Burn in hell!

Vincent J. Curtis

23 July 22

When the Pope is in Canada on his apology tour, I hope he tells his tormentors that they’ll all burn in hell if they don’t shape up.

How stands their love of God and neighbour as they demand money and apologies, saying that both will never be enough?  Never mind that the Pope had nothing to do with Canada’s residential schools, neither did the vast majority of his tormentors! (160,000 passed through residential schools over 110 years.)

I’ve never heard it asked of a “survivor” what they learned in school.  Did learn reading, writing, and basic arithmetic?  If so, they learned things the Neolithic aboriginal culture couldn’t did have, because it had no written language or numbers.  Aboriginals had no metallurgy or philosophy or science of any kind.  They weren’t “deprived” of their culture - they had massive voids filled in.

Aboriginals couldn’t survive today living the ways of the past, and none of them even try.  So, what was “lost” except an obsolete way of life?  Even hunters in the high Arctic use modern rifles and snowmobiles, wear western clothing, and rely for a balanced diet on supplies flown in from the south.

Over forty Catholic mission churches were burned down on reserves when anger exploded after signs of Christian burials were re-discovered on the grounds of residential schools.  (How many cemeteries are there on reserves?) And you wonder why the residential school model was chosen?  Do you really think it was safe to send one or two nuns onto reserves to teach school in the 1890s?

It takes a lot of chutzpah to demand an apology, and a bulky set of blinders (or vicious motives) to think one is required, or will even help.

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