Reconciliation: a path forward

In February 2004, I had the opportunity and the blessings to participate in the Returning to Spirit (RTS) foundational workshop. That same Fall, I was able to take the RTS Reconciliation workshop. During the 2005 Summer, two blood sisters, former parishioners, asked why I was not training to become an RTS trainer. I started my training in January 2006, was certified in January 2007. At the request of the RTS founder and with the province’s permission, in July 2007, RTS became my full-time ministry.

It became clear to me that reconciliation calls to become a way of being: it is not a state that we acquire once and for all, but it is ever in development. Each one of us has created a story (an interpretation) about the ministry with the Indigenous peoples. This story comes from our personal life story, from our philosophical and theological studies, our religious life training, and our clerical training. It comes down from the histories of the Catholic church, our religious congregation and our own particular culture. That story that I carry filters and colours the way I think, what I see, what I experience, the decisions I make. The story takes life in the conversation I have, especially the continual discussion I have with myself. In RTS, we talk of it as the already listening, being and doing, the points of view that I carry, the body reactions that these may trigger, and finally, the position I may take in the face of, here in this article, Indigenous relationships and ministry.

The story becomes my system of being, and I may be unaware of it, thinking all along that I am acting in freedom, with what is right and true, with what is genuinely demanded of me by the Church and God.

After ordination, I ask for the Indigenous ministry. I became aware very quickly of the contradictions between the realities in the field (negative impact) and the story that circulated about the Oblate successes and contributions to the evangelization of the Indigenous peoples. The litigations that we experienced and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) reports brought these out into the light.

The Oblates apologized in 1991. Many Oblates have participated in the RTS workshops and reconciliation. The path of reconciliation has started. What is next? From the very beginning of the process, for me, reconciliation means not only acknowledging the hurt, injustices and shortcomings of the past, and the letting go of the judgments and feelings around the issues, but it means to enter into a new partnership with the Indigenous people. What does that call forth?

We can gather some answers from what has been happening in our society in the last decades. We are becoming more aware of the systemic injustices that flow from our story (systems) as colonizers, settlers, evangelizers, from our cultural heritage, world view, either social or religious. It calls for a serious dialogue with the people we serve. Courage, humility, honesty, faith and a listening heart will help us to examine, analyze, acknowledge, let go of what continues to feed the systemic injustices and misunderstanding. No one owns all the answers, but this dialogue will create new possibilities of different ways of relating to each other, into a new partnership on the path the Creator calls us to travel.

I will end this short conversation with this statement: “Since most of us are no longer in a position to minister fully in the Indigenous ministry for various reasons, age being one, what can we do to pass on the lessons learned to those who follow us in ministry, either diocesan or international clergy?”

By François Paradis, OMI