Cornwall Standard Freeholder
18 October 2011
By Danielle VandenBrink DVANDENBRINK@STANDARD-FREEHOLDER.COM
CORNWALL — Catholic bishops from across Canada expressed their frustration Monday with meeting a $25-million goal to help aboriginal victims of residential schools.
During the first day of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops annual plenary assembly in Cornwall, about 90 bishops discussed the possibility of falling short on a portion of a residential school settlement backed by Catholic dioceses and other churches that operated native residential schools throughout the majority of the last century.
Part of the tab included a $25-million “best-efforts” Moving Forward Together Campaign, with Catholic entities involved in the administering of residential schools partnering with aboriginal, business and community groups to raise as much of the goal as possible in five years.
At the conference Monday, the bishops shared their concern with meeting the goal, saying that since the campaign started in 2009, the church has managed to raise $2.5 million.
The church has pledged that money raised will go to support healing and educational programs for aboriginal communities in Canada, including for former residential school students and their families.
Richard Smith, vice-president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton, said the struggle with raising the money stems from the reality of the global economic situation.
“The best efforts dimension comes from the fact that we are doing this in really difficult economic times,” he said. “Every bishop in the country wants to do whatever he can to support our aboriginal people, to support their healing and so on, but every bishop across the country at the same time is up against the wall financially with all the different things that he’s got to accomplish in his own diocese.”
Because the money is raised in part from pew donations from parishioners, Smith said bishops are increasingly up against “donor fatigue,” where people are overextended with donations.
“This really is, I think, the major stumbling block that bishops across the country are running up against,” he said. “It would be wonderful to raise $25 million, but I think the understanding is just make your best effort given the current economic climate that we find ourselves in.”
Beyond fundraising, Smith said the church has also initiated a Returning to Spirit initiative, which offers workshops for former students and staff who ran the schools.
“The monies of the campaign are really secondary in the sense that their whole purpose is supporting and actually being with the people and healing them,” Smith said.
In 2007, the federal government formalized a $1.9-billion payout to compensate aboriginal people who were forced to attend residential schools, often enduring substandard living conditions and suffering physical and emotional abuse. There have also been numerous allegations of sexual abuse. The settlement includes raising funds for healing and reconciliation with aboriginal victims to the tune of $79 million in cash and in-kind community work and programs.
Former residential school students were eligible for $10,000 for the first year they attended school, plus $3,000 for each additional year, through federal compensation called common experience payments.
Although the payment let the government and churches off the hook from further liability — except for cases of sexual abuse and serious cases of physical abuse — the Corporation of Catholic Entities Party to the Indian Residential School Settlement was formed in 2006.
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The opening day of the conference also included discussion around this year’s theme, “new evangelization,” which Smith described as finding a way for the Catholic faith to become more accessible to the public.
“The core message of the gospel is always the same, but its got to be proclaimed in ever-changing circumstances,” he said.
Smith said the church now faces the challenge of harnessing new media to reach people.
“A way of being out there, where the people are, especially for the young, using these technologies that are there to try and communicate,” he said.
Smith said the focus in the future will also be finding language that better relates to people, straying away from language steeped in rich theology.
“In a society that is increasingly fractured, where relationships are broken, where people are experiencing betrayals and all the anguish and the hurt that goes with that…how do you, in the midst of that, proclaim in a language that’s understandable, a message of hope?”
The plenary assembly continues at the Nav Centre until Oct. 21.
Comments
$25 million seems like a pretty small price to pay. If this outfit truly wanted to make amends, and make the world a better place, they would simply shut down, close their doors, and disappear forever.
Post #2 By Furtz A Bootbomb
Well, how about selling some of the stuff from the Vatican in Rome? There’s a lot of wealth there and secondly, those bishops and priests should get a job like everybody else, most of them never worked a day in their lives! They have no clue what it is like to raise a family and pay your bills. They even have a cleaning lady to do their house work! At least, that’s how it was when I grew up. I don’t trust them anymore, they have caused too much harm to our children.
Post #3 By CloL
The best leave those people alone. They’ve done enough damage already. Sell some assets like unused churches… People are completely disenfranchised with organized religion these days. People are questioning and that is healthy. The church should be back taxed 500 years in my opinion and then have its doors closed for good. Nothing but and organized gang like hells angels and the police in my humble opinion.
Post #4 By nonbeliever
At least the Catholic Church has a leg up on other struggling denominations. The taxpayers of Ontario pay for the religious education of their children in a completely segregated sectarian school system! Sweet deal! Other faiths have to pay for that themselves. Most can’t afford it.
Not that Ontario can afford to fund a duplicate system for Catholic kids. It’s not like our hospitals, classrooms, highways, and old folks homes are adequately funded. But Catholic schools are far more important than any of these, aren’t they? Well, our MPPs seem to think so!
Post #5 By Ottawa Lad
Why is it that the victims of Project truth get more damges then the children that were taken away by loving parents that wanted them unlike the children in the project truth. Is it beacuse they are white? If you do the crime you must pay for it. Over 50,000 Native children are still unaccounted for; where are they?
The tax payers should pay it was their government that stripped these children from their homes and placed them in these schools. Pay UP!
Post #6 By spiritbear1
Post #9 By thespider
Post #10 By dodger