Image from Canadian Press

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: The Doctrine of Discovery isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem

Jul 30, 2022 | 6:41 AM

AFTER A VISIT of almost a week, Pope Francis boarded a plane yesterday to return home from Canada. It was, despite those who found fault with his words day after day, a remarkable event. The media seemed intent on highlighting those who were dissatisfied rather than the many who found comfort in the visit.

Think about it. Indigenous leaders wanted the pope to offer an apology, and travelled to the Vatican to seek it. He gave them one. They wanted him to come to Canada to apologize “on Canadian soil.” He came, and gave them another apology, a heartfelt personal penitence.

After his apology in Alberta, they wanted him to apologize in Quebec, so he apologized in Quebec. And then he did it again in Iqaluit. They wanted an apology for the sexual abuse suffered at the hands of Catholic clergy. He came through with one.

They wanted him to apologize for the church having robbed them of their language and culture, and he did. It was really quite amazing, watching and listening to the pope as he made his way across the country, begging forgiveness day after day for things not of his making. Yet those who wanted everything at once were disappointed.

While he pledged a new “search” for the truth, he didn’t outline specific actions. He didn’t offer that the Vatican return indigenous gifts collected over the years, nor to open Vatican archives. Nor did he speak of money. And, maybe the biggest gap — there was no renunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

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I’ll venture that most Canadians had never heard of it until the pope’s visit, but it’s suddenly a prominent issue. The Doctrine of Discovery is said to be the rationale of the church for the colonization of Canada and establishment of residential schools.

Media report it as a series of documents — papal bulls, or decrees — justifying the takeover of aboriginal lands and forming the very foundation for Crown sovereignty in the country. For the most part, that’s as far as the description goes.

Never mind that the Doctrine of Discovery is rejected by some who have studied it as having no effect in Canada. A clue can be found in none other than that online fountain of all knowledge, Wikipedia.

According to an entry there, the original papal bulls on the subject were superseded by one called the Sublimis Deus issued by Pope Paul II on June 2, 1537, stating that indigenous people “and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property.”

This bull is said to nullify an earlier bull from Pope Alexander VI upon which the concept of the Doctrine of Discovery is based. Terry Glavin, a respected author on indigenous history and issues, yesterday posted an addendum to a column he wrote for the Ottawa Citizen and National Post.

“Somehow it has become quickly embedded in respectable opinion in Canada that the 1493 bull Inter Coetera is the grandpappy of all European Doctrine of Discovery land claims, and it’s still somehow in effect,” Glavin wrote.

He continued that as far as the Vatican is concerned, the Inter Coetera was repealed by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and again by Sublimis Deus, and yet again by Pope Benedict XIV’s Immensa Pastorum in 1741, “and that’s just where it starts.”

Glavin also pointed out that, in 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada stated in its Tsilqot’in Nation v. British Columbia decision:

“The doctrine of terra nullius (that no one owned the land prior to European assertion of sovereignty) never applied in Canada, as confirmed by the Royal Proclamation.” That document recognized First Nations rights in Canada.

Along the way, there are various interpretations on which documents referred to which situations and even which continents. Clearly, there’s plentiful material with which to argue the issue. And although I’m quoting other sources here, I guarantee somebody will conclude, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

True, it’s all Latin to me. But here’s the point. If a renunciation, another apology, this time for the Doctrine of Discovery, will help in some way, then why not? In fact, it’s now being reported that the Vatican is mulling it over from a legal point of view and that Pope Francis may well do just that. He’s trying, really trying, to do the right thing.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.