The Catholics Strike Back
It’s About Time
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From a recent National Post op-ed by Lord Conrad Black:
“The victim culture, which has become so overpoweringly tedious in Canada, derives from the Marxist view that all relationships are based on power and you either wield power over someone who then becomes your victim, or you are yourself the victim of someone with power over you. The attraction of this conception is that it enables almost anyone to become a righteous complainant and provides a free pass for the misdeeds and excesses of anyone self-identifying as a victim and enables them to behave as bullies to the window-rattling applause of the serried masses of contemporary society’s virtue-signallers.” - Lord Conrad Black, The 'absurd' idea of paying reparations for slavery
Perfectly stated Lord Conrad! Please do me the honour of further teeing off today’s article: “As I have often written here (National Post) before, including last week, this is an evident phenomenon in much of our treatment of Indigenous questions in Canada.”
Indeed.
Until recently, the Catholic Church, like all institutions in the modern West, seems to have suffered from the same primitivistic reflex that prevented them from doing or saying anything counter to the needs, interests or demands of so-called equity deserving groups, especially indigenous groups. When institutions first began to succumb to the anti-Western / anti-Christian mind virus, it was for the most part regarded as misplaced empathy which was somewhat silly and kind of annoying. But then moral do-gooding and virtue signaling (with all the wrong facts), has expanded into something far more offensive than mere annoyance.
What is happening today is nothing short of shocking and grotesque. History will not be kind to the social justice fools so stricken with the aforementioned woke mind virus who have rendered nearly obsolete the objective truth-seeking tradition so integral to Western progress. With an incredible absence of cultural sensitivity they want to “tear down” Western culture and its Christian heritage, and they want you to feel that’s a good thing, and help them do it.
Our great Western institutions arose out of a liberal-democratic order which prioritized individual human rights. But under the woke regime of the last few years, activist subverted institutions have revolted against this foundational premise. They have brought in illiberal collectivism in the name of anti-racism, LGBTQ advocacy, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. They have labelled as a negative our society of majority European descendents, “Eurocentric.” They have revised history and demanded indigenization, decolonization and one-sided reconciliation. They have waged war on freedom of speech, and in the process of all of this, have harmed far too many individuals.
If it is a battle for truth in which we are engaged, should it not be won by those who wield the most substantial facts? One would think so. However, material evidence and their adjacent historical facts do not seem to slow down the mind virus-afflicted anti-Western activist class. It seems there is more to this battle than truth. For, those who reject truth, reject the good. Our battle extends to one of good vs. evil. We are locked in the throes of a classic struggle. Our enemies, the activists, possess the same intellectual capacities to discern plausibility and to examine material evidence as everyone else. However, they do not possess the same moral compass. All notions of right and wrong, since the activists feel are just products of that evil old Western tradition, are cast aside in favour of employing whatever immoral, dishonest, and unjust means they deem necessary to forward their destructive anti-Western interests.
Our institutions have been thoroughly subverted, and we can no longer depend on those who hold leadership roles within them. If they have those roles, it's because the social justice class allows it. If they challenge the social justice class, they end up humiliated and cancelled. Our institutions have taken on a totalitarian character. The equity-deserving are in charge now. But yet the majority of the majority still has no idea as to the extent their own social institutions militate against them. But every boiling pot eventually blows its lid. The only question remaining: when will the explosion occur? Or more importantly, is there anything that can be done to stop it?
I believe there is. Individuals from within and without Western institutions must continue to fight the battle for truth. Keep in mind though, as mentioned above, this is not a truth battle won with facts alone. While facts will ultimately deal the fatal blow that defeats the social justice crowd, we always must keep in mind that the “truth” in this battle is to be thought in general terms as “the good.” Jesus described himself as “the truth.” We must realize that truth is “the good,” and that lies are not the enemy, but merely weapons of the ultimate enemy: evil.
Let There Be Light!
Several heroic individuals, Catholics from that great and illustrious institution of Western Christianity, have decided to speak their minds about facts and truth concerning the false claim of 215 murdered children buried in an apple orchard outside of a former Indian residential school in Kamloops B.C.
Back in August of 2023, The Catholic Register, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Toronto, reported on comments made by Bishop Emeritus Fred Henry of Calgary. In an email sent to newspapers, the Bishop asked, “Why is the Catholic Church not asking the federal government for proof that even one residential child is actually missing in the sense that his (or) her parents didn’t know what happened to their child at the time of the child’s death?”
