Historically inaccurate to suggest Catholic Church hasn't apologized for residential schools

National Post, 04 June 2021

All of the dioceses that had residential schools and the religious orders involved apologized decades ago, and those expressions have been renewed in recent days.

There has been much commentary about a Catholic apology for residential schools, even in these pages, that I prefer to think is ill-informed rather than ill-motivated.

While I speak for no one but myself, and certainly not for the Catholic bishops, much less the Holy See, it is understandable that many have asked me about how and where the Catholic Church should apologize for its role in the grave offences against human dignity that occurred in residential schools.

All three parts of that are important: “Catholic Church,” “how” and “where.”

Notice that “if” and “when” are not part of the question. The Catholic Church, like other Christian communities, has been engaged in reconciliation and healing for 30 years. It made sincere apologies not long after the issue came to wider public attention.

“We are sorry and deeply regret the pain, suffering and alienation that so many experienced. We have heard their cries of distress, feel their anguish and want to be part of the healing process,” read a statement issued by Canadian bishops and leaders of religious orders that participated in the schools.

That was in 1991, and was quoted in the submission the Canadian bishops made in 1995 to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, more than a decade before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established.

The various religious orders that ran the schools also issued apologies. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which ran the Kamloops Indian Residential School, included this in their detailed four-page apology, which was issued in 1991:

“We apologize for the part we played in the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious imperialism that was part of the mentality with which the peoples of Europe first met the Aboriginal peoples and which consistently has lurked behind the way the Native peoples of Canada have been treated by civil governments and by the churches.”

Why are these forthright statements, issued three decades in the past, set aside by those who claim that somehow the Catholic Church refuses to apologize or seek forgiveness?

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