A woman holds up a sign during a rally against assisted suicide in 2016 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. (CNS photo/Art Babych)
Those who persist in denying that the Church is engaged in a culture war, the combatants in which are aptly called the “culture of life” and the “culture of death,” might ponder this June blog post by my summer pastor in rural Québec, Father Tim Moyle:
Tonight I am preparing to celebrate a funeral for someone (let’s call him “H” to protect his privacy) who, while suffering from cancer, was admitted to hospital with an unrelated problem, a bladder infection. H’s family had him admitted to the hospital earlier in the week under the assumption that the doctors there would treat the infection and then he would be able to return home. To their shock and horror, they discovered that the attending physician had indeed made the decision NOT to treat the infection. When they demanded that he change his course of (in)action, he refused, stating that it would be better if H died of this infection now rather than let cancer take its course and kill him later. Despite their demands and pleadings, the doctor would not budge from his decision. In fact he deliberately hastened H’s end by ordering large amounts of morphine “to control pain” which resulted in him losing consciousness as his lungs filled up with fluid. In less than 24 hours, H was dead.
Let me tell you a bit about H. He was 63 years old. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters who are both currently working in universities toward their undergraduate degrees. We are not talking here about someone who was advanced in years and rapidly failing due to the exigencies of old age. We are talking about a man who was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. We are talking about a man who still held on to hope that perhaps he might defy the odds long enough to see his daughters graduate. Evidently and tragically, in the eyes of the physician tasked with providing the care needed to beat back the infection, that hope was not worth pursuing.
Again, let me make this point abundantly clear: It was the express desire of both the patient and his spouse that the doctor treat the infection. This wish was ignored….
Canada’s vulnerability to the culture of death is exacerbated by Canada’s single-payer, i.e., state-funded and state-run, health care system. And the brutal fact is that it‘s more “cost effective” to euthanize patients than to treat secondary conditions that could turn lethal (like H’s infection) or to provide palliative end-of-life care. Last year, when I asked a leading Canadian Catholic opponent of euthanasia why a rich country like the “True North strong and free” couldn’t provide palliative end-of-life care for all those with terminal illnesses, relieving the fear of agonized and protracted dying that’s one incentive for euthanasia, he told me that only 30% of Canadians had access to such care. When I asked why the heck that was the case, he replied that, despite assurances from governments both conservative and liberal that they’d address this shameful situation, the financial calculus always won out – from a utilitarian point of view, euthanizing H and others like him was the sounder public policy.
But in Canada, a mature democracy, that utilitarian calculus among government bean-counters wouldn’t survive for long if a similar, cold calculus was not at work in the souls of too many citizens. And that is one reason why the Church must engage the culture war, not only in Canada but in the United States and throughout the West: to warm chilled souls and rebuild a civil society committed to human dignity.
Then there is the civic reason. To reduce a human being to an object whose value is measured by “utility” is to destroy one of the building blocks of the democratic order – the moral truth that the American Declaration of Independence calls the “inalienable” right to “life.” That right is “inalienable” – which means built-in, which means not a gift of the state – because it reflects something even more fundamental: the dignity of the human person.
When we lose sight of that, we are lost as a human community, and democracy is lost. So the culture war must be fought. And a Church that takes social justice seriously must fight it.
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Members of the Sts’ailes First Nation at Holy Rosary Cathedral last year for the first Mass to integrate a First Nation language. A Cardus report presents the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking about their faith and distinguishing it from the traditional spirituality they’re often associated with. / Photo courtesy Nicholas Elbers, 2022
Vancouver, Canada, May 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
A groundbreaking report published by the Ottawa-based Cardus Institute has given voice to Indigenous Canadians who are frustrated by secular society’s unawareness of — or unwillingness to accept — the fact that almost half of them are Christian.
“I find that insulting to Indigenous people’s intelligence and freedom,” Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette said of the prejudice he regularly encounters.
