denied their traditional clothing, punished for using their tribal languages, and forced to convert to Christianity. More than 6,000 children – one-in-25 - died in these schools. Tuberculosis and influenza were the primary killers. Neglect, physical and sexual abuse, lack of food, isolation from family and badly constructed buildings were often factors in child deaths. At least 40 children died in school fires.
Nearly 38,000 claims of physical and/or sexual abuse have been recognized by the government and four supervisors at the Grollier Hall residential school – 1958-1979 – were convicted of sexually abusing children.
The TRC received 6,750 statements from witnesses, recorded 1,355 hours of testimony and produced a six-volume report.
The TRC called on Pope Francs to apologize to the survivors and their families “for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit and Metis children in Catholic-run residential schools.” The Commission was echoed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament.
But papal visits normally follow an invitation from the national bishops’ conference and some bishops balked, frequently citing the popes age and health and the complexity of mounting a high visibility papal visit. – generally recognized as flimsy excuses in view of Francis’s trip to Iraq during a pandemic and in light of his other planned pilgrimages. Some bishops even called Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 apology to a delegation from the Assembly of First Nations sufficient.
By mid-2021, the TRC’s findings, the recognition that more than 4,000 children remain missing, and the discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked graves of Indigenous children at four residential schools put the lie to the bishops’ conference denial of culpability. Indigenous leaders, Trudeau and Parliament began to call on the pope to apologize on Canadian grounds and not to a small delegation of Indigenous leaders in the Vatican.
Pope Francis’s “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada reflects his 2015 journey to Bolivia, where he showed a willingness to apologize for the Church’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and its role in colonialism.
On Monday, July 25, Pope Francis said he was “deeply sorry” for his Church’s “catastrophic” role in the “cultural destruction of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples… I am sorry. I ask for forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the systems of residential schools.”
After praying in the cemetery grounds believed to hold the remains of Ermineskin Residential School students, Francis told the gathered community:
“I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to express my closeness and to pray with you and for you…
“The place where we are gathered renews within me the deep sense of pain and remorse that I have felt… I think back on the tragic situations that so many of you, your families and your communities have known; of what you shared with me about the suffering you endured in the residential schools. These are traumas that are in some way reawakened whenever the subject comes up; I realize too that our meeting today can bring back old memories and hurts, and that many of you may feel uncomfortable even as I speak. Yet it is right to remember, because forgetfulness leads to indifference and, as has been said, ‘the opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference… and the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference’ (Elie Wiesel). To remember the devastating experiences that took place in the residential schools hurts, angers, causes pain, and yet it is necessary...
“I thank you for making me appreciate this, for telling me about the heavy burdens that you still bear, for sharing with me these bitter memories. Today I am here, in this land that, along with its ancient memories, preserves the scars of still open wounds. I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry. Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous Peoples…
“What our Christian faith tells us is that this was a disastrous error, incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is painful to think of how the firm soil of values, language and culture that made up the authentic identity of your peoples was eroded, and that you have continued to pay the price of this. In the face of this deplorable evil, the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children. I myself wish to reaffirm this, with shame and unambiguously. I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples…
“Dear brothers and sisters, many of you and your representatives have stated that begging pardon is not the end of the matter. I fully agree: that is only the first step, the starting point. I also recognize that, ‘looking to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient’ and that, ‘looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening’ (Letter to the People of God, Aug. 20, 2018). An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered.
“On this first step of my journey, I have wanted to make space for memory. Here, today, I am with you to recall the past, to grieve with you, to bow our heads together in silence and to pray before the graves. Let us allow these moments of silence to help us interiorize our pain. Silence. And prayer.
“In the face of evil, we pray to the Lord of goodness; in the face of death, we pray to the God of life. Our Lord Jesus Christ took a grave, which seemed the burial place of every hope and dream, leaving behind only sorrow, pain and resignation, and made it a place of rebirth and resurrection, the beginning of a history of new life and universal reconciliation….”
In coming weeks, politicians and their supporters will attempt to garner votes with false claims of “Critical Race Theory” being taught in schools. They will attempt to secure power by declaring “that was so long ago” and “forget about it,” while disingenuously asking “Why are you bringing that up now?” Too many self-described “faithful Christians” will forget Pope Francis’s words: “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors…”
“A serious investigation into the facts” and history of what author Jim Willis has called “America’s Original Sin” might, allow – in Pope Francis’s words - “the beginning of a history of new life and universal reconciliation.”