750 Unmarked Graves Found At Second Canadian Residential School

Let’s suppose the only thing we knew about the Catholic Church was its administration of the Irish Laundries. Would that be enough to tarnish the institution to the point where it could never be polished again? The answer is no. We know that because the Catholic Church remains, no matter how many women’s lives it stole, both metaphorically and quite literally. One would think that the discovery of a mass grave of 150+ bodies would have been enough for a significant rethink of the church’s role in society, but nope! No matter what the church does, it stays; and, in fact, it continues to hold forth on moral matters, as if its own easily accessible history doesn’t exist.

Let’s suppose the only thing we knew about the Catholic Church was its decades-long commitment to aiding and abetting the sexual molestation of children. Would that be enough to tarnish the institution to the point where it could never be polished again? The answer is no. We know that because the Catholic Church remains, no matter how many children’s lives it stole, both metaphorically and quite literally. One would think that tens of thousands of abused children across the globe would be enough for a significant rethink of the church’s role in society, but nope! No matter what the church does, it stays, and, in fact, it continues to hold forth on moral matters, as if its own easily accessible history doesn’t exist.

So, let’s suppose the unfurling Canadian unmarked graves scandal continues to reveal itself, as this week’s revelation of 751 unmarked graves at the Marieval Indian Residential School marks the third such discovery in the last few weeks. The previous revelation – of the bodies of 215 children at the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School – means so far that more than 1000 unmarked have been discovered. It is tempting to conclude that this is bad, especially when one accounts for there having been 150 of these schools in existence during the program’s history. That program, which removed indigenous children from their families so that they could be properly assimilated into Canada (them and their families having long predated Canada’s existence of course mattered not at all), existed for more than 100 years and likely saw more than 150,000 children come through its doors. These schools were state-based, but most were run by the Catholic Church. The churches brutalized the children sent there. But let’s assume, for no particular reason and certainly not an earned one, that less than a third of the lowest number of unmarked graves discovered at one site as our baseline – in other words, let’s assume that Marieval was an outrageous outlier, and that Kamloops was an outlier – meaning that authorities are going to discover 75 unmarked graves per remaining facility. That would put the total number of unmarked graves at 12,100. In other words, a huge percentage of the students that came through the schools ended up buried in unmarked graves.

And that is all presuming an extremely low estimate against what is known so far.

So, will that be enough to tarnish the institution to the point where it could never be polished again? The answer is no. We know that because the Catholic Church remains, no matter how many children’s lives it stole, both metaphorically and quite literally. One would think that the discovery of unmarked graves of more than 1000 unidentified individuals, a significant portion of whom are children, would be enough for a significant rethink of the church’s role in society, but nope! No matter what the church does, it stays, and, in fact, it continues to hold forth on moral matters, as if its own easily accessible history doesn’t exist.

As if desperate to illustrate this arrogance, we have Owen Keenan, a Catholic priest from Mississauga, Ontario, who decided that it made good sense to ask his parishioners, and Canadian society generally to think of all of the good that had been done at the Residential Schools. Faced with hundreds of unmarked graves that contained the bodies of children who had been ripped away from their homes and families and parents, Keenan – who is, again, a priest, tasked with providing moral guidance, among other responsibilities – argued that people should consider appreciating all of the “good done” in the residential school system.

During a mass on June 6, Keenan said the discovery was “very sad” and a symbol of the “ongoing tragedy” of government policies against Indigenous people, but also that:

“We don’t know how those children died. We don’t know, we can’t know, if they would’ve died if they stayed at home.”

While he called for prayers and reconciliation, he also said, “Many people had very positive experiences of residential schools. Many people received health care and education and joyful experiences.

“They weren’t universally awful. But there’s still no place for the horrors that are alleged to have occurred there.”

Residential school survivors have shared horrific accounts of abuse, starvation and neglect, and difficulties getting documents from the Catholic Church, which ran the majority of the schools. The final 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission begins by stating that what took place at residential schools “can be best described as ‘cultural genocide.'”

Keenan was, apparently, serious. Sure, there are all of those bodies, after all, but only a monster would consider focus on just that when all of the good these schools achieved could be discussed instead. Keenan did not extrapolate on all of this alleged good; presumably, those listening were just meant to understand that good had occurred.

So, yes, the Catholic Church and its monstrous arrogance remains. But none of the rest of us are obliged to go along with this nonsense. We are not required to believe that the Catholic Church is good or decent or even okay. We are allowed to properly understand it as a criminal organization that has, again and again and again, aided and abetted remarkable evil. And if that position forces a reconsideration of those that still attend and donate and support and encourage and look the other way, well, what other course of action would be more reasonable?