If there were specific situations or incidents in the past which Catholic clergy or other "personnel" committed bad acts by all means acknowledge and apologize for those bad actions and try to make restitution if possible.
But I don't see the point of simply apologizing by agreeing to a narrative. I am sure the Bishops are sincere, but th…
If there were specific situations or incidents in the past which Catholic clergy or other "personnel" committed bad acts by all means acknowledge and apologize for those bad actions and try to make restitution if possible.
But I don't see the point of simply apologizing by agreeing to a narrative. I am sure the Bishops are sincere, but the technique resembles the modern act of "virtue signaling" more than repentance of personal sin. Because we are not apologizing for stuff we did, we are apologizing for stuff that other people did or were supposed to have done. What's more, these apologies only go one way, in a way that is consonant with modern pieties.
No one is demanding that American Indians (or for that matter, Germans or Romans!) apologize for killing missionaries in the distant past - in fact the idea would be considered absurd and rightly so.
Agreeing to a narrative is also a problem because when you do so it is hard to disentangle the narrative from specific allegations, true or false, which coincide with the narrative. For example, in Canada right now the Catholic Church has been dealing with allegations related to residential schools in that country. The Church has been accused of mass murder because supposedly mass graves and unmarked graves have been discovered by these residential schools. These allegations are widely reported by Canadian media and repeated by government leaders. Misguided indigenous Canadians have committed violent acts including arson against Catholic Churches. These allegations happen to be a hoax, spread by weasel wording and other narrative building techniques but I understand they are widely believed.
I am sure that the Bishops are very concerned about Native people and want to make sure that bad things in the past don't continue into the future, but it's really good to pause before issuing these sort of apologies in the present moment, where facts don't matter and narratives can and will be abused.
If there were specific situations or incidents in the past which Catholic clergy or other "personnel" committed bad acts by all means acknowledge and apologize for those bad actions and try to make restitution if possible.
But I don't see the point of simply apologizing by agreeing to a narrative. I am sure the Bishops are sincere, but the technique resembles the modern act of "virtue signaling" more than repentance of personal sin. Because we are not apologizing for stuff we did, we are apologizing for stuff that other people did or were supposed to have done. What's more, these apologies only go one way, in a way that is consonant with modern pieties.
No one is demanding that American Indians (or for that matter, Germans or Romans!) apologize for killing missionaries in the distant past - in fact the idea would be considered absurd and rightly so.
Agreeing to a narrative is also a problem because when you do so it is hard to disentangle the narrative from specific allegations, true or false, which coincide with the narrative. For example, in Canada right now the Catholic Church has been dealing with allegations related to residential schools in that country. The Church has been accused of mass murder because supposedly mass graves and unmarked graves have been discovered by these residential schools. These allegations are widely reported by Canadian media and repeated by government leaders. Misguided indigenous Canadians have committed violent acts including arson against Catholic Churches. These allegations happen to be a hoax, spread by weasel wording and other narrative building techniques but I understand they are widely believed.
I am sure that the Bishops are very concerned about Native people and want to make sure that bad things in the past don't continue into the future, but it's really good to pause before issuing these sort of apologies in the present moment, where facts don't matter and narratives can and will be abused.
> Misguided indigenous Canadians have committed violent acts
Misguided Canadians... I don't know what ethnicity.