Blog July - August 2021 Reflections on the Residential Schools, and a personal piece

    When I was a kid in elementary school, growing up in a small town north of Toronto, I used to subscribe to a little magazine that contained things like Bible stories and various teachings. A big theme would have been the Christian imperative to love all people. I assume that my school was promoting the magazine, and my parents supported it. My memories of it are positive.

    It also happened that one of the Catholic families in the area had a priest who was a member of a religious community. I knew the family fairly well, but I only knew him from seeing him when he came home for visits from the missions. Members of his Order were among the teachers in the northern residential schools (I am not sure which Province), and that is where he was stationed. I remember talking to him on one occasion about the magazine I had subscribed to, and I offered to save back copies to send to him for the children in the schools. He was grateful, and I did that for probably a couple of years.

    I would have been in grade 7 or 8, and I remember being pleased to have this opportunity to do a little work of charity for kids who I imagined would be happy to receive these magazines.

    This was my personal connection to the Residential School system. When I think back on that time now, I have two horrifying thoughts. The first is that these children did not choose to go there, rather they were taken from their families for the express purpose of removing their native heritage from them. My second thought is please God the priest I knew never did anything to abuse those children physically or sexually. But even if he did not do any of that, surely he was aware that it was taking place. And I feel sick.

    We all know that recently in 2021, 215 and then 771 unmarked graves have been discovered at sites of the Residential Schools. It is not known if all of these contain bodies of children, but most likely do. I read that the mortality rate of the children in the schools was very high. Apart from death caused by illness and atrocious living conditions and mistreatment, what I know about separation leads me to believe that it is possible that most died simply from the heart break of unbearable separation from their parents.

    And then another horrifying thought hits me. We hear that church officials removed the markers from these graves, which is the reason they were not discovered until ground penetrating radar technology came along. This says to me that there was an attempt to remove their identity. (By contrast where I grew up, tombstones have dates as far back as the 1700's). Worse yet, the children were stripped of their humanity. Once you are able to do the mental gymnastics involved in making groups of people less than human, you are able to do whatever you want with them. This is the history of slavery and it is the history of the Jewish people in World War II. It is to weep for, and it is so very hard to relate to unless we find those private little exceptions we make for ourselves in the world we live in. It takes incredible honesty, however, to bring those exceptions to conscious awareness.

    Yet another horrifying thought hits me. When these children died, there probably were no native burial rituals - that would be to give back to the children the heritage that was being taken from them. But did they not hold any funeral services for them at all? Catholic funeral rites are so very beautiful with the theme of trusting the promise of the Resurrection as we send the deceased individual home to the Paradise of heaven. Did no one even do this for those children? Did they just bury them? I do not know the answer to this. Nothing in my preliminary searches has yielded any information about burial services for the children. I would like to find out. Because their absence would mark not only a major betrayal of any honour or dignity a Christian person might bring to bear in this circumstance, it also would mark a betrayal of the most fundamental beliefs that a Catholic missionary lives with at the core of their own person.

    In the home town in which I grew up, I was taught by Sisters of a religious community in different grades. I have no bad memories of them, and many of them were extraordinarily beautiful and kind individuals. Teaching or nursing was how they supported their community, and their salaries went to that purpose. My understanding is that the modern Residential Schools system was initiated at the government level and contracted to the religious orders., But the long history also includes the initiatives of the Orders themselves. (Check out this link, for a good overview of the background and the history of the schools: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/timeline/residential-schools.)  In any event, it is mind-boggling that the members of religious orders bought into the vision of stripping indigenous children of their heritage and identity, in favour of a white, Christian substitute. And in the process, convincing themselves that they needed to be strict, structured, and punitive.

    You have undoubtedly heard that a priest in the Toronto area recently complained that no one was speaking of the good that teachers and staff in those schools did alongside any harmful things that were done. Needless to say, the public blowback was swift and furious, and he has resigned. Here is the thing. It is hard for me to imagine that there were never any individual kindnesses shown to any of those children. But whether there were or not, the problem is that the whole thing was wrong! The entire enterprise was unkind! (Look up Sir John A.’s words in Parliament on the matter - you never heard these in your history courses!) Native children and their families were dehumanized to permit the cultural genocide that was the purpose of the schools. It is sickening to think that religious communities found a way to buy into that vision, and that an acquaintance of mine could have been a part of it.

