What do you want when someone wrongs you?
Do you not want acknowledgment from the wrong-doer that they have wronged you?
Do you not want remorse from the wrong-doer over the wrong that they have done you?
Do you not want compensation from the wrong-doer for the wrong that they have done you?
Across Canada, Catholic churches are going up in flames.
Is anyone surprised?
Let us be frank: the Roman Catholic church is—and has always been—premised on the destruction of traditional cultures.
First it worked to suppress and destroy the traditional cultures of Europe.
Alas, the destruction did not stop there.
The destruction of my ancestors' traditional culture took place so long ago that few even see it any more as a wrong, although it was.
Until shockingly recently, the Catholic church was complicit in the destruction of Indigenous Canadian cultures through the network of residential schools that tore First Nations children from their families and did its best to uproot Native language and culture from those children.
(“First they break your leg, then they offer to sell you a crutch,” says a priestess friend of mine.)
The recent discovery of the bodies of hundreds of those same children, dead of abuse and neglect, is rendered even more horrifying by the near-certainty that there are thousands more yet to be unearthed.
The anger over the death of George Floyd is not anger over the death of just one man, but over a systemic injustice. Here we see the same.
As pagans, we may not condone the actions of the church-burners, but we understand them, and we stand in solidarity with them.
As for the Catholic church: let it acknowledge the numberless wrongs that it has done to Indigenous peoples everywhere, Europe included.
Let them declare for themselves a Day of Mourning, fasting, in sackcloth and ashes, in shame and atonement.
Then—in their own language—let them repent, and actually—for once—do something about it.
As for the burnings: well, you can't say that they don't deserve it.