ICYMI: Douglas Todd: Hate crimes against Catholics almost tripled. Do Canadians care?
2022/10/20 Leave a comment
Catholics were subject to a far higher escalation in police-reported hate incidents than any other religious or racial group, according to a Statistics Canada study.
But politicians have been silent about it and so, largely, has the mainstream media. How many Canadians care? In a country of often-aggressive secularism, it’s not popular to express empathy for the way Canada’s 12 million nominal Catholics, as the census described them, had to endure a harrowing upsurge of harassment, arson and vandalism. When a statistic that is far out of the ordinary pops up, people normally seize on it, since it could capture a cultural shift. And journalists did cover a StatCan report in August saying that 2021, the second year of COVID, was not a good one for hate crimes. They were up an average 27 per cent.
But, for puzzling reasons, neither politicians nor most media mentioned that, while hate crimes against Blacks went down by five per cent and up 16 per cent against Chinese and other East Asians, attacks on Catholics rose by far the most — by an astonishing 260 per cent.While it’s true police hate statistics are notoriously subject to variabilitydepending on who chooses to file complaints, and that Black people and Jews reported a higher total number of incidents than Catholics, it is still news that anti-Catholic hate crimes increased 10 times faster than overall. Statistics Canada offered no comment on why there was an eruption of attacks on Catholic buildings and people, nor did it distinguish between severity of incidents. But the Catholic media has speculated the arsons and vandalism relate to the 2021 announcements of discoveries of potential unmarked graves of Indigenous residential-school students.
That caused an international media storm alleging “mass graves,” much of which has been shown to be inaccurate. Still, the media coverage seemed to be the spark that led to scores of Catholic churches, many of which served First Nations or immigrant communities, being vandalized or burned. Arrests have been few. And the response from politicians has been, at best, muted. In some quarters, anti-colonial activists applauded the destruction, with people like Harsha Walia, head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association before she resigned, tweeting, “Burn it all down.”
Some researchers are reporting that Catholics these days feel under more pressure than others to self-censor, including to protect their livelihoods.
Trinity Western University political scientist Paul Rowe said Catholics are feeling the “chill” since many politicians are starting to use religion as a partisan “wedge issue to pry apart Canadian society.” In reaction to this column, some will likely “accuse” me of being Roman Catholic. It’s happened before. But I never have been Catholic. Indeed, my journalism over the past decades has often lead to conflict with Catholics. In 1989, I began to produce hundreds of stories about Catholic clergy sex abuse, especially at residential schools. A faction of Catholics reacted with fury and disdain and sometimes intimidation, lawsuits and even stalking by a disturbed woman who was eventually reined in by her diocese.
So I’m hardly a Catholic apologist. But I am a journalist who believes in accuracy, fairness and balance. And it must be said that critics have a point when they ask why the media in Canada, not to mention politicians in B.C. and across the nation, have strangely ignored the escalating contempt toward Catholics.
That includes 11 attacks on Catholic churches in Metro Vancouver alone, complete with arsons and defacement with paint of an East Vancouver sanctuary in which Filipinos predominate. The Catholic church on the Penticton First Nation reserve, and many others across the country, were torched beyond repair. Scores of other hate incidents occurred against churches, cemeteries and shrines, according to an interactive database of the Catholic Civil Rights League.
While many Canadians associate Catholicism with whites and Western colonialism, they seem oblivious to how most of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics are now in Latin America, with their numbers in Africa and Asia almost surpassing those in Europe and North America.
When other sacred places of worship — such as mosques, gurdwaras, temples, Indigenous healing centres and synagogues — are treated so abusively, politicians and pundits quickly speak up. As they understandably do when visible minorities are harassed.
But not in this case.
National polling helps explain, but not justify, the lack of empathy for Canadian Catholics, including half a million who are Indigenous. And, according to sociologist Reg Bibby, roughly 35 per cent all immigrants to Canada, most of whom are from Asia, are Catholic.
In Canada, there are five fast-growing mega-Chinese Catholic congregations — with 3,000 to 8,000 members each, according to Bibby. And the country is home to the same number of Filipino, Korean and Vietnamese Catholic mega-parishes.
Despite Catholicism’s ethnic diversity, the Angus Reid Institute found this year that when it comes to three religions — evangelical Christianity, Islam and Catholicism — “Canadians are more likely to believe their presence is damaging than benefiting.” Specifically, 31 per cent of Canadians said Catholicism has been damaging, while 26 per cent said it’s been a benefit. Another 32 per cent said Catholicism has had “no real impact” and the rest couldn’t say. In regard to other world views — including Sikhism, Buddhism, Protestantism, atheism and especially Judaism — the polling organization found Canadians’ positive assessments outweighed negative ones.
To put it mildly, Roman Catholicism, in its 2,000-year history, has been far from perfect. As an institution it has much to answer for, including its role in Canada’s federally funded, church-run residential school system — for which the pope has apologized.
But, as someone once said: ‘Any institution, or group, older than yesterday is going to come with problems.”
But contemporary Catholics do not deserve to be smeared with collective guilt for the behaviour of their predecessors — particularly when the righteous anger of a segment of Canadians leads to fresh expressions of not only intolerance, but divisive loathing.
Source: Douglas Todd: Hate crimes against Catholics almost tripled. Do Canadians care?
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