    It has just occurred to me that I had a little part in this with my magazine charity. And continue to do so by not speaking up more. Do your own conscience check. For myself, I apologize to Indigenous people everywhere. I apologize to the people of Canada whose values were betrayed by that school system. And I apologize to members of our faith communities who are horrified (finally?) at what we did to those people. Time now for the relevant Governments to continue to step up. Time now for the Church to step up and live what we believe. Apologize. We cannot continue the betrayal. Platitudes are no longer acceptable.

When it’s over, then what? Blog post June 2021

     I love seeing ideas with different slants on the same topic, in juxtaposition with each other. You find that in politics, in religion, and in discussion with your neighbours. If you keep an open mind you can often grow through expansion of your own thinking. My mentor in developmental psychology, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, points out that the ability to do this is one of our great developmental achievements. A three year old who wants you to come play with him can’t factor in that you are busy talking on the phone. They want you now. (There are a lot of three year olds around, aren’t there?) Neufeld describes the achievement as the ability to do ‘on the one hand..... on the other hand.’ On the one hand I want mommy right now. On the other hand I see that she is busy, so I will wait.

    I came across a couple of reflections that are relevant to the pandemic, notably to its outcome. They are not from the same publication, and only one spoke to the pandemic by name.      

    I will give you some selections, but before I do, what are your own thoughts? Is the world going to be a better place because of the pandemic? Or is it irreparably divided and damaged? Have we grown closer to each other or more suspicious of each other? Have you personally grown in any way or have you become more cynical about life?

    The Washington Post ran an Opinion piece by Salman Rushdie on May 24. Mr. Rushdie is feeling pretty negative, I think it is fair to say. He is cynical about the old adage of good things coming out of bad:

    I didn’t buy any of it, the stuff about divine or earthly retribution, or the dreams of a better future. Many people wanted to feel that some good would come out of the horror, that we would as a species somehow learn virtuous lessons and emerge from the cocoon of the lockdown as splendid New Age butterflies and create kinder, gentler, less greedy, more ecologically wise, less racist, less capitalist, more inclusive societies. This seemed to me, still seems to me, like Utopian thinking. The coronavirus did not strike me as the harbinger of socialism.

    He goes on to say that the damage done by the leaders of three countries in particular has been devastating:

    To repair the damage done by these people in these times will not be easy. I may not see the wounds mended in my lifetime. It may take a generation or more. The social damage of the pandemic itself, the fear of our old social lives, in bars and restaurants and dance halls and sports stadiums, will take time to heal (although a percentage of people seem to know no fear already). We will hug and kiss again. But will there still be movie theaters? Will there be bookstores? Will we feel okay in crowded subway cars?

    The social, cultural, political damage of these years, the deepening of the already deep rifts in society in many parts of the world, including the United States, Britain and India, will take longer. It would not be exaggerating to say that as we stare across those chasms, we have begun to hate the people on the other side. That hatred has been fostered by cynics and it bubbles over in different ways almost every day.

    Then he hits us where it really hurts:

    It isn’t easy to see how that chasm can be bridged — how love can find a way.

    What do you think? Does he strike a chord? On the one hand. He seems to make a good case. On the other hand .....

    Well, check this out.

    The daily email I get from The Plough and its Daily Dig has an uncanny ability to hit the sweet spot on emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual matters. Here’s the one that caught my eye in juxtaposition with Mr. Rushdie’s piece. It is by Eberhard Arnold, dated April 29:

    It is a simple thing: joy in everything that lives. Anyone who can rejoice in life, in other people, in the fellowship of church community – anyone who feels joy in the mutual relationships of trust and inner fellowship – such a person experiences what love is. Anyone who cannot feel joy cannot live.… Only where there is joy do love and justice dwell. We need the spirit of joy to overcome the gloomy spirit of covetousness, the spirit of unjust mammon and its deadly hate. We can only have such joy if we have faith, and if we believe that the earth has a future.

    I sat with that one for a while. On the one hand.....you can’t have joy and hate at the same time. You can’t have joy and cynicism at the same time. You can’t have joy and gloomy despair at the same time. Self-evident.

    On the other hand ....... you can have joy and love at the same time, You can have joy and faith at the same time.

    If you have joy and love you would seem to be in the sweet spot where the ‘chasm of hatred can be bridged.’ Rushdie, for all his cynicism, seems to want us there.

