Big surprise that the mobbed-up gang of pedophiles and pedophile enablers/accessories after the fact is sleazing out on their obligations to provide even token compensation for the horrors they inflicted on First Nations children and their familes. (National Observer) The Catholic Church pinky-swore to raise $30 million in compensation to the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement but has so far failed to raise even 1/6th that amount. (At the same time it was able to raise four times that amount to renovate a Catholic Church in Toronto.) This is racist arrogance, pure and simple.
But here at The Schoolyard we're all about the fair and the balanced. Let's let the Official Diocese of London explain:
7. Will the Catholic Church pay financial reparations to those harmed by residential schools?
The federal government has paid over $3 billion in settlements to residential school survivors.
The Catholic entities that operated residential schools were part of the 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA).
The Holy See and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops were never involved in running the former schools. The “Roman Catholic Entities” named as parties in the IRSSA were legally deemed to have fulfilled the requirements of the settlement agreement by a judicial review. Following this review, the former Conservative government released the entities from further obligations – a decision which the present Liberal government did not appeal.
The 50 or so individual entities which signed the IRSSA paid:
i. $29 million in cash (less legal costs);
ii. more than the required $25 million of “in-kind” contributions; and
iii. an additional $3.7 million from a “best efforts” campaign.
Those same entities, together with other dioceses, institutes and national Catholic organizations, continue to be involved in efforts across the country to provide in-kind contributions, which go well beyond the scope of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.
Disgusting, isn't it? "The federal government has paid $3 billion." Really? That's not what's at issue here, is it? "The Catholic Church was one of the guilty parties." No shit. "The Vatican and the Canadian Catholic Coordinating Committee have no legal liabilities."
I remember when the fall-out from the Residential Schools Scandal bankrupted the Anglican Church in Canada. The Catholic bureaucracy had long before learned the beauty of limited legal liability. They all have to follow orders from the Pope on down through the hierarchy, the same way a national office in a transnational corporation has to follow orders from the parent firm, but for purposes of financial security they employ the legal fiction of being separate entities.
The rest of the section from the London Diocese is equally revolting. Especially when you remember that the Catholic Church is supposed to be about RELIGION/GOOD & EVIL/THE MEANING OF LIFE/etc.
I asked once twice before: Where are the ordinary Catholics? The "flock"? Here's a website from Catholics For Truth & Reconciliation but they don't appear to be rallying their fellow sheep very well, do they?
Finally, here's Pam Palamater:
A careful reading of the apology shows an attempt to soften or deflect the church’s culpability for the devastation experienced by Indigenous Peoples, by situating residential schools within the larger context of “policies of assimilation and enfranchisement,” presumably those of the government.
He referred to stories told to him about “how the policies of assimilation ended up systemically marginalizing the Indigenous Peoples” and how the “system of residential schools” denigrated Indigenous languages and cultures. While this is all true and caused irreparable damage and loss, what the Pope fails to do is explain how the rampant physical and sexual abuses, tortures and deaths of thousands of Indigenous children and babies at the hands of Catholic priests, nuns, clergy and staff, had nothing to do with government policies of assimilation.
...
This sexual abuse was about racism, white supremacy, power, domination, exploitation and depravity — not “indifference” as stated by the Pope. The pattern of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy is an evil that was well-known by the church and covered up for generations — thus clearing the path for the abuse to continue unabated. The Pope’s failure to acknowledge this problem and accept responsibility for it not only leaves sexual abuse survivors without an apology that recognizes their traumas, but also creates barriers within the church to ending sexual abuse worldwide.
How do we expect a species that tolerates such behaviour to survive itself?
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