For the Times, they are a'Changing
by Gilbert Oskaboose

There is an old Chinese curse out there that goes: may you live in interesting times. We do live in interesting times. Some of the stuff that's come down in the last few weeks is amazing, to say the least.

The Law Commission of Canada has tended it's long awaited 455 page report titled, "Responding to Child Abuse in Canadian Institutions."

The report pulls no punches and really tells it like it was. There's stuff on native residential schools and kids eating rotten meat, being used as slave labor on farms and undergoing just about every abuse known to man. Thank the Creator that someone has finally listened to us. We have been saying these kind of things for years and years.

Disease was rampant and children were denied contact with their parents. Whole families were destroyed. Some agencies have called what happened genocide. It was genocide, by any definition of the term. Children were punished for speaking their own languages by being forced to walk barefoot in the snow. It really hurts to read about all of this stuff, but Hell, it is the truth. Those things really happened. And now the Law Commission of Canada has put it all down in black and white, for the whole damn world to see, and wonder.

At the same time the Pope of the Holy Roman Empire is apologizing to everyone in sight. Guess it's a part of their own growing up. The Pope has apologized to the Jews for all the anti-Semitic crap that's come from the RC church. He has apologized to women for the way they have been treated by a male dominated hierarchy. He has apologized to native people for the church's interference in their lives and spirituality. He has apologized to blacks.

I don't know, call me gullible and a fool, but I accept all these apologies with the same grace with what they were offered. The times, they are a' changing and people have to change with them, or perish. If Galileo had to wait 400 years for his apology from the church, I guess I can hang on a while longer. I think the Pope is a good man and he wants to do what's right. May his God keep him and help him to do the right thing. Took a lot of guts and courage to go up against conventional wisdom and the way things have always been. The church and it's thinking has been stuck in the 12th century for long enough.

I can imagine that a lot of his older minions will not go along with the Holy Father. Change comes hard to some people and they will resist. The local churches and leaders will probably continue to drag their backsides on the lawsuits. They will continue to shelter pedophile priests and try to weasel out of paying up. But change will come. The Holy Father has started the ball rolling and change will come, come hell or high water.

The only constant in the entire universe is change; it happens every second, every hour and every day. Change will come. Only a fool would stand in the middle of a river, arms outstretched, trying to stop change from happening.

Truly, we live in interesting times.