    Joy is a feeling but it is a bit different from happiness. You may not be happy in times of hardship. But you can be joyful: Anyone who can rejoice in life, in other people, in the fellowship of church community – anyone who feels joy in the mutual relationships of trust and inner fellowship – such a person experiences what love is.  

    The hardships of the pandemic may well continue for a while. On the one hand, we will make them worse with cynicism and hatred, as Rushdie implies.

    On the other hand, he points to the solution, which is love. And Eberhard Arnold tells us how to get there. By rejoicing. Again:  Anyone who can rejoice in life, in other people, in the fellowship of church community – anyone who feels joy in the mutual relationships of trust and inner fellowship – such a person experiences what love is.
 
    You may have discerned by now that many events of everyday life are generally out of our control but that events and reactions are not the same thing. It is so important that we do not give away our control of those reactions. We get to decide in favour of joy. Brilliant, yes? Because with it comes all good things, including the solution to the damage of the pandemic.
    
    On the one hand ....   On the other hand .....

Blog Post: May 2021 Were You Aware?

        How are you doing?

    Everyone is tired, I think.  Most are frustrated. The unpredictability of it all. Schools open.... schools close. Patios open, patios close. Who knows which stores are open, and for what? When will I get vaccinated, I am on the front lines......   

    People have been remarkably resilient for all that. But even in Canada we have had  violent protests against shut downs - as if the decision makers, not the virus, were the enemy of the people.

    However you cut it and whatever your political outlook, this virus chips away at our determination, even at our mental health. Care workers have been magnificent at supporting their sick patients, both CoVid patients and others, all of whom had in common that they could not visit their family members in hospital. But over time the care workers themselves were taking hits. You could hear it in interviews they gave, their pleas for more resources, their alarm bells over burnout.

    I dealt with burnout many many times in my practice. It was always frightening for people to feel they had come to the end of their resources - people who hitherto had been great and confident problem-solvers - but who were now feeling helpless, out of gas.

    All of this came to mind when I read an article on Easter Monday reprinted in the Toronto Star from the Los Angeles Times. The story was about hospital chaplains who were finding a new role in caring for the caregivers, whose morale was suffering in the face of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic.

    What caught my eye was a quote from one of the nurses who had been trying to follow her grandfather’s advice, “Be a caring presence.” She and other staff realized that they themselves needed that kind of attention. The multi-faith chaplaincy staff responded to this need - a new one for their work - and created a space on different wards where clinical staff could come for a cup of tea and quiet. “Two by two, to accommodate physical distancing, hospital staff trickle in, greeted by warm smiles and hot cups of tea. The chaplains may dim the lights or diffuse lavender-scented oils. Sometimes they set up a jar for workers to deposit their stressors, which are written on slips of paper.”

    The point in this, I believe, is the word ‘presence.’ Nurse Katz was already trying to be that to her patients. She surely responded when caring presence was given to her. The word resonates with me because I learned a long long time ago that if you are not present to the person in front of you, if you are not conveying that they matter to you, then nothing happens. And it is remarkable how simple the act of presence can be. A tea cart and quiet set the scene in that hospital, but it was the person of the chaplaincy staff that made the interaction so powerful. There was not even any mention of particular words. Nor did it matter which faith or denomination they represented.

    I love that.  And I mention it because I think that is what many of us right now are doing even when we think we are not doing very much. Yes you are! It is what many of you reading this are doing. A phone call, an email, FaceTime, grocery delivery, cookie drop off! Your faith may be strong or it may be weak or non-existent. You have a sense that the person you are talking to needs your presence. That’s enough. And somewhere in your consciousness you may register this as the work of God. Keep it up. Especially never ever underestimate how important it is and how it spreads healing ripples through the landscape of the pandemic.

    I think it is no accident that this article was published the day after Easter Sunday. It speaks to what the Resurrection was and is all about.  

    But to help make a very gentle connection to the source of this kind of power, here is another reflection contained in one of the daily emails I get, The Plough. This is neat:

    God’s love tears down walls. No longer religion against religion, Christians against non-Christians, but justice against sin, life against death. Therefore, every person you encounter should be your concern. Do not settle for less.                 Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

How’s that Easter thing working for you?

  Blog post Easter - April 2021

   Easter will be in a few days. At time of writing we are just entering Holy Week, the days between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.

