No Church, No Liturgy
By DONALD DeMARCO
The ongoing discussion concerning the liturgy has been welcomed, insightful, informative, and productive. All the while it has been taken for granted that there would be a church in which the liturgy would be celebrated. That was never an item for discussion. This assumption that liturgy would have its proper home, however, is being called into question these days in Canada.
As of July 7, 2021, the unmarked graves of children at the now-closed Kamloops Indian Residential School located in British Columbia have resulted in at least 35 churches, most of them Catholic, being set afire or vandalized. Five Catholic churches have been burned to the ground.
Arson and vandalism are never justifiable. They were, however, rationalized, as some kind of act of reparation for the bodies of children that had been discovered in unmarked graves. Overreaction, jumping to conclusions, together with an antipathy toward Catholics, rather than logic and common sense, fueled these destructive, nay, sacrilegious, actions.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was silent for three weeks after the burnings had begun. He finally made the comment that the conflagrations were “understandable,” a remark soon echoed by his former right-hand-man, Gerry Butts. From a dubious political perspective, it seems important for the Liberal government not to alienate vandals and arsonists, while it seems permissible to ignore and even unfairly implicate Catholics. Nonetheless, there is no clear and definitive evidence that Catholic teachers had been acting in a grossly irresponsible way. Columnist Terry Glavin, responding to these recent comments, asked whether it would even become “politically expedient to shrug off the burning of mosques and synagogues.”
Indigenous journalists were calling upon Pope Francis for an apology. No apology was forthcoming for the simple fact that Catholic guilt had not been established. To the Holy Father’s credit, he did not capitulate to ideological pressure.
The evident hostility to Catholics reached a highpoint in a statement made by Harsha Walia, an indigenous person and executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. “Burn it all down,” she said. Her tweet came the same day that centuries-old St. Jean Baptiste Parish in Morinville, Alberta, was reduced to ashes. Walia has a strange sense of liberty in calling for the abolition of the rights that perfectly innocent Christians, including indigenous citizens, have to attend their houses of worship.
British Columbia Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth felt that Walia’s comment had crossed the line. He stated that it is “just disgusting and reprehensible that somebody who heads up an organization like that would make such comments…vile beyond belief.”
Chris Sankey, a Tsimshian First Nation entrepreneur and indigenous relations consultant, declared that Walia should resign. “You are encouraging violence and hate,” he stated, “and if that’s what you’re trying to do you have no business having any sort of platform whatsoever. . . . That’s not who we are as Indigenous people.”
The residential school system was founded by the secular government in the nineteenth century. It was woefully underfunded by the government. Although different religious groups were asked to operate the schools, the Catholic Church has borne the brunt of recent criticism. Distinguished Catholic artist and novelist Michael O’Brien attended residential schools. He testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the chief underlying issue in the residential school saga was the institutional abuse of children being removed from their families by the state authorities, and then taken to the schools, noting the “long-term psychological and social effects of this.” After arriving at the school, children rarely saw their families again.
In the rush to judgment against Catholics, the mainstream media have ignored a number of important facts. Citing costs, the Department of Indian Affairs is reported to have refused to ship home the bodies of children who died at the government-mandated schools. There were high child mortality rates during the early 1900s. Despite this fact, the Canadian government ignored an inspector’s warning in 1907 that residential schools were home to “prime conditions” for “outbreaks of epidemics.” A report in the early 1900s by a medical inspector showed high rates of tuberculosis among Indigenous children.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report found that the number one reason for the children’s deaths was disease, including tuberculosis. There is evidence that the deceased children were not buried in unmarked graves. The wooden markers could very well have decomposed over time.
The residential schools were not as unsuccessful as the media have painted them to be. Cree playwright Tomson Highway, as well as the late Inuvik Dene band chief Cece Hodgson-McCauley, agreed that attending residential schools set them up for success in their adult life. James Risdon is an indigenous Métis man and a Catholic. He told Epoch News (July 8-14) that “the recent attacks on Roman Catholic churches horrify me. But perhaps more than the actual burning of churches, is the rationalizations on social media that are the most frightening of all.” Unfortunately, the lie that presumptive abuses in residential schools of the past justify violence and hatred is catching on.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission retained Dr. Scott Hamilton from the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario to address the question of deceased children who had attended in residential schools and were buried on school lands. His 44-page report tells a very different story than the perceptions created by the mainstream media. According to Dr. Hamilton, communicable diseases were a primary cause of poor health and death for many Aboriginal people during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tuberculosis, for which there was no cure, was rampant during this period. Furthermore, it affected aboriginals more than other Canadians since the former had limited resistance to the European newcomers’ diseases.
The poor living conditions within the residential schools increased the problem. Some children may have contracted contagious diseases prior to attending the schools. Poorly constructed residential schools built by the Department of Indian Affairs (and not by various churches) only increased the problem. Dr. Peter Bryce, the chief medical officer for Indian Affairs noted, in 1906, that “the Indian population of Canada had a mortality rate of more than double that of the whole population.” Tuberculosis and the Spanish flu were epidemic during those years.
Prejudice fueled by media bias and tolerated by a lethargic government, can be inflammatory. Much spiritual damage has been done to both indigenous as well as non-indigenous Catholics. When more facts are unearthed, tempers may be quieted. One hopes and prays that the devastated churches will be rebuilt and harmony will replace hatred. The road, however, may be long and steep. Churches with liturgies now have added responsibilities.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus, St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review and is the author of forty books. One of his latest books, The 12 Supporting Pillars of the Culture of Life and Why They Are Crumbling, is posted on amazon.com. His fortieth book, Glimmers of Hope in a Darkening World, is now available.)