On October 22nd of this year, I reposted a piece from The Catholic Register called 3 Years Later, Canadian ‘Mass Graves’ Claims Remain Unproven. In that piece the Catholics point out the highly suspicious length of time it took Chief Casimir (the Chief of the Kamloops band) to upgrade her language when referring to the contentious apple orchard site near the former Kamloops residential school. From that piece, “...the ground-penetrating radar had merely identified ‘anomalies’ under the surface of the Kamloops site. Such anomalies indicate only that some kind of soil disturbance has occurred, not the definite presence of any human bodies. Despite this uncertainty, until this year the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation (Kamloops band) declined to acknowledge that the existence of children’s graves was unproven.”
Turning to Father Raymond J. de Souza, a National Post columnist whom I read religiously (pun intended). On Sunday, Father de Souza published his thoughts on The Mixed Legacy of Murray Sinclair. Sinclair passed away last Monday. Father de Souza, while reluctant to “speak ill of the dead,” correctly in my view, places “public figures…in a different category.” Father de Souza feels Sinclair was “likely the most influential Canadian public figure of this century,” as demonstrated by Sinclair’s role as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because of this, some much needed scrutiny over exactly what Sinclair's contribution to Canada was is perhaps best initiated by the reasonable observation that Sinclair “taught Canada to speak ill of generations of the dead, including its founders, and even to speak ill of Canada itself.”
I, for one, will not let the truth of Murray Sinclair’s legacy remain hidden. Expect to see more detailed examinations into his consequential and overtly anti-Canadian exploits in future articles. For now, let’s turn our attention to an outspoken Catholic priest who is simply not having the anti-Catholic false narrative concerning 215 murdered former Indian Residential School students.
On October 21st, a popular youtube channel called Catholic Minute run by Catholic speaker Ken Yasinski, posted a video which has since accumulated 125,000 views (as of this writing). The content of the video is an interview by Yasinski of Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette, who has Indigenous heritage.
At the beginning of the interview Father Bouvette walks us through the reasoning process he employed back in 2021 when the false Kamloops story first broke with sensational international headlines. Refreshingly, his thinking employs logic…Hallelujah! Although initially he did not know what to think, his remark concerning the widely reported 2021 statement by the Kamloops band which had claimed the remains of 215 children had been discovered, was as follows:
“It seemed as though this statement was going to suffice to send the entire country into a tailspin of remorse, and hatred, and vitriol, and anger, that left my head spinning. I couldn’t believe what was happening.”
Father Bouvette then recalls how during the first week after the story broke the media referred to the discovery as a “mass grave.” However, the following week the language was modified to “probable burial sites.” Everyone just moved on from “mass grave,” – although some didn’t get the memo and to this day still believe a clandestine mass grave full of murdered Indigenous kids was discovered.
At the time, very few people thought that maybe we should reel back the public emotional outburst that indigenous leaders and their media partners started. Very few people felt the need to ask questions. I think many Canadians somehow enjoyed the shame, sadness and anger. They used it as a way to feel something. Maybe their lives were boring and uneventful. Maybe the false story confirmed the ugly feelings they always harboured for their nation and cultural heritage – the message of how bad European colonialism was, and how terrible Christians in general are, especially Catholics, has been a constant beating drum for decades. Is it really a surprise so many of us literally lept to believe with the eagerness of children on Christmas morning the most awful and by all accounts implausible story of indigenous-non-indigenous relations and the making of Canada?
Father Bouvette speaks at length using clear precise language. From the beginning he has been asking questions. That is to say, he has been doing what the vast majority of credulous Canadians who have been trained like seals to not second guess indigenous people – or any so-called “equity deserving” group – have not been doing. Father Bouvette asks, “what’s the point of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission if we leave the truth off?” If you ask me, there is no point at all. That is why I advocate for the entire thing to be abandoned. My piece Just Say No To Truth and Reconciliation lays my feelings out. I’ll add here that it has never been clear what exactly it is we should be reconciling. In fact, once the historical wrongs perpetrated by indigenous people against the settler population are properly and fairly factored into the reconciliation equation, it may be determined that there is absolutely nothing to be reconciled. It may be determined that the Aboriginal Industry (the general consortium of indigenous activist organizations) owes something back to Canadian tax-payers for their decades-long multi-tiered rent-seeking extortion racket, which creates and exaggerates historical wrongs, and that has stolen tens, perhaps hundreds of billions from tax-payers.
The interview with Father Bouvette is almost 40-minutes. It took him a while to go public with his views, but I am so pleased that he has. Better late than never.
Another brave Catholic is popular youtuber Brian Holdsworth. Two weeks ago he posted a video called I Could Get Arrested For This Video, which has accumulated over 30,000 views so far.