    Last year, 2020, Easter Sunday was April 12. We were only just into the pandemic, or at least the declarations of states of emergency. At our house, we were not out of the country when the state of emergency was declared, but we were out of town. We came rushing back home in the middle of March Break week when we heard the news. So did a lot of other people.

    I re-read my Easter Blog post from April 2020. Curious as to what I was focusing on early in an intense situation whose future and duration we could not know. We were staying at home, we were being vigilant, and we were aware among other things that church services were being severely curtailed or cancelled. For the first time in my life my favourite service of the entire year - the Easter Vigil - was actually cancelled. Not only is it the number one service in the church’s calendar, I have had the privilege since 1993 of singing the Exsultet, the great Easter proclamation. Not in 2020.

    But still, didn’t we all expect it to be temporary, relatively short lived?

    My Blog post reflects that, I think. The theme was purification, picking up on one of the great themes of Lent, Passover, and so on. Clearly understanding this as something you go through. And you need to be attentive and intentional about what you are doing. It all has great significance in the faith life of anyone who believes in Jesus and what He is about.

    Here is part of the conclusion to that post:

    It all seems to come together in a most remarkable way. Wouldn't it be terrible if we went through the purification rituals of Holy Week, and then walked away from it all when it was done. And wouldn't it be terrible if we went through the purification rituals that are going on at the hands of the coronavirus, only to later walk away from the experience as if it meant nothing.

    A bit unknowingly prescient, perhaps. We realize that we have much to learn from coronavirus. The monster has forced that upon us by staying in our face for so long and depriving us of contact with each other, depriving us of income, depriving us at times of even a sense of well-being, of feeling safe in the world.

    But it was not going to last. And it has. And even with the vaccine, we are going to need to be vigilant for some time to come.

    Great damage has been done in the meantime. We have lost relatives. We have been unable to say good-bye to loved ones who died even from other causes. We have lost jobs. We have lost businesses. And again we have lost a bit or a lot of our ability to feel safe.

    Which brings me to Easter again. The Resurrection. The triumph of goodness over evil, of life over death. The words of the Exsultet that I used to sing on the eve of Easter Sunday in the dark before the lights came in on the church, are tremendously triumphant in tone. Pick any stanza. Here is one:

    Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
    radiant in the brightness of your King!
    Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
    Darkness vanishes for ever!

    Here is another:

    This is the night when Jesus Christ
    broke the chains of death
    and rose triumphant from the grave.
    What good would life have been to us,
    had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

    Oh really? The pandemic did not stop last Easter. It won’t be done by this Easter. What then does all this mean?

    Robert Barron has a wonderful reflection on the Stations of the Cross, the fourteen images of Jesus’ journey from his trial by Pilate, to his execution and then his burial. The third station is Jesus’ first fall under the weight of the Cross and after he had been whipped with cords that had shards on the ends. So he was bleeding a lot.  It should not be too big a stretch for us to imagine carrying the weight of the pandemic. That we, like him, totally do not deserve.

    In his reflection on this scene, Bishop Barron tells the story of a man who approached him after Mass one day to say that the sermon he had preached - and that Barron thought was pretty good! - on the benevolent love of God, had left the man empty. Oh? Why? The man told about his situation in which his two granddaughters, ages 5 and 7, were suffering from a terminal disease that starts with loss of their eyesight. They both will die. The disease was not understood and could not be controlled. The elder girl had already lost her eyesight and the younger sibling was crying in terror at the fate that awaited her too. The man had been to priests, ministers, rabbis and gurus, to ask the question, Why is God doing this? Barron’s sermon was for the man the most recent in a line of failures to shed any light on it all. Barron notes: “Never had the problem of evil - reconciling the goodness of God with the presence of suffering - appeared to me so concretely and in such a compelling way.”

    He replied to the man that he did not have a concrete answer to the problem. But he could see the man was still searching for God, and “if you follow the question all the way, you will be led to the heart of the Christian mystery, which is that God the Father sends his Son into the very worst of our suffering, into what frightens us the most. And in that we have the answer ..... a deeply spiritual answer: that God doesn’t take away our suffering, but he enters into it with us and thereby sanctifies it.”

    The triumphal language of the Exsultet is exactly that - the paradox of triumph arising from the torture, the death, the resurrection of Jesus. He was not spared, and that is where the sanctifying comes from. For believers, the resurrection does not take away pandemics, it removes their sting, their ultimate power over us. The resurrection shows us that they do not get the last word. We are invited to believe that and to trust it. And when we do, we sing the Exsultet and announce it to the world.

