Call for Repentance Conference Reflection
by Trevor Scott, SJ
At any given time for every generation there are realities in our world, near or far, that we must recognize the moral importance of acknowledging and addressing in some way. One reality near to us as Canadians is how Indigenous peoples have been negatively looked upon and treated throughout Canadian history for the sake of righting our relationships with them moving into the future. Another reality - seemingly far away from us in Canada - is the treatment of Palestinian people’s in their own homeland… particularly in Gaza over the last 2 years. This current reality of Palestinians should move and call us personally to respond in some manner. But not only personally. Communally too. How are our faith communities being moved and called to respond to the inhumanity and tragedy we are witnessing each day taking place in Gaza?
For many members of faith communities this is a pressing question, as well as a source of shame for an inadequate response. For many - myself included - the inhumane brutality we are witnessing in Gaza has not been unmistakably acknowledged by our church communities. Perhaps we do not want to be seen as taking sides. Perhaps we do not want to be seen as turning our backs on the Jewish peoples, who have been the target and victims of untold horrors against them over millennia, most recently in Europe during WWII, as well as the brutal attack on October 7th at the hands of Hamas. Yet, there is no excuse for what is taking place in Gaza in response… for what the government of Israel is inflicting upon the men, women and children of Gaza, over the past 2 years in particular.
Ezra Klein, of the NY Times, in a recent podcast interview with international lawyer, Philippe Sands, who specializes in international judicial cases on questions of genocide, observed that Gaza is approximately the size of greater Detroit. Since October Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of explosives on this equivalent of a mid-sized American city… more than was dropped on Dresden, Hamburg and London combined during the entire second World War, and those were devastating in each themselves. In addition to the resulting casualties and the devastation to the physical infrastructure of Gaza from these bombs alone aid infrastructure to deliver food and water to its citizens has been prevented from developing, with the resulting famine we have started to witness.
In his last Christmas address (December 21, 2024) Pope Francis called this response of Israel upon the people of Gaza to October 7th cruelty, not war. To give it more context, Pope Francis more fully said: “Cardinal Re spoke about the war. Yesterday the [Latin] Patriarch [of Jerusalem] was not allowed into Gaza, as had been promised; and yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to tell you this because it touches my heart. Thank you for having referred to this, Your Eminence, thank you!” A question we must face is how to name this particular reality of our time taking place in Gaza, how to recognize and address it both personally and communally… as an act of war, or cruelty… even genocide? Do we have the courage to refer to it as it is? One comment I often receive from Catholic parishioners is why we don’t hear in pastor’s sermons any reference to the suffering and genocidal actions taking place in Gaza; why this reality taking place in our world is not referred to beyond inclusions in the prayers of petitions; why we are being denied the opportunity to discerningly reflect upon what is taking place in Gaza within the context of our faith and worship… in the light of our Gospel message. Beyond trying to do my part in breaking the silence, I ask myself these same questions.
In the midst of the silence that we are are witnessing from so many of our faith communities on this reality in Gaza a conference was organized at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa earlier in May. It was named ‘Call for Repentance Conference.’ Its purpose was to address this silence of our faith communities in a spirit of repentance… to seek to be bolder and more courageous in our condemnation of such cruelty in the spirit of Gospel values. Among its organizers was the Mennonite Church of Canada (Manitoba Palestine-Israel Network), the Anglican Church of Canada, Development and Peace / Caritas Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Centre Oblat, Canadian Friends of Sabeel, as well as the Jesuit Forum. To help instil a deeper sense of boldness in speaking out on the acts of cruelty in Gaza, to grow from out of a sense of political sensitivity and paralysis, the following addresses were given: ‘The Stones Cry Out: Reimagining the Parable of the Sower in Palestinian Theological Context Amid Gaza’, by Shadia Qubti; ‘Christ in the Rubble’, by Rev. Munther Isaac; ‘Beyond the Two State Solution’, by Jonathan Kuttab. Various panel discussions also took place, among them, ‘Settler Colonialism, Christianity, Churches, and Christian Zionism’, with Nawel Hamidi, Isaac Friesen, Michaël Séguin, and David Salvador Hernandez; and ‘Reimagining Interfaith Relations in Solidarity with Palestine’, with Diana Ralph, Nadia Abu Zahra, Sandra Ballantyne, and Michel Andraos. A more comprehensive list of this conference’s addresses, panels and presenters can be found through this link: https://www.callforrepentanceconference.com/schedule
One of the main organizers of the ‘Call for Repentance’ conference, Jane Barter, from the University of Winnipeg, observed upon this silence of our churches with one example… the official statement of the Canadian Council of Churches released a week after the October 7th attacks. It started with “Words fail to convey…” and then highlighted our sense of “helplessness” and the “historical complexity” of the situation. Jane Barter observed, “This is a remarkable statement. For one, it is puzzlingly abstract in naming actors and agents in this war. It lacks any reference to proper nouns: Israel, Israelis, Palestine and Palestinians, Gaza and Hamas are nowhere mentioned in the statement. Just as there are no proper names, there are also, according to the document, “no words” which can convey the sense of grief and outrage that October 7 and its aftermath have inspired.” Even as recently as June of this year the Canadian Council of Churches remains ambiguous in naming what is taking place in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military and relativizes the suffering experienced by both Israelis and Palestinians. https://view.flipdocs.com/?ID=10002989_936885
But when we point at and name the issue and reality with particularity we inevitably take a risk. When a group of 30 Canadian women’s religious congregations - a significant number - wrote a public letter in July in support of the Carney government’s call condemning Israel’s conduct towards the people of Gaza and seeking a ceasefire, they were labeled as “naive”, condescendingly referred to as the “good sisters”, and slyly criticized for not wear religious habits, as if this had any bearing on their concern for the people suffering in Gaza. As an Ignatian colleague of the Forum (Jenny Cafiso, of CJI) put it, “Naive is not a word that I would associate with women religious congregations whom I have met in the most remote corners of the world. They run hospitals, build and manage schools for thousands of students, lead research centres, and know how best to do the work the Gospels call us to do… Perhaps more than others, they understand what it means to live among people on the margins, who suffer war, poverty and violence.” https://www.catholicregister.org/item/2477-naive-nuns-play-squarely-into-hamas-hands The sister’s letter rightly address the issue of war - and cruelty - that exhibits every sign of disproportionality and lack of restraint on the part of the Netanyahu government.
We need to speak more boldly, Jane Barter, reminds us in her essay. Not simply to call and pray for peace, but calling out with clarity for peace upon the foundation of justice. I leave the last word to Jane in her attempt to wake us up to this cruel reality seemingly far from our homes in Canada, but so very intimately residing within our consciences: “It is likely that posterity will judge the Western world, including the churches, very harshly for its lack of bold and courageous language and action. We will no doubt revise our histories to avoid looking squarely at how our language and our actions in the churches have been almost entirely polluted. They have been polluted by our habits and our training as Christians to repent of our complicity in a genocide against the Jewish people some 80 years ago and to conflate that very appropriate repentance with not speaking out against Israel. They have been polluted, moreover, by the racism which surveys with detachment the growing heap of corpses in Palestine while embracing the casualties of October 7 as exclusively worthy of our mourning and our outrage. And they have been polluted by our belonging to a Church and to a nation that conquered and settled and then naturalizes our conquest and settlement.”