Bouvette, who has mixed Cree-Métis and Italian heritage and now serves as vicar for vocations and Young Adults in the Diocese of Calgary, was one of 12 individuals interviewed by Cardus for the report “Indigenous Voices of Faith.”
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, left, leads a post-production discussion by Indigenous Voices of Faith participants. Photo courtesy of Cardus
Prejudice against Indigenous Christians has become so strong, even inside some Indigenous communities, “that Indigenous Christians in this country right now are living in the time of new martyrdom,” Bouvette said.
Although that martyrdom may not cost them their lives, “they are ostracized and humiliated sometimes within their own communities if they openly express their Christian or Catholic faith.”
Statistics Canada reported last year that the 2021 census found that 850,000, or 47%, of Canada’s 1.8-million Indigenous people identify as Christian and that more than a quarter of the total report they are Catholic. Only 73,000, or 4%, of Indigenous people said they adhere to traditional Indigenous spiritual beliefs.
In a new report, Cardus wants to “amplify the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking for themselves about their religious commitments, which sometimes clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Photo courtesy of Cardus
Ukrainian Catholic Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Faith Communities, conducted the interviews for the think tank last fall. He published his report in March at a time when Canadian mainstream media and many political leaders continued to stir division and prejudice through misleading commentary about abandoned cemeteries at Indian Residential Schools.
The purpose of the report, he writes, “is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of Indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”
Too often, however, “the public narrative implies, or boldly declares, that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous Canadians and Christianity or other faiths,” Bennett said. “[M]any Indigenous Canadians strongly disagree with those narratives.”
Father Bouvette is clearly one of those.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of [my Indigenous grandmother’s] time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to,” Bouvette said. “No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down.”
Bouvette said his “grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for 99 years and 11 months of her life. She was a Christian from the day of her birth, and she remained a Christian until the day of her death. And so that was not by the consequence of some imposition.”
Nevertheless, Canadians continue to labor under a prejudice holding the opposite view. “I do believe that probably the majority of Canadians at this time, out of some mistaken notion of guilt for whatever their cultural or ethnic background is, think they are somehow responsible for Indigenous people having had something thrust upon them that they didn’t want,” Bouvette said.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us,” Father Cristino Bouvette says in a Cardus report on Indigenous faith. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“But I would say, give us a little more credit than that and assume that if there is an Indigenous person who continues to persevere in the Christian faith it is because they want to, because they understand why they have chosen to in the first place, and they remain committed to it. We should be respectful of that.”
The executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, Christian Elia, agrees and says society should grant Indigenous Catholics the respect and personal agency that is due all Canadians.
“Firstly, I am not an Indigenous person, so I cannot speak for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but neither can non-Indigenous secularists who choose to ignore that Indigenous people in Canada continue to self-identify as Christian, the majority of these Catholic,” Elia said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
He said his organization has heard from many Indigenous Catholics who are “growing weary of the ongoing assumption that somehow they have been coerced into the faith, that it is inconceivable that they wish to be Catholic. This condescending attitude must stop.”
Deacon Rennie Nahanee, who serves at St. Paul’s Indian Church in North Vancouver, was another of the 12 whom Bennett interviewed. A cradle Catholic and member of the Squamish First Nation, Deacon Nahanee said there is nothing incompatible with being both an authentic Indigenous person and a Catholic.
“I’m pretty sure we had a belief in the Creator even before the missionaries came to British Columbia,” he said. “And our feelings, our thoughts about creation, the way that we lived and carried out our everyday lives, and the way that we helped to preserve the land and the animals that we used for food, our spirituality and our culture, were similar to the spirituality of the Catholic Church.”
“I believe that’s why our people accepted it. I don’t think anybody can separate themselves from God, even though they say so.”
Interviewed later by The B.C. Catholic, Nahanee said he is not bothered by the sort of prejudice outlined by Bouvette. “People are going to say or do what they want,” he said.