    I have experienced family tragedies in my lifetime, challenges to faith. But by far the biggest challenge to believe this resurrection stuff came in October 2015 with my diagnosis of lymphoma. That is when Easter/ resurrection/ Exsultet became real. Really real. I trusted the message, and I felt what that triumph is about. At the Easter Vigil 2016 when I was in the middle of my treatment and too weak to walk on my own up and down the two steps of the sanctuary at St. Paul’s, I sang the Exsultet with a weak voice and a strong spirit of hope. Lymphoma did not get the last word even though I did not know what direction it was going.

    This year we join the old man with his granddaughters and weep for them and for him. We join everyone affected by the pandemic and feel our hearts break a little. And then we let Christ enter. And we sing. 

Talking to Mr. Anxiety

 Blog March 2021

    The pandemic with its stay at home orders and shut downs and school closings has truly rocked us. Mental health issues have appeared and there is a lot of anxiousness around. I thought I would reflect a bit on some of my work with anxiety.

    Here is a scene that played out in various ways many times over the years:

    Every time someone yelled at her or even got upset with her, she would start shaking. At work, she would shut down and retreat into herself. She was in a responsible job, however, and so she learned to forge ahead and try not let anyone see the extent of her distress. She was paying a great price for this strategy and one day she could just not do it anymore. She had to take time off work. Her boss was very concerned and puzzled. Listening to her, he thought she was depressed. He suggested she get help, and called me himself.

    The employee - male or female - in such a situation would feel embarrassed and humiliated. But also relieved to be able to finally share how difficult it had been all this time. Difficult because of the distress itself, but equally difficult in the realization that people did not understand what they were going through. Friends, co-workers and even family would ask if something was wrong. Men in this situation often conveyed the impression that they were angry.

    My client told her story, including her history of having been yelled at when she was a young child. She grew up thinking that she was not smart enough or capable enough or good enough. So she had to work extra hard to not only succeed but to excel at everything she did. She recognized the price she had paid, and it was not a big leap for her to connect at least some of that to her background. The problem was that it still felt very real to her that she might actually not be smart enough or capable enough or good enough. And that people knew it or soon would.

    And therein lies the heart of the matter.

    Two terrible things had happened to her in her psychological development. She was not responsible for either of them (do you remember that great scene in Good Will Hunting? Robin Williams says to Will twelve times, “It’s not you fault........ it’s not your fault ..... it’s not your fault.......”). First, the emotional reaction (fear) to being yelled at gave rise to the cognitive reaction (‘there is danger here’) of not being ‘good enough.’ Second, because that sequence had been laid down often, she (us, maybe) could not tell the direction of causality. Did the danger give rise to the fear, or did the long history of fear keep finding dangers? In this case, the fear found/ created the danger, not the other way around. But she and we do not register it that way when it happens. Our conscious experience is that we are afraid because there is a terrible danger that we have to avoid. It is heart-breaking to see and hear that history play out.

    To make matters worse, when the danger is evoked, we have no defense against it, it seems so real and familiar and legitimate. And so we do our best: we deflect, deny, obfuscate, become a perfectionist, get quiet, get angry - anything to avoid the danger of people seeing that I truly am not good enough here.

    Here is the good news. There is a defense.

    First a little side-bar. I went through this myself, and did not get to deal effectively with it until I was done grad school and was actually out practicing. Talk about humiliating! I had gone all the way through elementary and high school with a very high expectation bar set for me. The result of reminders of the great accomplishments of aunts, uncles, etc etc in religion, medicine, law, and other fields. My greatest fear would arise when I  would be told I had done something wrong, didn’t understand something, failed a test! Danger! Everyone will see I am not capable enough - not good enough. The voice told me don’t ever put your hand up in class. Even if you give the correct answer, someone might laugh thinking it was the wrong answer. And the fear and the danger would again be evoked.

    The anxiety was terrible. I at least recognized it as anxiety. It often presents as anger, or burnout or depression (if you live long enough with anxiety that you cannot master, you will become a candidate for depression) with the individual not being aware of the underlying anxiety. At that point it is accurate to say they do not feel their emotions.

    The defense, the one that works, is to learn to talk to the fear signal before it creates the danger. Or even while it is evoking the danger. I created Mr. Anxiety for this purpose. I would say, “I see you there, telling me I can’t speak up” or whatever I was too anxious to do. “I see you there, but today I am in charge. I am going to do it anyhow.” And I would. Mr. Anxiety eventually gave up and lost his power to manufacture dangers.

