Should Pope apologize for abuse at Canadian residential schools for Indigenous children?

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mrsdizzyd said:
Would Christ retreat to hard-hearted jurisdictional claims or would he reach out to console those who are suffering?
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There have been attempts to reach out and console these victims.

Is it really a failure on the part of the Church because the victims keep coming back and saying, “No, you haven’t said the right thing yet. We want you to say X before we decide you are sufficiently contrite for what has happened.”

I’m all for a pastoral approach. But there is a difference between being pastoral and just bending to the popular will. I’m not convinced this is pastoral rather than populist.
 
casslean said:
There have been attempts to reach out and console these victims.
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And the Church should, therefore, stop trying to reach out or make amends?

God never ceases reaching out to us. Why should His church be any different?
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
And the Church should, therefore, stop trying to reach out or make amends?

God never ceases reaching out to us. Why should His church be any different?
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But where does it stop?

You hurt someone’s feelings (no I’m not saying this is the same). You apologize. The next day they come to you and say, “I don’t feel like I said X, and I’d really like to discuss it.” You do, because it’s the right thing to do, and you say you’re sorry. Two weeks later they come back again and say, “This is still an issue, and you didn’t address this.”

How many times do you have to say you’re sorry?

I am NOT reducing this to a mere disagreement between friends. But you can’t keep saying “we don’t think this is good enough”. Especially when in this case there is evidence to say the Church as a whole had no idea it was going on.

Even in the military we don’t axe the wing commander if there is no evidence that they knew what a group or squadron commander was up to, because we acknowledge that it’s impossible for them to know everything. If ONE MEMO or email exists to the contrary, though, you can bet we drag them on the carpet.

Maybe that’s a bad analogy, I don’t know. But it makes sense that there’s no reason to yield in this case.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
God never ceases reaching out to us. Why should His church be any different?
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Also, God reaches out to us because even though we choose to walk away from Him, usually as a result of pride, He loves us. Part of that act of coming back often requires the humility on our part to acknowledge that it was our pride, and not an act of God, that caused us to leave.

It would be completely inappropriate for us to keep coming back to God saying, “I’m still mad. This is what I want from you now before I decide I’m not mad.”
 
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I would say it depends. As Matt Walsh notes, the one thing you never do is apologize to a mob of pitch-fork wielders. People in that mentality will never be satisfied no matter what, and from what I’ve seen on here, a lot of Catholics will learn that the hard way because of their pride and arrogance.

I sometimes joke that those of us affiliated with North America indigenous communities should apologize to each other for untold millennia of tribal conflicts before any Europeans came.
Pup7 said:
I am NOT reducing this to a mere disagreement between friends. But you can’t keep saying “we don’t think this is good enough”. Especially when in this case there is evidence to say the Church as a whole had no idea it was going on.
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A lot of people really don’t want these issues resolved because they profit off the grievance and division.
 
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SuperLuigi said:
A lot of people really don’t want these issues resolved because they profit off the grievance and division.
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It’s horrible to say…but I agree.
SuperLuigi said:
People in that mentality will never be satisfied no matter what, and from what I’ve seen on here, a lot of Catholics will learn that the hard way because of their pride and arrogance.
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Oh, that’s not confined to us Catholics, I’m afraid. That’s the current mentality everywhere.
 
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SuperLuigi said:
A lot of people really don’t want these issues resolved because they profit off the grievance and division.
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Sadly, yes.

I’m not convinced TRC was entirely about finding healing, given how unworkable many of the Calls to Action were.
 
Pup7 said:
But where does it stop?
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This is a legitimate question, but in this case we are not yet there.

The only pope to actually address this was Benedict. So far as I can find, Pope Francis hasn’t said anything on the subject.

It should also be noted that there has been no papal apology to date.
 
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I know how reactionary this sounds but I sometimes wonder if in cases like this, the only satisfying action will be the complete dissolution of the Catholic Church.
 
😥

I have a “friend” (it’s a difficult friendship) who’s a Native American and this is legitimately the ONLY thing that would satisfy him. And I often find in discussions with him that the damage done to indigenous peoples by Catholics in the past is being used by him for this goal. I’m certain not all view the issue as he does but it’s both frightening and infuriating.
 
gracepoole said:
I have a “friend” (it’s a difficult friendship) who’s a Native American and this is legitimately the ONLY thing that would satisfy him. And I often find in discussions with him that the damage done to indigenous peoples by Catholics in the past is being used by him for this goal. I’m certain not all view the issue as he does but it’s both frightening and infuriating.
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Victim politics where you can always be outraged and demanding and never questioned.

I truly think it is a sickness.

I once talked to an atheist guy who wanted the Catholic Church to be heavily fined for causing global warming because of all the candles that were lit in churches. He wanted each and every church confiscated to pay reparations. I am still not sure if even that would have satisfied him.
 
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abucs said:
I once talked to an atheist guy who wanted the Catholic Church to be heavily fined for causing global warming because of all the candles that were lit in churches. He wanted each and every church confiscated to pay reparations. I am still not sure if even that would have satisfied him.
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Oh, geez. The real agenda is pretty thinly veiled…
 
Again, do we not see how someone who is hurting might see this position as hard-hearted? Do we not see how giving these folks the cold shoulder is alienating and damaging to the Church?

(As a general comment: )
I still don’t see how the Church is harmed by giving a Mea Culpa here. The Church does not have to change it’s Doctrines or forsake it’s Tradition in order to show a face of compassion here.

At the end of the day, we are talking about human beings who were abused, tortured, and in some cases killed by organizations who were Catholic. In some cases, the Bishops were aware and did little or nothing at all.

Making legalistic arguments and splitting hairs over whether or not Pope Francis personally sanctioned these atrocities is so beyond the point that it is utterly absurd!
 
OK, so Pope Francis offers this mea culpa, just to placate everyone and apparently because it is the only thing that will make all these victims feel better.

Then the victims return and demand compensation from the Church via the Vatican, because now the only thing that will make them feel better is being adequately compensated for their pains.

Shouldn’t the Church just pay out? After all, they already admitted their fault, right?
 
From what I’ve read the Church already agreed to 25 million to set up some sort of healing foundation.

And, aren’t we already settling with other victims of abuse (related to the sex abuse scandal). I’d say the ship has already sailed on that front.
 
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