Apologist vs. Ex-Catholics of Reddit (Mass Grave Conspiracy Debunked)

You’re in fact not allowed to engage in what they call Catholic apologetics or hospitalization. And rule number seven is Catholics in general are not welcome. So fair enough, I can’t share this video directly to the Reddit, but I can nevertheless pointed it out here and say, yeah, the people making these allegations are in many cases sharing things that are flatly false, even though rule number two of their community is no conspiracy theories. And they say, while this subreddit is critical of the Catholic church, you may not use this subreddit to spread unsupported or hyperbolic information that is not supported by evidence. Okay, let’s see how that’s going. One of the top posts of all time is called the church needs to pay for its crimes and it’s shared by the user named Will You Quit It? And he is in turn or she is in turn sharing a political cartoon shared by Johnny Girl Decolonized.

So that already tells you we’re probably dealing with indigenous politics. But then if that wasn’t clear enough, the political cartoon is of a church that says Love thy neighbor and buried beneath it are just tons and tons of skulls. Now, this is a not particularly subtle reference to the alleged mass graves found across Canada. And sure enough, the person who posted it then shared a NPR story that says, more Graves found at New site. Canadian Indigenous Group says, now that is about the alleged mass graves at St. Eugene’s Mission School, and we’re going to get to that. But to give a little context to what we’re talking about, there’s a few things you should know. Number one, we’re dealing with what are called residential schools in the 19th century in Canada. It was legally required in some cases for members of the indigenous communities known as First Nations to attend these what were often religious schools.

And that by itself seems to be a pretty egregious violation of the rights of parents. The numbers I saw said something like 30% of indigenous children were mandatorily forced to go to these schools. And while there are some positive stories, it’s fair to say there are a lot of really negative, really awful ones, but the size effect that you’re stripping parents from their children and children from their parents and taking people out of their culture and indoctrinating them in Western education as well as in Christianity. You also have schools that were in many cases, overcrowded, underfunded, could be a vector for disease, and were a place that attracted both sadistic and pedophilic monsters. I mean, there’s no two ways about it. There’s a lot of ugliness in this story, and I think that’s important to say upfront. If you take away from this Joe Hemi or the Catholic Church thinks residential schools were just fine, then you’ve completely misunderstood.

In fact, Pope Francis to his great credit came to Canada as part of what he described as a sort of penitential journey. He put it like this. He said, today, I’m here in this land that along with its ancient memories preserves the scars of still open wombs. I’m here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is out of again, asking forgiveness of telling you once more that I’m deeply sorry, sorry for the ways in which regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the indigenous peoples. I’m sorry, I asked forgiveness in particular for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities cooperated not least through their indifference in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools. Although Christian charity was not absent and there were many outstanding instances of devotion and care for children, the overall effects of the policy linked to the residential schools were catastrophic.

What our Christian faith tells us is that this was a disastrous error incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think this is a fair, nuanced, honest, and forthright kind of presentation. There was a lot of ugly and indefensible stuff that happened as part of this assimilation project, a forced assimilation project that the people who were at the receiving end of it did not ask to be a part of. And there were a lot of things that hopefully we wouldn’t do again. So I’m not defending the residential schools or the abuses in the residential schools. Neither though am I overlooking those outstanding instances of devotion and care for children that many of the people involved weren’t movie villains. They weren’t sadists, they weren’t pedophiles or predators. They were people who were trying to help children maybe in a misdirected way, maybe in a way that doesn’t agree pedagogically with what we would do today, but we can recognize both many people had good intentions and that the results were often disastrous.

But that’s not specifically the allegation being charged. The allegation being charged is instead as the New York Times reported in mid 2021 that there were mass graves. So in Austin’s article from May 28th, 2021 says, horrible history, mass grave of indigenous children reported in Canada, an indigenous community says it’s found evidence that 215 children were buried on the grounds of a British Columbia school, one of the many in Canada set up to forcibly assimilate them. And this is referring to the Kamloops Indian residential School. If you saw the picture earlier, that’s a picture from that school. So the claim was 215 children were buried there and that they discovered mass graves or a mass grave actually is the way the headline reads. The problem is neither of those things were true. Number one, there was no mass grave nor any evidence of a mass grave. What there was instead were with ground penetrating radar disturbances under the ground beneath an apple orchard, which could be human bodies, animal bodies, any number of things that can disturb the ground pipes that run through All that was actually detected was radar detection, that there were some areas where the ground had been disturbed.