    But, you say, some of the dangers are in fact real, as when you are threatened by someone or when you come down with a very serious illness. Good point. Mr. Anxiety cannot create those dangers. What he can do, though, is convince you that you are helpless, that your life is over, and there is nothing you can do. Notice? (S)He has taken away your power again. So we address him/ her in the same way: “I hear you there. But you do not get to determine the kind of day I am going to have. I do. I am not giving that power away to you. I am going to be active. I am going to contact friends or a helping person. I am going to spend time on my hobby ....... I am going to live .......”

    I loved helping people develop their own version of Mr. Anxiety. One 12 year old boy created an image of an anxiety balloon that floated near the ceiling, and he would talk to it, and tell it that he - the boy - was in charge today.

    It occurs to me that the “Let’s Talk” campaign of earlier this year is a very worthwhile resource. And in keeping with the spirit of it, there could be some things in the stories I just told, that you can use or suggest to someone you know. In the particular example of anxiety - which may be observable but may also be disguising itself - talking to someone about it and then talking directly to it, may bring significant relief. I can tell you I own the t-shirt on that one.

    If you are a person of faith, you have another dimension to work with, namely the knowledge that you are supported by a God who loves you to bits. Sometimes you will recognize that support (usually after the fact) in the form of persons who come into your life or into your day. Sometimes you will recognize it in the quiet interior nudges that encourage and point to new directions. I will close with this hopeful little reflection that speaks beautifully to that. I re-posted it recently and it had appeared in the Loyola Press Daily Lenten Reflections: Have another look. The ending is beautiful. https://www2.loyolapress.com/webmail/39532/1133776403/b787d08f36b001ce70de6610cd3d8dc8d9310c4cb96bf55b979791968a38a9bb

Transitioning and believing

Blog Post February 2021

    What a year this has been, and we are only a month into it! Covid persists and stay at home orders or lock-downs become necessary. Business people, employees, health care workers, students, teachers, parents, struggle and experience everything from grief to fatigue to anger, to depression and burnout.  Politicians waver, hoping that the vaccines will bail them out. All of us try to maintain hope but some days that is in short supply. And when we turned to our faith community, we found that we were prevented from gathering with them other than by video link. Most understand that this is a health and safety issue, however, not a rights and freedom issue. In any case, it is one of the losses of the times.

    Fortunately, people are also writing about positive things that have come from the pandemic, the ‘hard gifts’ we mentioned here in a previous post. Fortunately, too, people are learning what the term ‘Common Good’ actually means. That learning has been prompted by moral and ethical issues about whom to vote for, who gets vaccinated first, why I should wear a mask, and so on.

    All in all, the history of the 2020's will provide fodder for academic analysis and learned papers for many years to come. We will tell our grandchildren that we lived through a frightening time.    

    You cannot comment on anything this year, though, without mentioning the January 6 assault on the Capitol in Washington D.C. Timed to coincide with the certification of the U.S. presidential vote, the transition period of the leaving of office by one president, and the inauguration of another.

    In all of this, in the long list of terrifying issues we have been faced with, one has troubled me greatly for a long time, and that is why I am writing now. I have referred to it in recent posts, and who knows, we may face it again. That is the role of religion in the ascendancy of the outgoing president of the United States. More specifically, the role of Catholics in that ascendancy. In trying to talk about it, one enters into the domain of both topics you never bring up at a dinner party: politics and religion. Both are emotionally laden, and both are important elements of the identity of each of us. We do not alter course easily. So forgive me.

    But there is something urgently important in this instance. Very well meaning and sincere people really believed the last president was an answer to what they thought was the only issue that mattered, namely the abortion situation in the U.S. Because you could see, right?, that he was pro-life. They were willing to look past the list of public offenses he has committed and bragged about. They were willing to look past his cynical desecration of St. John Episcopal Church and the statue of Pope St. John Paul ll in Washington. All because he would act on abortion. All because he was going to root out socialism. All because, for some people, he was going to save the world from the pedophile ring led by Hillary Clinton in the basement of a pizza shop. I will spare you the name of the movement if you don’t know it. Its members were front and centre on January 6.

    I refer you to a recent article that is important reading for Catholics and Christians of all stripes, I think (it includes the photo of the Trumps standing in front of the statue of Pope St. John Paul ll): https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/how-catholics-got-conned-donald-trump.

