Indian Residential Schools
Up here in Canada there is big news about the government making an official apology to natives in residential schools. What happened is that in 1870 the Government of Canada, in association with the Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian churches, had a policy of removing Indian children from their homes and forcibly putting them into boarding schools. There they were educated, taught the white language and culture, and indoctrinated into the Christian faith.
This policy ran for over 100 years and was pretty much a complete disaster. It turns out governments and churches are not as good at raising children as the child’s own mother and father. Some people were even smart enough to know that but it was even worse than their worst fears. Abuse was so common in those schools it makes you truly wonder how these churches could have done so badly. It is one reason why I have never seen the US priest sex abuse scandal as being a big deal. This case is so much worse. The numbers are scary. To make matters worse the government forced these children to live with their abusers. Even survivors of the abuse who later had families of their own had those kids taken away and sent back to those same schools.
The government has apologized and that is right. The Anglican, United, and Presbyterian churches have done so as well. The CBC reported last night that the Catholic church has not. There are some legal issues around apologies. So that may have to wait until the matter is no longer before the courts. Cardinal Ouellet from Quebec did apologize more broadly for the sins of the church including saying “youngsters were subject to sexual aggression by priests and religious figures.” Still a specific apology about this scandal would be a good idea.
On reflecting on this it is important to make some distinctions. It takes me back to Pope Benedict’s doctrinal note that I comment on here. What he talks about is how to interact with other faiths. He sees two dangers. One is conversions that are in some way forced or coerced. That is part of what the residential schools were about. They were trying to make them Christians but they were going about it the wrong way. We need to respect human freedom and dignity when we evangelize. We must not prevent them from being exposed to people of other faiths. We must show the Catholic faith and allow it’s beauty and the Holy Spirit to draw them to it. Here we showed them the ugliness of sexual abuse and associated it with the gospel of Christ. Not surprisingly, many natives were repulsed by the idea of becoming Christian. It was the very opposite of evangelism. There was plenty of coercion so they looked like good Catholics. But it only lasted as long as the teachers had power over these kids. Most left the faith shortly after.
The other danger Pope Benedict point out is the one we seem to be falling into now. That is the danger of doctrinal indifferentism. The notion that one spirituality is as good as another. You hear this a lot from government and native sources. The idea that the Indian spirituality is just as valid and good as Christian spirituality. That does not follow. There is truth and goodness in all faiths but the Catholic faith has the fullness of truth. It is better because it recognizes Jesus, it has the scriptures, it has sacred tradition, and it has true sacraments. These are things that are missing in native spirituality and because of that it is inherently inferior.
The point is we need to let people figure this out for themselves. We need to respect a marketplace of ideas when it comes to religions. We can make the truth claims of Catholicism and logically show how they are superior to the truth claims of other belief systems. We cannot shut out or misrepresent other faiths. We need to expect that not everyone will be Catholic. We need to interact with other faiths, listen to them and learn from them. Then we need to let the Holy Spirit draw them towards the fullness of truth. Always being as positive and charitable towards the other faiths as we can.
One thing Prime Minister Harper said a few times is that the state should never again use its power to try and prevent parents from teaching their faith to their children. I fear we are beginning to do exactly that. We have Mennonite families leaving Quebec to avoid being forced to educate their children in evolution and homosexuality. We have atheists saying that teaching your children about sin and hell is child abuse. We say we believe in these principles but we discard them pretty quick as well. It is more complicated than that. Moslem parents do not have the right to teach their kids to hate Jews. So there is a basic morality that the state must enforce. Where does it come from? The answer is natural law. But we haven’t thought this through so we are still violating the parental principle willy-nilly. We need to refine the principle so we can follow it consistently. That way when someone says you have to teach your kids that gay marriage is OK you can actually explain why that is not so.
