An annual StatsCan report on police-reported crime in Canada found a sharp increase in the number of hate crimes allegedly committed against Catholics in 2021. The number of reports to police of such crimes increased from 43 to 155 last year, a 260 per cent increase. Perhaps this upsurge was a reaction to the discovery of possible graves for residential school students at residential schools in Kamloops and elsewhere.
Catholics might respond to this report in one of at least two ways. On one hand, we can cry out that we are becoming a discriminated group, establish our own anti-defamation league and urge the country to take note that we are victims of others’ hate. We can point out to those who call us perpetrators that we also are victims.
On the other hand, we might reflect on our mission of love in the world and see that other groups endure significantly more persecution than we do. For example, the Jewish community in Canada, which makes up 1.4 per cent of the country’s population, was the target of 487 incidents of police-reported hatred in 2021, an increase of 47 per cent from the previous year.
Blacks – 2.9 per cent of the overall population according to the 2011 census – were the most targeted group with 642 incidents reported. Surprisingly, Indigenous people reported only 77 incidents of hatred to police. Perhaps this is an indication of the lack of trust Indigenous people have in the police; they don’t report incidents of racial hatred because they believe they won’t be taken seriously. And that raises the further issue of the reliability of these annual statistics.
As well, 423 people reported they were objects of hatred because of their sexual orientation. The StatsCan report on hate crimes in 2013 noted that not only did 186 people that year say they experienced hatred because of their sexual orientation, but people in that category were most likely to have suffered violence.
In any event, the total number of incidents of hate crimes reported to police rose from 1,414 in 2012 to 2,646 in 2020 to 3,360 last year. Further, elected officials and journalists are among those who are speaking publicly about the increasing incidence of harassment and threats of violence. The problem is not unique to Catholics.
More importantly, Canada is suffering from a rising tide of hatred which affects a wide array of ethnicities, religions and other groups. People of visible minorities and not-so-visible minorities are increasingly liable to be made scapegoats for societal problems.
The world has seen this numerous times previously, and it never turns out well. It is almost endemic to the human condition. We belong to tribes which provide us with a large part of our personal identity. To protect that identity, we divide the world into the good (us) and the evil (those outside our tribe).
Canada has made a stab at overcoming this tribalism through our efforts at multiculturalism. But we have never been consistent. The British conquest led to the expulsion of the Acadians, the exclusion of the Quebecois and the oppression of the First Peoples of this land. Ask the various waves of immigrants from the Irish through the Eastern Europeans to those who have comes from Asia, Africa and Latin America about Canadian equality. We are perhaps doing better in recent decades than in the more distant past, but resentment against the stranger is never far from the surface.
What do we do to turn the tide on the current nastiness? We can try to protect our tribe in whatever reasonable ways we can. But that alone is not the Catholic way. The Catholic way is the way of agape love, the selfless love Jesus revealed when he died on the cross. It is the way of the good Samaritan who sacrificed his own interests to help a person who was beaten and left for dead.
Pope Benedict XVI described love of neighbour when he wrote, “It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I begin to look on this person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend” (Deus Caritas Est, 18).
I often argue, as do many others, that to overcome racism and other forms of division, we need to get to know the other and to see the world through that person’s eyes. But Pope Benedict says we need to do something deeper than that. We must see the person through the eyes of the God who is love. If we do that, we won’t just be defending ourselves, we will stand side by side with all who experience discrimination and hatred. We will contribute to harmony rather than further division.
Oh, holy Church, your time is now.
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