    Here are a couple of brief excerpts from the article, written by a Franciscan Sister and a Catholic priest:

    It was never about "pro-life." Many Americans, including Catholics, voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was "pro-life." Those who did were conned by the con artist himself. Others knew but did not care that his recently claimed "pro-life" stance and his revolving membership in the Republican Party were born less of personal conviction and more of political expediency.......

    The authors talk about Trump’s apparent sociopathy:  Using real-life examples from Trump's life: a sociopath has no qualms about separating babies from their mothers, mocking a disabled reporter, ridiculing public figures or firing others at will. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants, including inciting violence........

     They go on: But what about Catholics? How do we explain the fact that nearly 57% of white Catholics voted for Trump in this last election? Or that many Catholic bishops likely cast their ballots for him as well? How did the leaders of the Catholic Church and so many of its members get pulled into this quicksand of resentment, this hijacking of the Gospel?

    The authors suggest a number of reasons for the move that took place among Catholics. In the last item on their list they call out American bishops who in part got to their support of Trump through their opposition to Pope Francis: 

     This, in turn, has given encouragement for right-wing Catholic movements to become more vocal in their opposition to Francis. Timothy Busch, the Napa Institute, the Knights of Columbus, William Barr, Steve Bannon and the Federalist Society now lead the lay resistance to Francis and the opposition to finishing the work of Vatican II.

    On the other side of the ledger, Catholic friends have indicated they would never vote for Joe Biden, a practising Catholic who has not condemned the politics of abortion on demand. An article in the Globe and Mail by Michael W. Higgins titled ‘The unassuming Catholicism of Joe Biden prepares him well for the hard journey ahead,’ paints what will be a study in contrast between the two presidents.  

    Again, a couple of excerpts:

    He doesn’t showcase his religious convictions with dubious sincerity – as did, say, Bill Clinton when he carried a Bible with him during his impeachment controversy, or Donald Trump, who visited an Episcopal church for a photo-op after protesters in the area were cleared by armed police in riot gear – nor does he theologize with the cognoscenti, as Barack Obama did with Marilynne Robinson. He just carries his rosary, attends mass regularly, publicly delights in singing 1970s Catholic hymns and credits his faith as the bedrock of solace during those times of bereavement when he lost two children and a spouse........

    If some in the U.S. hierarchy are distrustful of his commitment to his faith, the Bishop of Rome is not among their number. In fact, Mr. Biden and Pope Francis have spoken on several occasions. Mr. Biden is on record as sympatico with the Pope’s prioritizing of the poor, prophetic teaching on the climate crisis, hypersensitivity to the social and economic upheaval of forced migration, and he remains deeply grateful for the pontiff’s personal accompaniment at the time of the death of his son Beau.

    There is a pro-life vision here that Trump abhors and that Pope Francis endorses. People that see this pro-life vision in the context of Catholic teaching on the Common Good (see my last post) will be able to support Biden even with his blind spot. People who do not, and especially those with the double barrel animus that involves indignation at Pope Francis, will not. I am a tad embarrassed for their Catholicism.

    Here is the conclusion from the NCR article ‘How Catholics got conned....’:

    How are we to respond to this painful reality? We offer not advice, but an image of active hope. Late Wednesday night, following the riots in the Capitol, U.S. Rep. Andy Kim spent almost two hours on his knees picking up debris on the floor of the Rotunda before returning to the congressional caucus to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Kim is the first Asian American congressional representative from New Jersey.

    His response is a challenge to each of us. What can we do now? We can kneel and pick up the broken promises of justice, the scattered pieces of the Gospel. We can kneel as humble servants to clean up the debris of fear and hatred. And we the people, all the people, can stand together in the long road of healing.
 
    That is the U.S. We in Canada watched it all unfold. The last four years, the last four months. We were affected by it: we resonated to large pieces of the turmoil, and we have been repulsed by much of it. We can certainly heed the advice of the authors’ conclusion. We can, above all, kneel and pick up the ‘scattered pieces of the Gospel.’ The Gospel got brutalized in the last four years. We Catholics - all of us, including bishops and organizations called out in the article - can also reaffirm our allegiance to Pope Francis, the duly elected, legitimate successor of Peter. He is our best guide to living the Gospel, and he is our best protection against ever being misled like this again.