More Churches Up in Flames in Canada as Outrage Against Catholic Church Grows

[EPW]

Not outlandish at all. The whole idea of these schools was to eliminate native culture(and no, they were not optional). If a large % of the kids died of "natural causes", so much the better. This happened all over the western world btw, not just canada.

[Berzerker]

obviously these schools were culturally cleansing the Indians of their heritage and guilty of various other abuses but I suspect these burials mostly coincided with waves of disease sweeping thru communities. Shouldn't there still be Indians who survived to tell us what happened?

[Uncle Sparky]

And that's what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did (http://www.trc.ca/). However, if you ask a sixty year old what happened at their school when they were 6 years old, you probably won't get the kind of testimony that would hold up in court.
Besides, the first thing the churches did when the children arrived is give them proper Christian names and forbid them from speaking their own languages. Maybe Gideon (age 8) died one winter, but who was Gideon? No one named Gideon left any of the reserves... So no one would be notified of Gideon's death.
The thing you need to know is these were schools, with cemeteries for students with unmarked graves... None of the schools I went to had unmarked graves on the schoolgrounds - did yours?
Parents were frequently not informed if their kids died... Why bother? They were heathen, right?

[EPW]

The schools were cramped, the CHILDREN were underfed and forced to work in the fields. It was a perfect storm for infectious diseases to sweep through.

We instil in them a pronounced distaste for the native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origins. When they graduate from our institutions, the children have lost everything Native except their blood. -Bishop Grandin

[Berzerker]

wow, that sucks

[Jon Miller]

Sounds like this is very similar to what the US (and Europeans before) did outside of Canada. In Canada it was done as 'assistance' and was abetted by the Catholic Church (and others churches, and outside of Canada it was also at times abetted by religious groups).

Shame on the Catholics, but the main group at fault is the Canadian government (and in the US, the US government). The fact that the Canadian government seems to encourage assigning primary culpability to the Catholic Church is despicable.

I don't understand why the Media (and the Liberal Media, who has known the proper primary culpability for decades) is going along with this.

JM
(and I do consider it as related to genocide, similar to what is taking place in China now.)

[Elok]

I second what JM said; also, it's unclear to me what new information this brought to light about the schools. Were Canadians previously unaware that a lot of kids died in these schools? Did they previously assume the dead were sent home to their families to be buried? This sounds like fresh evidence of crimes that were already common knowledge.

[Uncle Sparky]

You do all realize that the burning of churches is a recent Canadian reaction to colonization (a game I really didn't like btw), but the mistreatment of 1st nations isn't a uniquely Canadian thing.

In answer to Elok, yes, every now and then since the 1910s the Canadian government has had inquiries, set up committees, written papers, amended legislation, curbed some of the worst excesses, etc., but only did whatever they thought the minimum necessary was at the time. Consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments have moved the bar as slowly as possible, though Liberal governments had tended to apologize more often, with a more sincere sound. Canadians, for the most part, did not know or care about the conditions in residential schools, or assumed the conditions were better than on many of the reserves the children came from. And since Canada, like the US, for the most part moved the 1st nations off of 'good' arable land, and into marginal (or worse) land, a nice church run school on the prairies must have been nicer than where they lived.

And of course until fairly recently (1970s), who would Dare question the Church... if the Church said they were acting in the best interest of the children, who would argue? If the police were told a priest was raping children, who would the police believe, a 'savage' (maybe a minor) or a Man of God?

Final point, the village of Lytton that had 90% damage from a fire last week, that BK blamed on church burning protesters; the investigation has it narrowed down to one of two trains that passes south of the town the day of the fire. One (or possibly both) sparked and ignited extremely dry brush in the area causing a forest fire.

[Jon Miller]

Your perspective seems to agree with mine, and it is important to point out that the governments actions were abetted by the Catholic Church if that had been forgotten somehow (But it is mentioned (for the US) in the older (decades old) children's books we borrow from the library and it had reached me before I turned 20). But then maybe you can answer why there seems to be this 'shock' (with associated attacks against Catholic symbols including former symbols which have not been Catholic for a long time?) and why Trudeau was saying that the Pope needed to come to Canada to apologize when the prime responsibility is with the government who has a very mixed record including with accepting culpability?

JM

[Dauphin]

JM, possibly because: 1)The Canadian government issued formal apologies over a decade ago and so has acknowledged its role, 2) The Catholic Church has not issued an apology or acknowledged it’s role and 3) most Canadians (rightly or wrongly) blame the church.

This is not to say the government isn’t shifting blame, but having the church acknowledge is an important step - as shown by the sentiment of public opinion.

[Dauphin]

Also to add, other denominations have also apologised.

[Jon Miller]

I thought that there was recognition on the part of the Catholic Church in Canada, as seen by the effort to raise money for the victims (this did not come out right, which is bad, but I don't know details and it doesn't change the point that some responsibility was acknowledged by some portion of the Catholic Church in Canada)?

Isn't having the head of Canada (who has primary responsibility of the schools) requiring that the Pope of the global Catholic Church, in which the Canadian Catholic Church is a very small and minor component of which it has partial responsibility over leadership but not over running the actual schools, to personally come to Canada to apologize a bit disingenuous?

JM

[Dauphin]

Depends on who you ask and who is doing it. I personally don’t think the government should be demanding it. I also think the church in Rome should be atoning.

Indigenous communities have demanded it, and it was an outcome of the commission to obtain it (similar to the pedophile cases in Ireland). They also gain financially bu getting it.

Some have genuine motives. Others have disingenuous motives. Is asking for something you believe wrong simply because you have a non-independent position? People can make that decision themselves.

[Jon Miller]

I think the pedophile case is something different. That is a worldwide problem, the Catholic Church has primary culpability (it isn't a function of a specific government (or even specific governments) asking the Catholic Church to do something wrong and the Catholic Church taking part) and that even the individual metropolitan and episcopal sees have not admitted culpability/responsibility.

It is an important difference. I think that the Catholic Church should atone for the global problems of pedophile and the abuse by missionaries but the specific problem of the schools in Canada seems like like it belongs to the relevant sees and the Canadian government.

If you say the pope needs to come and apologize, then what about the millions of other local abuses? It seems like local authority should make local atonement and global authority should make global atonement.

JM

[Dauphin]

https://www.vatican.va/content/bened...h-ireland.html

The Pope, specifcally to the people of Ireland:

I must also express my conviction that, in order to recover from this grievous wound, the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children. Such an acknowledgement, accompanied by sincere sorrow for the damage caused to these victims and their families, must lead to a concerted effort to ensure the protection of children from similar crimes in the future.

.....

Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape from your sufferings

......

To priests and religious who have abused children. You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your confreres.

Plenty to pick out from the letter, but those seemed apt and analagous. Something similar would be of value to some people, whether or not you or I believe it is warranted.

[Jon Miller]

Hmm, yeah, I think I can see your point.

And maybe it would be good if the pope went everywhere apologizing for a few decades.

JM