by Richard Shields, Dundas, ON

The Residential Schools affair is a clear signal that the Roman Catholic hierarchy can no longer go it alone. Church officials need to learn how to share decision-making with the faithful at large, in order to find equitable and positive changes in the church’s relations with Canada’s Indigenous communities.

The story of Indigenous children in residential schools has already been told in the lead-up to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA, 2005). Nevertheless, the recent recovery of unmarked and neglected graves at the church-run residential school in Kamloops, B.C. came as a surprise to many Canadians, including Catholics. Even as more graves were being discovered at other school sites, news broke that the Catholic Church had walked back its monetary promises to Indigenous communities made at the end of the IRSSA.

At that time the Catholic Church agreed to pay $29 million toward programs that would directly help survivors. The church paid just over half — the rest going to lawyers, consultants, unapproved loans and previous lawsuits. The church also pledged its “best efforts” to raise an additional $25 million for healing and reconciliation. It managed to raise less than $4 million.

Catholics were caught off guard by these reports. They were left speechless, unable to understand their church’s involvement with a program designed to “take the Indian out of the child” and put an “end to the Indian problem in Canada.”

Nor could they comprehend why their church ignored the findings of Dr. Peter Bryce, the Medical Insp. for Indian Affairs, who in 1907 wrote that “Indian boys and girls are dying like flies in these situations (residential schools) or shortly after leaving them (ibid).” Catholics were humiliated to learn that while their church could not meet its financial commitment to residential school survivors, it was able, in the same period, to raise over $300 million for its own internal projects

I am not interested in the complex ecclesiastical logic that says it was not “the” Catholic Church that did these things. And that any wrongdoing must be attributed to the “entities” (the particular dioceses and religious congregations) that operated the schools.

That distinction is lost on me and on most people. Common sense tells me that there is a visible and recognizable Catholic Church in Canada, made up of the people who, through faith and tradition, identify with and are committed to it.

Even if the courts absolved the church (or its “entities”) from any legal debt to the survivors or descendants, there remains a moral duty. And morally, that duty falls on the whole church.

If a church is only as good as its word, then those in the Catholic Church who have the authority to make final and binding decisions have exhibited not only an alarming disinterest in the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultures in Canada, but have done a disservice to the rank and file Catholics, who bear the shame, confusion, and anger for choices made for them by a small number of ecclesiastical decision makers and office holders.

Why were so many Catholics never informed of their church’s history with residential schools? Or left unaware of the impending accusations which would be made against their church? Why did church leaders hold back information about the injustices committed in the past? Or not consult the laity over how their church should respond?

If the Catholic Church expects to forge a credible future with First Nations and to restore its reputation among Canadians, its leaders need to find ways to involve ordinary Catholics in their next steps toward truth, justice and reconciliation. They must learn how to share their teaching authority and executive power.

They need to acknowledge in practice that the church’s rank and file have a sense of the moral direction the church should take. When church leaders act without collaborating with their members they narrow their vision, often with the aim of protecting the institution.

Would the church have been able to meet its obligations if the bishops had held extensive discussions with the faithful? If they had spent time with their parishioners addressing the issues arising from church’s perhaps well-intentioned, but culturally genocidal, administration of residential schools? Or had they simply appealed to basic Gospel values to involve the laity in the process of reconciliation?

Hindsight cannot tell us whether the Catholic Church would have made better ethical decisions had the bishops consulted with ordinary Catholics. But one can’t help but imagine that the outcomes would have been more equitable and compassionate. That church leaders continue to reserve such major decisions to themselves no longer makes sense.

Catholics do not want more promises made in their name. They do want to be included in plans and promises that impact on their lives and that place the church’s reputation at stake. The way forward will not succeed if it continues to be driven solely by executive decisions. How to introduce consultation and shared decision-making into a traditionally hierarchical and clerical structure remains elusive.

Perhaps the reality of the church’s history with residential schools will open the door to rethinking how decisions are made in the name of Canada’s Catholics.

Richard Shields is a Catholic living and working in Dundas, and a long-time ICN subscriber.