For Activists, No Apology Is Ever Enough

The Pope’s Penitential Journey Through Canada

Photo by Nacho Arteaga on Unsplash

I mentioned yesterday, that today’s newsletter would go into more detail regarding my latest Op-Ed for True North, Unmarked Graves: Money or Justice? - co-written with Tom Flanagan and Brian Giesbrecht. I have written the commentary as promised, including a little background on Brian and Tom, but must defer it one more day. Since Pope Francis is in Canada, apologizing for Indian Residential Schools, I thought todays indigenous file should deal with his holiness.

Let’s begin - You can read the Popes full apology here.

Already there is much grumbling from activist circles; the Popes apology is still not good enough. And I’m quite sure the Pope’s most heartfelt words, and strategically considered positions on all matters colonialism, residential schools, and the direct harm caused to the indigenous by some aspects of these histories, will continue to fall short of the petulant demands of activists. Demands, of a disingenuous design, intended to open yet further doors to phony processes of reconciliation which ultimately deliver the cash transfers rent-seekers forever seek.

I believe the Pope is well aware of the rent-seeking angle and the games being played by activists. This is reflected in the carefully crafted statement that, on one hand apologizes for the very real harm caused by “so many Christians,” but on the other, smartly ignores several of the points requested by activists.

An analysis of the apology activists had recommended the Pope give, in my view, shows a typical pattern of rent-seeking behavior involving a coerced admission of guilt intended to extract apology, which officializes both the guilt and the expectation that the guilty party act in some way to repair the harm in which they’re blamed.

When the Pope said yesterday - “Although Christian charity was not absent, and there were many outstanding instances of devotion and care for children, the overall effects of the policies linked to the residential schools were catastrophic” - I was disappointed that there was no mention of the great challenges faced by Canadians at the time. Won’t anyone ask what would have become of indigenous children had there been no residential schools? This question is rarely brought up in polite circles. But there is little chance the Pope hasn’t heard it.

It appears to me that the Pope has chosen to engage in a disingenuous dance with indigenous activists. This involves throwing countless past members of the Catholic Church under the bus, and injecting yet more condescension into the indigenous discourse in Canada. This type of thing will never end until a leader - a prime minister, a premier, or a Pope - grows a spine and learns to say with confidence to the indigenous activists of Canada, a simple two letter word; No.

Instead we get, “regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples. I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools.” - the Pope

As cringe-worthy as this was, it fell short of what was requested. According to activist demands, the Catholic Church’s 15th century Papal bulls related to the Doctrine of Discovery, should have been apologized for as they were responsible for the conquest and colonization of Canada. The Pope made no apologies for these things, and so he shouldn’t, they are based on illogical and ahistorical interpretations of the age of discovery.

Apologizing, and taking responsibility for colonization in the way demanded, is to act as though colonization held no benefit to the indigenous people. It ignores, among other things, 100 years of mutually beneficial co-dependence during the fur trade, in which both indigenous and non-indigenous people were keenly interested in one another, and traded and co-operated in countless ways.

In June of 2022, Canadian author, Peter Best, and independent researcher Nina Green, published a fascinating Dorchester Review essay which sets the record straight - Activist claims about 'Discovery' and Papal Bulls are incorrect.

On this issue I pose questions similar to the one regarding residential schools. What would have become of the indigenous if Europeans had not settled in Canada? Would they have been better off? Would not someone else have settled in the enormously vast area of Canada, perhaps the Spanish? Again, it will take future leaders with back-bone to stand up to activists and demand they answer these questions.

Let’s turn our attention now to another academic, one of those Dorchester Group trouble makers, who writes often about residential schools; Hymie Rubenstein.

Hymie runs The Real Indian Residential Schools Newsletter substack, which I highly recommend you checkout and subscribe to. However, on July 23rd, he wrote a great piece for the Western Standard which not only contains an excellent critique of the inauthenticity of the Popes visit but, by responding to the ridiculous suggested papal apology designed by activists, offers a summary of several key lines of evidence-based argumentation revealing far more than any sleep-walking irresponsible narrative-obsessed mainstream media has interest in providing.

From Hymie in the Western Standard:

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022, an organization called the “National Indian Residential School Circle of Survivors (NIRSCS)” released a recommended apology, reported on by many news services, they want Roman Catholic Pope Francis to make when he visits Canada beginning on July 24. 

You can read their full recommended apology.

Here we see the NIRCS involved in gratuitous exaggeration, conflating historical fact with the ahistorical fictions of postmodern activist-academics. The spirit of their recommended apology is consistent with the falsehoods spoken publicly by TRC commissioner Murray Sinclair, which is consistent with the falsehoods upon which many Canadians believe, and consistent with the falsehoods much of indigenous public policy is based.

It was expected that the supreme pontiff would largely ignore the activist generated apology, and so far he has. Here is what Hymie had to say about it:

“…this apology not only grossly exaggerates the harms caused by these boarding schools but implies that they caused only harm to their students, an assertion contradicted by historical and other evidence in the Truth and Reconciliation reports and elsewhere.”

And lastly, from the REAL Indian Residential School Newsletter, here is Hymie’s reaction to the actual apology the Pope gave yesterday:

Among many other transgressions, this Pope today severely libeled his own 2,000-year-old church and tarnished his own legacy by defaming the memory of the thousands of priests, nuns, Catholic brothers, and low paid workers, many of them indigenous people, who gave a lifetime of work to compassionately and patiently educating and training tens of thousands of indigenous children, nearly all with their parents’ or the state’s blessing, so they could adapt to life in a rapidly changing Canadian society.

What Pope Francis failed to reveal most of all today is what the alternative was to residential or day schools during the 113-year period in question. That alternative was no education at all, a policy, if enacted, that would have made our country’s aboriginal peoples far worse off in every possible way than many are today.

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Reach out to me through Twitter or Facebook if you would like to organize with other Canadians and become part of the pushback against the great illiberal subversion.

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