Today’s news report states that Indigenous, Inuit and Métis leaders are traveling to the Vatican to seek the Pope’s apology for his church’s disgusting treatment of Aboriginal children in schools in Canada. While a noble pursuit, it will in my opinion not succeed in achieving the sought-after result.
The Pope, who represents the Catholic Church, is constrained by the history of the body.
For him to apologize would by extension require him to issue apologies throughout the world, acknowledging the failings of the Church over time in its dealings with native peoples.
Missionaries failed to respect the native cultures they found because it was not in their’s nor the Church’s interest to do so. It was their mission to enslave people through the church’s belief system and supplant the native culture with “western” values.
In Canada this has long been recognized to be the case.
The Church achieved this because it used many methods of force, psychological and physical. The Church’s missionaries accomplished this because it considered natives inferior, dirty, uneducated and spiritually bereft. This attitude was and is not only condescending but morally wrong.
So, for our emissaries to expect the Pope to issue an apology would require him to recognize the failings of his Church in every instance, such as its actions in Central and South America, the Philippines and to the Maoris and the nations of the south Pacific as well as many more.
His apology, if it were to be given, would demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic brand and show it as a house built on sand.
Justin Trudeau, a catholic, called upon the Pope to issue an apology and was rebuffed.
It is not because the Pope is a ‘bad person,’ it is because he bears the full weight of the perfidy of his organization.
Perhaps we should apologize to the Pope for causing him so much consternation.
Wayne Underhill
Chilliwack
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