Brian opens with an historical account of the “Indian Bishop” – A French missionary named Vital Justin Grandin who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, travelled to the new world, and became the first Bishop of Brian’s diocese. Bishop Grandin was known as the “Indian Bishop” because of his dedication to indigenous people. According to Brian, regardless of woke assessments of his legacy, Bishop Grandin “was a man who sacrificed a comfortable life as a French cleric to come to the edge of the known world. Not to serve European settlers, but an indigenous population that would eventually become western Canada.”
It was Bishop Grandin’s tireless and selfless advocacy for the educating of indigenous children that today earn’s him the scorn of historical revisionist activists. Never-the-less, “by all contemporary accounts he was a champion of indigenous people,” he understood that after the signing of various treaties, with many indigenous people now consigned to reserves (and therefore no longer following the buffalo herds they historically relied on for sustenance), they desperately required education in order to adapt to their changing circumstances in a rapidly transforming modern world.
The historically illiterate activists today have been successful in having Bishop Grandin’s name removed from two Catholic school boards from within the arch-diosese he founded. Also, Brian mentions that his home city (which Bishop Grandin helped found) is considering removing Bishop Grandin’s name from anything related to the city. A man who successfully dedicated his life to indigenous people, who had such a lasting impact and who was greatly loved by those he served, deserves to be canonized not cancelled.
Brian makes a brilliant point when he asks Canadians to consider if we have the moral and intellectual integrity on which we can judge our ancestors. In Brian’s view, and in mine, we do not. “It’s just as likely that our descendents will hold us in contempt for our moral certitudes today.” And concerning our forefathers, “How can such an arbitrary approach feed such a confident reproach towards our ancestors?” It cannot. In fact, it may be this very thing, this morally superior posture and ahistorical attitude and judgement of our ancestors which will indeed turn off our descendents, and lead them to see us as virtue signalling idiots, who listened to activists while hundreds of thousands of poor indigenous people suffered and languished on remote reserves (an actual humanitarian travesty, unlike the Indian Residential Schools). Because of this, I don’t think I would blame our descendents, they would be correct in their assessment: we continue to choose what feels right, instead of what is right.
“Between church tithes and tax-payer dollars we are probably close to a hundred million dollars dedicated to the search for the remains of the alleged victims, but we are yet to find a single one. The likely explanation is that there are no remains at the site of the school in Kamloops or elsewhere…all that was discovered at the Kamloops site was soil disturbances in an area with known archival records of septic fields being dug in that exact spot.” - Brian Holdsworth
Brian correctly points out that the assumption which was immediately adopted at the break of the false Kamloops story was that “the Catholic church must have buried murdered children here.” After over three years of covering this story, the near universal acceptance of this outrageously implausible story with no evidence, is something I have yet to reconcile. Yes I know that for decades Westerners have been propagandized into anti-Westernism and Christian hatred. It’s just that I’m still shocked at how utterly effective the campaign to turn Westerners against their ancestors and cultural heritage has been. The million dollar question concerning the widespread belief in the false Kamloops story is, as Brian put it, “what does that say about everyone who jumped to that conclusion with little to no evidence supporting it?”
After commenting on “residential school denialism” (alluded to in the title of his video), Brian brings up historical records and photographs found on Nina Green’s excellent website, IndianResidentialSchoolRecords.com, of an anniversary celebration of former students of the Kamloops Indian Residential school (photo at the top of this article). It was a two-day event in 1977 and involved over 280 former staff and students. The event featured such things as a Salmon BBQ with Indian dancing. Do the people photographed look like genocide survivors?
Since the former students who attended this event are now indeed referred to as “survivors,” Brian asks:
“If Residential Schools, and especially this now infamous Kamloops residential school were really the machinery of genocide that everyone has come to believe they are, why would anyone come back to the place of their ordeal to reminisce about the good old days.”
Great question. Maybe Kimberly Murray, Leah Gazan, or Chief Casimir could give us an answer.
Thanks for reading. For more on this topic, read Is Kimberly Murray planning to recommend Canadian taxpayers pay billions in reparations?
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A two-day reunion at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1977 involved 280 former staff and students. Activities included a “Salmon BBQ with Indian dancing.”
The point is this:
“If Residential Schools, and especially this now infamous Kamloops residential school, were really the machinery of genocide…why would anyone come back to the place of their ordeal to reminisce about the good old days?”
Bad news James !! Murray has just issued an arrest warrant for you with the charge of Res School Denialist. You are to appear before an unbiased tribunal of indigenous chiefs at the next AFN meeting. You may be required to run the gauntlet.