That’s it. And if you know anything about true crime, and I think I’ve mentioned before on this show, I watch and listen to too much true crime frequently that turns out to be nothing. There’ll be a family story. Oh, there’s a body buried in the backyard over there. Ground penetrating radar will detect something and then they dig it up and it’s like a dog or it’s pipes or it’s nothing because ground penetrating radar is not a particularly reliable way of finding out if there is in fact a human body. Why do I mention that? Because now we are more than three years removed from that. And as the daily wire points out, we’ve so far found zero bodies in these alleged mass graves as they put it. A recent excavation project commissioned by a Native American leader at a Catholic church found no evidence of human remains, again, casting out on allegations of Canada’s so-called unmarked mass graves.

Now to be clear, the story they’re talking about there was not camloops. This story was instead in Manitoba at our Lady of seven Sorrows Church and the Canadian press reported no evidence of human remains found beneath the church Pine Creek residential School. And so it was another case where there were allegedly mass graves and then they didn’t turn out to exist. But nevertheless, the daily Y article goes on to say Canada was rocked two years ago by reports of hundreds or even thousands of these alleged unmarked mass graves of Native American children at residential schools, which were funded by the Canadian government and run by Catholics and other Christians. So far, not a single body has been recovered. So that’s the thing. There were allegations that there had been a discovery of mass graves and what there actually had been were reports that there were disturbances in the soil.

Now, there are a number of things a disturbance in the soil could be besides a mass grave, but we’re going to get into that. The allegations of a mass grave turned out to not even be true if you accept the most generous interpretation of the evidence. But we’ll get into that. The problem is it’s very hard to have an honest conversation about this. If you read the Wikipedia page on Canadian Indian Residential School grave sites. I’m not citing to Wikipedia because it’s reliable. I’m citing to it here because it’s not this questioning of the official narrative is called denialism, which is intended to invoke the specter of holocaust denial. And so the article says some individuals engage in denialism about the existence of some or all residential school burial sites, indigenous groups and academics dismiss such denials. Now that’s a wild claim. You’re not allowed to deny the existence of some residential school burial sites.

We just saw that they dug and found out that at least one of them didn’t exist. You can’t say any of them didn’t exist, but then it gets weirder. Federal judge justice minister David Latti said in 2023 that he was open to outlawing residential school denialism. So here you have ground penetrating radar and people jumping to the conclusion of mass graves, no actual bodies being recovered, and you’re not even allowed to question it upon penalty of violating a potential. I mean, they want to literally outlaw asking the question of, oh, maybe that’s something else. Now notice that claim that indigenous groups and academics dismiss such denials. Now, I don’t doubt that there were academics who were only too eager to support the popular narrative, but it’s not true that this is some kind of academic consensus. In fact, there was a book in 2023 called Grave Error, how the Media Misled Us and the Truth about Residential Schools in which numerous historians jumped in and talked about how weak the evidence was and how a lot of these claims were simply untrue.

So the one of these essays is fairly famous n camloops. Not one body has been found, which is exactly what it sounds like, that Camloops is world famous for the discovery of a mass grave, and yet we haven’t actually found a single body in that alleged mass grave. We found disturbances in the soil underneath an apple orchard, which could or could not be anything. But then another of the figures is kind of striking here because it’s Professor Francis Whitson who is a tenured professor, and she questioned kind of the official narrative and you know what happened? She was fired despite having tenure. And so yeah, maybe you can get a kind of an academic consensus if you threaten to outlaw dissenting ideas and then fire any academic who challenges the academic basis of the results being presented in the media. So fair enough. The problem is not only were 215 bodies not found, but even the First Nations chief who claimed there had been 215 bodies quietly on the third anniversary switched from saying 215 bodies to now saying there are anomalies and she still claims that she thinks they might be unmarked burials.

But notice two things. Number one, you don’t have a clear evidence of unmarked burials. You have anomalies in the soil. That’s it. And number two, unmarked burials are not the same thing as a mass grave. Those are massively different. In fact, one of the CBC opinion articles confronting, so-called denialism talks about this. They say residential schools are not fake news. There is no big lie or deliberate hoax. Well, that’s what the byline says. Now they acknowledge denialists to be clear, do not deny the existence of residential schools. Okay, so why in your pipeline do you insist that residential schools existed? No one is debating that. Fine, okay? But then they go on to say it’s true that in the rush to report on the this, the Kamloops Indian Tribe’s announcement, some journalists in Canada and abroad mistakenly called the unmarked graves being located mass graves inadvertently invoking the horrors of the Holocaust.

