It’s nice to apologize. As a married man I know the value of an apology. It’s something I employ often. But Pope Francis’ recent apology to the indigenous in Canada is poorly timed. For one thing, Pope Benedict XVI already apologized for sins committed by Catholics in the name of spreading the gospel.

But at this moment, there’s a lot going on in Canada and the recent apology seems to be an admission to something very specific and unimaginably awful.

Last year, the media along with Prime Minister Trudeau jumped on some ground penetrating radar results that suggested anomalies underground near a Church that had acted as a school for children. This was immediately upgraded to specific yet unfounded allegations that the underground anomalies were scores of unmarked graves of children.

Yes, the Catholic school was being accused of genocide.

As anyone who has ever watched an episode of Oak Island or seen people searching for Aztec gold on The History Channel can tell you, underground radar isn’t the most dependable test there is. You can see what you want to see.

And the media wanted to see a genocide and reported on it as if it were settled science. Trudeua, predictably, jumped in as well. It was disgusting. Mind you, there’s literally no evidence of a genocide and not one body has been uncovered since the initial allegations. Not one.

But over this past year, over seventy Churches have suffered vandalizations, arson, and desecrated statues. This has mostly been ignored but even when reported its been reported as understandable comeuppance for the eeeeeeevil Catholic Church.

So, in this frame of reference you then have Pope Francis dropping an apology that says, “I say this to you with regret: Many grave sins were committed against the native peoples of America in the name of God. I wish to be quite clear, as was St. John Paul II: I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the Church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”

It certainly looks like an admission, doesn’t it? Honestly, if you told me that the Vatican was plotting against the Church I’d ask how they’d act any differently.

David Warren wrote at The Catholic Thing:

Indeed, the most recent development was the formal apology given by Pope Francis to a delegation of radical Indians in Rome. This was reported in Canada as if it were a formal admission that all of the charges made against the Church were true.

Meanwhile, the Liberal government is funding surveys of Indian burial yards and the vicinities of the residential schools, to do more ground radar studies – which, as is known to anyone with experience of the techniques, produces meaningless results unless it is followed by excavations.

Again, not one corpse has been dug up in these programs, or is likely to be revealed in the future by an exercise that is obviously designed for purely theatrical effects. The documentary research done at many of these sites has been replaced by wild hearsay.

While no one claims that the history of the residential schools was a consistently happy one, there is evidence even in the archives of the CBC of happier days in the most controversial of them, as recently as the 1950s and 1960s. This is supplemented by the memories of many, that have been steamrolled in the race to victimhood.

Here we get into the background issue: demonization of the Catholic Church. We have entered one of the recurring periods when the devil takes the upper hand, and the faithful must watch his exertions. Fanciful charges against the Church are hardly restricted to Canada, but by reviewing the situation here, we may see what we are facing more clearly.

This ill-timed apology might make Pope Francis feel better but it also stokes the dangerous flames of anti-Catholicism.