In the shadow of Mount Cashel: The tipping point of disillusionment with the Catholic Church

By Ainsley Hawthorn
CBC Broadcasting
March 17, 2019

https://bit.ly/2FhAgei

Mount Cashel has loomed over the province since it began, both in structure and in legacy.

'Even at our young age, my classmates and I shivered at the name "Mount Cashel,"' writes Ainsley Hawthorn.

Writer Ainsley Hawthorn considers herself a 'none,' one of the growing numbers of Canadians who aren't members of any religion.

Fewer and fewer people say they are religious.

A file photo of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Harbour Grace in 1981. Its last mass was held in 2014 and the building is now set to become a brewery.

The spectre of Mount Cashel loomed large in my late childhood, both literally and figuratively.

My family moved to St. John's from the west coast of Newfoundland when I was eight years old. It was October 1989, and a judicial inquiry's hearings on the allegations of child abuse by the Christian Brothers had begun only one month earlier.

I enrolled in Vanier Elementary, a small school in the east end of the city. The classrooms for Grades 4 to 6 were in the back of the building, facing a broad field where we would spend recess and lunch.

At the end of the field, beyond a chain-link fence, stood the Mount Cashel Orphanage.

Even at our young age, my classmates and I shivered at the name "Mount Cashel." We understood that secrets had been revealed, that children like us had been hurt by the people who were meant to protect them.

The orphanage itself was imposing but dilapidated. Looking up at it as a child, I had the impression that a great institution had fallen.

The Mount Cashel hearings rocked a province where more than a third of the population identified as Catholic. As the full scope of the abuse came to light, some disillusioned Newfoundlanders and Labradorians stopped going to church altogether.

Today, fewer than 19 per cent of all residents of this province attend weekly religious services, compared with 32 per cent in 1989.

My family continued to frequent Sunday mass for several years after we arrived in St. John's, then lapsed after moving twice more. When I left home in my late teens, I tried to pick up the practice again, but some soul-searching led me to realize I just didn't believe any longer.

Now I consider myself agnostic, which is the fancy Greek way of saying "I don't know." Maybe the divine exists, maybe it doesn't. I don't believe we can know in this life.

This makes me one of the so-called "nones," the growing group of Canadians who aren't members of any religion. Most nones don't identify as specifically atheist or agnostic — some are "spiritual but not religious" and many don't give much thought to religion at all.

Despite their differences, there are common causes for the nones' exodus from organized religion. The Mount Cashel scandal represents one contributing factor: religion's loss of moral authority.

During the Mount Cashel hearings, men who had been held up as the most virtuous in the community were revealed to be predators and hypocrites.

Since then, other denominations have been called on the carpet, too. In the past 30 years, Newfoundland and Labrador clergy from a variety of faiths have been convicted of fraud, sexual assault and distributing child pornography.

All this wrongdoing has taken the shine off religion. If pastors and ministers, as a group, are no more upstanding than anyone else, how can they be trusted to advise others on ethics? If a church has actively concealed the crimes of its clergy, how can that church credibly preach virtue?

This loss of moral authority has gone hand in hand with a loss of intellectual authority.

Advances in our understanding of biology, geology, history and archaeology have shown that many passages in the Bible, Quran, and other scriptures can't be taken literally. Meanwhile, the internet provides critiques of religious doctrine at the push of a button.

The upshot is that churches, mosques and temples are no longer seen as reliable sources of truth about our world.

Finally, organized religions have lost their spiritual authority. Here they've played a role in sowing the seeds of their own demise.

My grandmother was an avid reader, as well as a pious Catholic who spent an hour and a half each day in prayer. When asked if she had read the Bible, though, she'd impishly reply: "Never opened it!"

To many Catholics of her generation, it was the priest's job to read and interpret the Bible, and the parishioner's job to pray and follow the priest's directions.

However, Vatican II, a Catholic council convened in 1962, radically changed the relationship between Catholics and their faith. After the council, mass could be conducted in the local language instead of in Latin. Parishioners who weren't ordained could read the Gospel in church and help administer communion.

The intention behind these changes was to encourage Catholics to become active participants in their religion, but the implicit message was that people could and should take responsibility for their own spiritual learning.

Other modern faiths have taken a similar tack, urging independent study of holy texts and one-on-one communication with God amongst their congregants.

If clergy aren't the only people who can preach and lead — if it's possible for anyone to interpret scripture, to develop a personal relationship with the divine, to live an ethical life — why not dispense with intermediaries like priests, churches, and religion entirely?

That's precisely what many Newfoundlanders and Labradors have done. No longer trusting in the moral, intellectual, and spiritual authority of organized religion, they are creating their own meaning beyond the gates of the temple.