Voices of Indigenous Christianity
Bennett, program director of Cardus Faith Communities, interviewed 12 Indigenous Canadians, most of them Christian, about their religious commitments, “which often clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Here is a selection of some of their comments:
Tal James of the Penelakut First Nation in Nanaimo spoke about the relationship between Indigenous culture and his Christian faith:
Tal James and wife Christina. Photo courtesy of Project 620 – James Ministry
“I think … that our [Indigenous] cultures were complete, and in Jesus they’re more complete. I think that’s a big thing and a big step for a lot of us. You’re going to have a lot of non-Indigenous people look at you and question your actions based on your Aboriginal heritage. Don’t take that to heart. They’re the ignorant ones who don’t want you to flourish. Those of you who are Christians, First Nations Christians, you come to the table with the same gifting that non-Aboriginal people have. For them to say, ‘We want to make room for you at the table,’ correct them. You are already at the table, and encourage them to step back and allow your gifts to flourish. Because it’s one in the same spirit.”
Rose-Alma McDonald, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, which borders New York, Ontario, and Quebec, talked about re-embracing her Catholic faith:
Rose-Alma McDonald. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“I surprised everybody, including myself, in terms of embracing Catholicism after 20 years away. So I’ve had a few epiphanies in the sense that this is why my mother made me do so much in the church growing up. When I’m working, volunteering, and doing stuff in the church, I remember that. I keep remembering I’m Catholic and I’m still Catholic. I will stay Catholic because of the way I was raised.”
Jeff Decontie, a Mohawk from the Algonquin First Nations who lives in Ottawa, talked about being a person of faith in a secular world:
Jeff Decontie. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“Secular worldviews can sort of eat up everything around them and accept a whole wide range of beliefs at the same time. For example, you have the prevailing scientific thinking alongside New Age believers, and people in society just accept this, saying, ‘Oh, whatever it is you believe in, all religions lead to the same thing.’ No one questions it. How can these contradictions coexist? … Then we ask an [Indigenous] elder to lead prayer? Any other religion would be a no-no, but you can ask for an elder who’s going to pray a generic prayer to some generic Creator, and it’s not going to ruffle any feathers. I think that’s the danger of secular thought creeping into Canada: It goes unnoticed, it’s perceived as neutral, but at the same time it’s welcoming a whole wide range of beliefs. And it doesn’t just influence Indigenous thought. It’s influencing Christianity.”
Rosella Kinoshameg, a member of the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, spoke about being Indigenous and Catholic:
Rosella Kinoshameg. Photo courtesy of the Catholic Register
“Well, I can’t change being Indigenous. That’s something that is me. I can’t change that. But to believe in the things that I was taught, the traditional things, the way of life and the meanings of these things, and then in a church, well, those things help one another and they make me feel stronger.”
This article was originally published May 10, 2023, in The B.C. Catholic, a weekly publication serving the Catholic community in British Columbia, Canada, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
Pope Francis presides over a July 28 Mass at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Canada. / Vatican Media
St. Louis, Mo., Jul 28, 2022 / 15:34 pm (CNA).
At a July 28 Mass in the historic Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Québec, Pope F… […]
5 Comments
It doesn’t appear to be a culture war limited to Canada. Neither is it specific to single payer med delivery systems. Though cutting costs as you note is a valid critique. But that is true in any med delivery system. Euthanasia occurs in Am frequently. It occurred in Nazi Germany 1940 with similar response by Catholic bishops who protested. “The Fulda Conference [Cath bishops] apparently attempted to negotiate with those responsible for the killings. Bishop Heinrich Wienken discussed [with the Reich Chancellery] ways to permit priests to administer the sacraments to the euthanasia victims. But these attempts at accommodation failed when the Vatican rejected the compromise” (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, Henry Friedlander, Chapel Hill, 1995, pp 114-5). Friedlander survived Auschwitz and praised the stance of Pope Pius XII in refusing to compromise, which the Pontiff deemed a form of complicity. Oregon, Washington State, New Mexico, Montana permit physician assisted suicide equivalent to euthanasia policy in E Canada. If the Dem Party won the election euthanasia policy would likely have received universal Fed sanction. It is simply not a cultural issue. The flaw in this article is omission of the primary catalyst for the Church either promoting or inhibiting euthanasia in Canada.
