Why the Pope's apology in Canada was so significant

Why the Pope's apology in Canada was so significant 

04 August 2022, The Tablet

The encounters between Pope Francis and First Nation representatives in Canada were among the most moving of his papacy. He clearly felt deeply and personally the violations of human dignity inflicted on the Indigenous tribes of North America by white colonial settlers. At the behest of the Canadian authorities, many children had been taken away from their families, separated from their culture and language and converted – that is to say, coerced – into Christianity. Some of them were abused, psychologically, physically and sexually.

Something similar was happening the length and breadth of the American continent, north and south, reflecting an unthinking consensus among European colonialists that already existing customs and beliefs had no value, and could and should be overwritten by their cultures and prejudices. Jesuit missionaries were among the few who rejected this approach. That automatic assumption of cultural superiority was untenable, Francis said last week, and the Church repented of it and asked forgiveness.

The Pope’s remarks should trigger a wider reflection. It is as easy in the age of the internet and social media as it was in the era of colonial expansion for Westerners to assume their civilisations are normative – that by which others, past and present, should be judged. The only criteria valid for such judgements are those explicit or implicit in the gospels, the Sermon on the Mount in particular. It is from such motives that the Governor General of India, a devout Evangelical Christian, banned the burning of widows, sati or suttee, in the 1830s; similar motives led other colonial rulers to strive to wipe out slavery, cannibalism or execution of prisoners by torture, wherever they encountered such practices. Needless to say, with hindsight their moral outrage has to be regarded as highly selective. Christians often colluded in offences committed by white settlers – as in the case of Canadian Indigenous tribes. It did not seem to be barbaric to stop a child using his native language on pain of corporal punishment, but it was.

Wherever the gospel seed is newly planted, the human community already exists and has learned to express itself. Those expressions deserve deep respect, and should not be superseded in the name of Christianity, except where Christianity itself seems clearly to demand it, and then with prudence and caution. The Gospel is offered as a gift, not imposed by conquest. And “Christianity” should not be confused with the culture of Western Christians, or with assumptions over-confidently drawn from Scripture, such as the criminalisation of homosexuality.

The key phrase is “critical distance”, critical in the sense of “just right, not too far and not too near”, but also in the sense of a willingness to criticise cultural assumptions; and distance, that is to say from a position outside the ruling establishment or dominant culture, but close enough to scrutinise it and free enough to speak against it. That is a formidable task for church leaders, ordained and lay. It requires a great effort of discernment, a skill not readily acquired. Yet if those leaders do not already live by the Gospel, their interventions will be easily dismissed. That is why Pope Francis’ apology in Canada was so telling.

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