A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

Because the evidence so far can have many explanations, graves being only one among them. The place apparently has a history of agricultural use, too, with several rounds of irrigation works.

It doesn't disprove that those are graves, of course. It's quite plausible that at least some of them are. But I don't feel like, on the balance of probability, it makes sense to make claims about "200+ children bodies", given the evidence we have so far.

> "I think my grandfather died in France during world war I and is buried somewhere in this field but the records are patchy so even after looking for decades we're still not certain" is something you respond to with empathy, not skepticism and demands for certain proof.

Well, for starters, nobody actually claimed to be a relative of some specific person that is ostensibly buried there. Indeed, it seems that there are no claims made of specific people being buried there at all - no names, just "N children". So the more accurate analogy would be "I think someone's grandfather died in WW1 and is buried somewhere in this field, but I don't actually know any of the people involved".

More importantly, if there are bodies there, a crime was committed - and many of the people responsible (if only for negligence allowing it to be committed) are still alive, so their reputation is directly affected by the claim. Organizational responsibility is also at stake; not that I have any love for the Catholic Church, mind you, but I'd rather blame them for the things they actually did.

If and when they dig up the holes, and they do indeed turn out to be graves of children - then I'll join the torches-and-pitchforks mob. But I resent the attempts to goad me into that before the facts are known - and it is exactly what the headlines in the media originally tried to do.

However, applying Occam’s razor: GP merely quoted C.S. Lewis, so it would seem to me that the simplest (and most charitable) interpretation is that they understood the quote and we’re not using it in any ironic/sarcastic way.

I find your reaction/response to GP a little confusing, but as best as I can tell: are you thinking they were using the quote in an intentionally ironic way as a means of making a jab at C.S. Lewis’ character/beliefs?

This whole thread has been really confusing, so I’d love to understand where the (apparent) disconnect is between both parties :).

Then, he's not saying that you should, on spec, be skeptical of claims of wrongdoing, or especially generous to mitigating claims. One way you know that's the opposite of his intent is that the essay is framed around the crimes of the Nazis; there is no possible way Lewis is suggesting we should be wary of news stories about the Nazis. Again: Nazism is a backdrop for not just the essay, or Christian Behavior, but really most of Mere Christianity.

This is a thread where really all we have to go on is a story about whether a media claim about wrongdoing is true, or can be mitigated. The quote then reads as an affirmation of the story! The quote would be saying exactly the thing I just said I believe it doesn't say.

But Lewis' quote doesn't apply here at all, unless you not only strip it of its context, but also turn it against that context. Nobody (at least, nobody identified) is reveling in what may have happened at the residential schools, or using it as a device to avoid forgiving any particular person. Our interest in the truth of what happened, and even our skepticism of mitigating claims, is totally independent of our duty to forgive, just as Lewis points out that our willingness to punish (or even kill) transgressors is independent of our duty to forgive them.

I think the whole thing is a lot clearer if you include the paragraph before and after the super-popular "newspaper article" quote.

I'm not clear on how I misread the original intent of the quote! I'm still interested in hearing that. So I'm re-explaining my own original intent in responding to it, but wouldn't want to be construed as doubling down on it.

My personal stake in this discussion is: I think Mere Christianity is pretty neat, and I'm attentive of the ways it gets used in online discussions. I don't know enough about Canadian history to have a stake in the truth of the residential school claims, though note that there is an expert rebuttal of these Quillette claims, from an archeological authority, downthread.