But, fighting the culture war would make you a “culture warrior” – that’s a bad thing according to the powers that be in the church… or is it maybe alright to be a culture warrior on euthanasia, as long as you don’t bother with abortion and have a “Who am I to judge” attitude about gay agenda?
But, as we know we don’t mold society, we adapt to it now. We don’t preach we evangelize – so only talk about things that don’t effect laws or culture…
The culture war was over when the church surrendered several years ago, now we have a leader who can’t apologize enough for ever having fought in the first place.
But, thanks to the leading lights of the culture in conjunction with the mercy as defined by the euthanasia crowd, this along with abortion has been successfully compartmentalized into simply a “culture war” issue that the general public often sees as something of a battle between “equivalents”….and not the monstrous, ultimate issue of life and death.
Also, while an undercurrent of euthanasia has always been in healthcare, there is a world of difference when it becomes naturalized via the law and a culture that has been conditioned to see its “utility.”
The people around Pope Francis attack us for fighting this “culture war,” for our “obsession” with issues like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, divorce, “transgenderism,” etc. The real enemy is not the pagan medical system. It is pagan Rome.
It doesn’t appear to be a culture war limited to Canada. Neither is it specific to single payer med delivery systems. Though cutting costs as you note is a valid critique. But that is true in any med delivery system. Euthanasia occurs in Am frequently. It occurred in Nazi Germany 1940 with similar response by Catholic bishops who protested. “The Fulda Conference [Cath bishops] apparently attempted to negotiate with those responsible for the killings. Bishop Heinrich Wienken discussed [with the Reich Chancellery] ways to permit priests to administer the sacraments to the euthanasia victims. But these attempts at accommodation failed when the Vatican rejected the compromise” (The Origins of Nazi Genocide, Henry Friedlander, Chapel Hill, 1995, pp 114-5). Friedlander survived Auschwitz and praised the stance of Pope Pius XII in refusing to compromise, which the Pontiff deemed a form of complicity. Oregon, Washington State, New Mexico, Montana permit physician assisted suicide equivalent to euthanasia policy in E Canada. If the Dem Party won the election euthanasia policy would likely have received universal Fed sanction. It is simply not a cultural issue. The flaw in this article is omission of the primary catalyst for the Church either promoting or inhibiting euthanasia in Canada.
But, fighting the culture war would make you a “culture warrior” – that’s a bad thing according to the powers that be in the church… or is it maybe alright to be a culture warrior on euthanasia, as long as you don’t bother with abortion and have a “Who am I to judge” attitude about gay agenda?
But, as we know we don’t mold society, we adapt to it now. We don’t preach we evangelize – so only talk about things that don’t effect laws or culture…
The culture war was over when the church surrendered several years ago, now we have a leader who can’t apologize enough for ever having fought in the first place.
But, thanks to the leading lights of the culture in conjunction with the mercy as defined by the euthanasia crowd, this along with abortion has been successfully compartmentalized into simply a “culture war” issue that the general public often sees as something of a battle between “equivalents”….and not the monstrous, ultimate issue of life and death.
Also, while an undercurrent of euthanasia has always been in healthcare, there is a world of difference when it becomes naturalized via the law and a culture that has been conditioned to see its “utility.”
Note to self: Don’t get sick in Canada or UK.
The people around Pope Francis attack us for fighting this “culture war,” for our “obsession” with issues like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, divorce, “transgenderism,” etc. The real enemy is not the pagan medical system. It is pagan Rome.