Defeating the Catholic Church's "let's-divide-ourselves-and-conquer" strategem

We wanted to thank and update supporters and comment further on the recent Joint Statement of National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and two two Catholic organizations affiliated with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (Oblates).

First, some numbers. A few days ago, we surpassed 1,000 signatures from wonderful people across North America. Let's keep up the good work!

In our last update, we lamented that the Joint Statement makes no reference to documents that the Oblates have lost, destroyed, or transferred elsewhere and, thus, fails utterly to commit the Oblates’ to coming clean about their involvement in Indian Residential Schools.

We now want to stress that our petition is addressed to the entire Oblates organization (not just the two subsidiaries that have signed on to the Joint Statement). The Oblates, like the Catholic Church, continues to act – and must be handled – like a multi-headed beast.

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) identifies 48 separate Corporate Catholic Defendants, including 7 organizations affiliated with the Oblates. The necessity (so far, at least) of contending with the Catholic Church’s let’s-divide-ourselves-and-conquer legal stratagem was obvious to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC).

In his essay, 'And Then the Pope Died' – The Timeline for How Canada Reached a Settlement Agreement on Indian Residential Schools (July 2017), former Chief Counsel to the TRCC, Tom McMahon highlighted how the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Doe v. Bennett, 2004 SCC 17 effectively immunized the Catholic Church in Canada from legal accountability:

"The Court refused to deal with the issue of the liability of the Roman Catholic Church because '[t]he record does not provide the clear picture of the details of the Church’s hierarchy or of the relationship between the Church and its constituent parts'.... The events relating to Doe v. Bennett are part of an extraordinary series of court decisions, described in detail elsewhere. This was one of series of court cases that made it clear that Canadian courts were not going to impose liability on the Roman Catholic Church as a whole [my emphasis]....

"Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci, appointed as Canada’s representative in the negotiation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, said: 'One of the challenges within the church group was that the Catholic church does not have a national organization. There is a United Church of Canada, Anglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, but there is not a Catholic Church of Canada [my emphasis]. There are individual dioceses and parishes that have entity statuses. … That added to the complexity.' The Truth and Reconciliation Commission would find out just how much it added to the complexity when it tried and mostly failed to obtain all records relevant to Indian residential schools, which was the legal obligation on each one of those Catholic entities."

To this day, the Catholic Church sticks to the defence that it staked out during the IRSSA negotiations. Here's how Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB)'s official website disposes of Indian Residential Schools and the TRC (accessed June 27, 2021):

"The Catholic community in Canada has a decentralized structure.  Each Diocesan Bishop is autonomous in his diocese and, although relating to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, is not accountable to it.

"Approximately 16 out of 70 Catholic dioceses in Canada were associated with the former Indian Residential Schools, in addition to about three dozen Catholic religious communities.  Each diocese and religious community is corporately and legally responsible for its own actions. The Catholic Church as a whole in Canada was not associated with the Residential Schools, nor was the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops."

In the aftermath of the discovery of unmarked graves on the grounds of former Indian Residential Schools, the Canadian government resurrected calls for the Catholic Church to take responsibility. The CCCB response was a verbatim recitation of this pat alibi.

The financial dimension of the Catholic Church’s let's-divide-ourselves-and-conquer strategem is finally gaining public attention. Two days ago, CBC reported:

“A Catholic priest is speaking out against his own church, saying he's ashamed it used a legal ‘loophole’ to escape its $25-million promise to residential school survivors. ’It's scandalous, really shameful,’ said Saskatoon priest and Order of Canada recipient André Poilièvre. ’It was a loophole. It might be legal, but it's not ethical.’

“One of the Catholic Church's promises in the landmark 2005 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement was to give its 'best efforts' at fundraising $25 million for survivors. After a decade, more than $21 million of that remained unpaid. All other churches involved in the settlement — United, Anglican and Presbyterian — paid their full shares without incident. Several years after the settlement, the federal government asked the church to pay. The church's legal team instead went to court and pointed to the ‘best efforts’ clause, saying the church had tried its best. On July 16, 2015, a judge agreed and absolved the church of its legal obligation.

“In an interview, Poilièvre said he was disgusted with the church's meagre fundraising effort, the ‘unethical’ legal manoeuvring to get out of it, and the fact more than $290 million was committed to cathedral and church construction across Canada during this time. ’It's pitiful,’ he said. ‘I think money should be spent on people first, and buildings and cathedrals last.’

“Poilièvre said he welcomed this week's announcement of local fundraising for survivors by Saskatchewan's five bishops — even if it is 16 years late. But he noted dozens of other bishops across Canada have remained silent this week on the money question. ’As a Catholic church, we were responsible. We need a collective, corporate response,’ Polièvre said. ‘We were complicit with the government in the design, the implementation and the management of these schools.’...

“Poilièvre and others say the Catholic Church's structure is a big part of the problem. In many ways, the church is hierarchical and synchronized, they say. From the top, the Vatican dictates the rituals of the mass, the rules for living and the belief system. From the bottom, the Vatican receives revenue from each individual region or diocese. But when it comes to compensating residential school survivors, producing documentation of unmarked grave sites, revealing the names of abuser priests or securing a Papal apology on Canadian soil, Poilièvre and others argue the top levels suddenly deny all responsibility. Each diocese acts as an independent legal and financial unit.

"’The Catholic Church has organized itself very deliberately this way to avoid corporate responsibility,’ said Thomas McMahon, former lead counsel for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. ’Governments could easily pass a law saying, "Yes, Catholic Church, you are a legal corporate entity." But our politicians are too afraid of Catholic voters. They let the Catholic Church play this game.’ McMahon said the Catholic Church hired a ‘bazillion’ lawyers at every stage, from compensation to a simple document request by survivors or the TRC. No other church group did that, he said. ’It's so obvious that was the strategy,’ he said....

“The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) declined an interview request. An official said they don't have the authority to speak on behalf of individual bishops. CBC News also asked the CCCB whether any bishops outside Saskatchewan have committed to further raising money for residential school survivors. The official said it's ‘outside the mandate’ of the CCCB to ask its members questions on behalf of outside organizations."

And so, our petition for the Oblates to come clean about their Indian Residential Schools is deliberately designed to defeat the Catholic Church's let's-divide-ourselves-and-conquer legal strategem. We demand that the entire Oblates organization — not just the two subsidiaries that have signed on to the Joint Statement — disclose every record of its massive operation of Indian Residential Schools.

Thanks for already signing our petition. Please take this opportunity to share it with your family and friends and urge them to join our campaign!