[Craic] A Comment on a visit from Pope Francis

[Allan Baker]

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Expecting too much of the Pope’s visit
By Jim Taylor
 
Sunday July 24, 2022
 
There is only one event worth writing about this week -- Pope Francis’s “penitential pilgrimage.”
            “Penitential” means doing penance -- making amends for having done something wrong.
            The name alone acknowledges that the Roman Catholic church failed its indigenous members.
            Church doctrines have long taught that Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world. Figuratively, Pope Francis chose to do the same with his church’s involvement in residential schools.
            People have mixed feelings about his trip and his apologies.
            Among the non-indigenous population, I hear everything from hand-washing to humility.
            Many indigenous people, I gather, see the Pope’s words as exactly what they had hoped for. The highest Roman Catholic official came to their traditional territories to say that he was sorry for what members of his church had done.
            Others see it as only a partial success. Because Pope Francis did not reject the “Doctrine of Discovery” -- he collection of papal decrees that authorized European adventurers to seize the lands and the resources of people who already lived there.
            He did not hold the Roman Catholic church as an institution guilty of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
            And he did not magically make everything right again.
 
No magic wand
            I suggest we’re expecting too much of him. He’s not a fairy godmother who can change the world with a flick of his wand.
            In fact, he has far less power than most folks assume.
            The Roman Catholic Church is not a monolith. Every diocese is independent. The Pope appoints bishops and archbishops, but each diocese is otherwise autonomous.
            Even within the Vatican, the Pope’s powers are limited. He cannot, for example, overturn 2,000 years of church teachings.
            That is why he has been careful to say that “some members” committed sins and evils in the residential school system. That “some Christians” acted contrary to the core message of Jesus.
            In March 2000, Pope Francis’s predecessor John Paul II used the same pattern in his “Day of Pardon.”  In a series of apologies for historic wrongs done to women, Muslims, Jews slaves, and even heretics in the Inquisition, he referred to individuals in the church. Never to the Holy Catholic Church as a whole.
 
Unacceptable alternatives
            Here’s the theological problem.
            If Jesus is God, and the church is the ongoing Body of Christ, then admitting that the Body of Christ has sinned would imply that Christ himself is not sinless. And therefore that God is also not sinless.
            Which is unthinkable.
            To accept the institutional church’s complicity in ruthless and inhumane systems would require Pope Francis to do one of two things.  Either deny that the Holy Catholic Church is the continuing Body of a Christ. Or assert that Christ himself could have sinned.
            Personally, I have no problem believing that Jesus could have sinned. If he is fully human, it’s highly likely that he swiped a cookie from his mother’s kitchen. Or had murderous thoughts about Roman soldiers who gang-raped a Jewish girl.
            But this is not about my views. It’s about what the Pope can and cannot say.
 
What good is an apology?
            In that context, an article published by Conversation Canada, brings up an interesting parallel. Author Lori Campbell’s grandmother was a residential school survivor. All seven of Lori’s mother’s children were taken away from her in the infamous 60s Scoop.
            Almost as an aside, Campbell wrote: “Canada continues to investigate and hold accountable individuals who committed war crimes during the Second World War. Where is the accountability for those who have committed crimes against Indigenous children?”
            There are huge differences between the two race-based programs. But there are also some upsetting parallels.
            Germany herded Jews into concentration camps. Canada herded “Indians” into residential schools and remote reserves.
            Germany tried to eliminate a race with gas ovens. Canada used education, for the same purpose.
            During World War II, Pope Pius XII failed to denounce the Holocaust. He did not rally Catholics against Nazi pogroms.
            Would a confession of complicity undo the pain and suffering of Jews? I doubt it.
            Similarly, would a confession of complicity in the residential school system undo the pain and suffering of generations of indigenous people? I doubt that too.
            As I look back on the week, I find Pope Francis’s actions more convincing than the words he cannot say.
            He came to Canada. To be where the iniquities took place. To be among indigenous peoples. To unite his pilgrimage with theirs at Lac Ste. Anne.
            And instead of having a subject people kiss his ring, he kissed the hand of an aboriginal woman.
            To my mind, those actions count more than any speeches.
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