Wait a second. So number one, actually I’m going to go back because a couple paragraphs before that they say communities have been clear that what is being identified are potential unmarked graves. So in other words, this is not mass graves, this is individual burials, which is a big difference because one of them invokes a spectra of the Holocaust or an intentional mass murder of children, and one is burying children. We’re going to get into that. But also allegedly in this opinion piece, communities have been clear that what is being identified are potential on Mark Graves. That’s just not true. Now, I pointed out that the Kamloops Indian band now acknowledges that all they’ve found were anomalies, but when this first was reported, they said this past weekend with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to life.

The confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, that’s not potential individual burials. They’re claiming that they had confirmation of the remains of 215 children, and it literally is not true. There is no confirmation. They had a suspicion, they have a suspicion, they have no evidence. They had no evidence. That’s it. There’s anomalies which could be mass burials. Well actually not mass burials, but the burials of 215 or it could be any number of other things. That’s it. That’s all. So it’s just not true that, oh, the communities were always very clear. This was just potential unmarked graves. But I want to go back now to the article because they say, okay, well yeah, sure. In the rush to report on it, some journalists mistakenly called the unmarked graves being located mass graves inadvertently invoking the horrors of the Holocaust.

Now, I want you to judge for yourself how inadvertent the Holocaust comparison being invoked by mass graves is. Now remember, the thing that started this all was this NPR article that was being shared on ex-Catholic that says, more graves found at new site Canadian Indigenous Group says, now this one isn’t kalo. Now I think it’s safe to say kind of debunked original one that started. This one is the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, and here they said they have 182 human remains have been found. Now, chief Jason Louis of the Lower Kuni Band called the Discovery Deeply personal since he had relatives attend the school. Listen to the following quotation, let’s call this for what it is. It’s a mass murder of indigenous people. The Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes. I see no difference in locating the priests and nuns and the brothers who were responsible for this mass murder to be held accountable for their part in this attempt of genocide on an indigenous people.

So yeah, the specter of the Nazis, it’s pretty intentional. The comparisons are explicit and NPR is sharing and promoting voices connecting, in this case the Saint Eugene’s burial sites with Nazi mass graves. Now, the first thing you should know is there were no mass graves. What makes this story different is I think there actually were human remains found here, but imagine of all places to find human remains a cemetery. So one of the other First Nations tribes actually spoke out very quickly on this and they set the record straight. They said preliminary results from the investigation found 182 unmarked graves within the cemetery grounds. Okay, so this is not like bodies being buried in the woods. This is people being buried in a cemetery. But you say, and not mass graves individual burials, right? Why were they unmarked then? Well, they explained graves were traditionally marked with wooden crosses, and this practice continues to this day in many indigenous communities across Canada.

Wooden crosses can deteriorate over time due to erosion or fire, which can result in an unmarked grave. So it’s not the case that they found like a giant pit with 182 children’s bodies. They found a cemetery, which was known as a cemetery and found that in some places, the older graves, because they had wooden crosses, those wooden crosses didn’t still exist a hundred years later. That is a little bit short of a holocaust, right? If we’re making holocaust comparisons, because in one case they rounded up and intentionally murdered millions of people, and in the other case they buried people, but they put a wooden cross instead of a stone headstone.

I dunno, that feels different. Those don’t feel like the same size kind of thing to be upset about. Now, I mentioned this because you’ll notice also that they point out that this is an indigenous custom still being done. Now, are you going to accuse them of being Nazis for burying their own dead that way? When I was in France in 2016, at Christmas time, I was in a monastery in southern France. I was visiting my cousin and the day that I got there, or maybe the day, I think it was the day I got there, but shortly before I arrived, one of the older members of the community died, and this is a small self-sustaining monastery, and so they dug a pit and they prayed for her and they buried her and they put a wooden cross and the whole thing was beautiful and serene.

Now, a hundred years from now, I took this picture, by the way, a hundred years from now, I have no doubt that those wooden crosses won’t still be there. But if you were to say, okay, what is that 1211 graves right there marked with wooden crosses, and let’s say all 11 of those crosses deteriorate with erosion or any of the number of other things that can upset a small wooden cross, there’s no way to turn that legitimately into a scandal of, oh, mass grave found, they’re just murdering nuns out here. No, it’s not true. And this kind of lie, and it is worth calling it what it is to take something like this and describe it as a mass grave of children that has been discovered when you in fact have on the one hand anomalies in the ground, and on the other hand, burials in a cemetery individually to describe that as a mass grave invoking the holocaust and convincing people that priests and missionaries and nuns were mass murdering children is not a harmless lie. It’s a terribly destructive one.

