Forgive Us Our Debts

Since talk is cheap, the Vicar of Christ is to spend the next few days expressing regret for his Church's peccadilloes against the indigenous peoples of Canada, where more than a hundred and fifty thousand children were removed from their families, deprived of their culture, and treated to the usual disciplines associated with Christian compassion and priestly sexual continence. Although the Church agreed fifteen years ago to pay twenty-nine million Canadian dollars in compensation, it has not yet distributed the full amount because of such pressing spiritual tasks as restoring cathedrals to their gilded proto-Trumpian splendour. Between the planned rituals of public worship addressed to the God who allowed it all to happen, the Pope will doubtless do his best to edify the survivors of his Church's ministrations concerning the superiority of spiritual wealth over the merely material.