Remember this article where the comparison is to Nazis and he says he wants to prosecute them? Well, amnesty International said the same thing. They created a petition that said, I call on you to take the following actions without delay. This is a sample letter you can write to Justin Trudeau investigate and prosecute those responsible for the deaths of indigenous children at the former Camloops Indian Residential School and other former residential and day schools. So notice the jump here from they buried students when they died and disease rates and everything were quite high to they were intentionally murdering them and need to be prosecuted. That’s not alone though ex-Catholic also highlighted favorably the desecration of the Saskatoon Catholic Cathedral. It was painted with fake, bloody hand prints saying we were children after the alleged discovery of 751. You guessed it, unmarked graves. So people are believing that there’s a genocide that literally did not happen, and they’re responding.

As you might expect, as of the beginning of 2024, at least 33 Canadian churches have been burned to the ground since that report came out so far, at least 24 of those 33 churches were confirmed to be arsons. Maybe the other nine were coincidental. I’m a little skeptical. So people are literally burning down churches reacting violently against the Catholic church when they’re not vandalizing it. They’re torching churches because they’ve been lied to into believing that there was a mass genocide that literally did not exist based on misunderstanding how ground penetrating radar works and the work of one person, a young academic who was kind of making her bones poor choice of expression, not intended. I want to go back to the ground rules of the ex-Catholic Reddit community though because they say no conspiracy theories, and again, their line is, while this subreddit is critical of the Catholic Church, you may not use this subreddit to spread unsupported or hyperbolic information that is not supported by evidence. That’s not an unreasonable rule because when you do that, you get things like, I don’t know, the mass backlash of torching down churches over literal, non-events over the individual and probably loving burial of children being conflated with mass murder and mass graves. That’s not a harmless error.

Final thoughts, because I think this is something of a theme. There is a sort of patronizing attitude towards indigenous Canadians and first nations and American Indians and the like. So one of the other top stories in ex-Catholic is a Lakota man who is announcing, celebrate with me. My tribe, the Ogalala Lakota nation has officially banned religious missionaries from the reservation, and I just have believing that either of these things would be heralded in the same way if it weren’t in this direction with these groups. What I mean by that is this, if instead of the Ola Lakota banning missionaries and saying you can’t spread a different religion, it was say, a conservative state banning all non-Christians from spreading their non-Christian belief. Because understand, the whole backstory to this is there’s traditional Lakota beliefs about the Great Spirit, and you had Protestant missionary suggesting the great spirit was actually a demon.

You can debate that all you want or you can just outlaw it using the force of law. Now, I realize tribes have special legal authority, but that is a weird thing to Harold, right? If Algeria said we’re going to ban Christian missionaries, it’d be very weird to be like, great, that sounds really healthy. But we have this weird, and I think again, condescending, patronizing view of indigenous peoples both in the US and Canada, and I think that extends to how we think about residential schools. Bear in mind by the way that the most famous Lakota of all time was Catholic sitting bowl. So in one of his official portraits, I believe he converted in 18 83, 1 of his official portraits, they often crop it at a round like the shoulder level, but if you see the full picture, you see he’s wearing an enormous cross or crucifix necklace.

He was proudly a Catholic to make it impossible to cut him off from Lakota history because he’s not authentically Lakota enough, despite being the most famous Lakota and being way more traditional than the guy spending his time complaining on Twitter. I don’t know, it just feels like this weird primitivism where American Indians and first Nations Canadians are expected to just be like these Indians on display in a museum like these primitives, and it’s like that is a bad way of understanding people, whether they have to be born on a tribe and a reservation or outside of one, should be able to embrace the truth of Christianity, should be able to explore their religious options, and it feels very strange to protest against the government trying to force people into Christianity, and then being really proud to see the Lakota trying to force people not into Christianity.

That is, I think, part of the story of the residential schools. There is a perfectly valid critique that forced assimilation was absolutely not the right thing to do, but I think if you’re going to be consistent, you should think about that very seriously and say, okay, maybe I have a completely consistent position that parents should have a say in the religious and academic formation of their children. Maybe I should be in favor of homeschooling. Maybe I should be in favor of parents who want to send their kids to religious education doing. But if you’re not in favor of those things, unless the person happens to be an Indian that feels weird, that feels completely unsupported, or if you’re not in favor of those things, unless it’s them choosing something besides Christianity, that kind of weird special pleading I think needs to be called out. These are not kind of harmless errors the way that we’ve approached the whole question of Anglo and Indian relations, both in the US and Canada. It’s true. It’s a complicated and messy story, and in no small part, Catholic missionaries and Catholic school employees and clergy have done things that weren’t the right thing to do, but in an age that we’re kind of responding to that in nuanced sort of backlash, I think it’s worth recognizing when the thing being promoted are simply not true. They’re simply false and false in a way that is dangerous, false in a way that is inciting people to violence and to believe in a genocide that literally didn’t happen.

For Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.