Saturday, October 15, 2011

Waiting for people to crave more “spiritual food:” Mackenzie diocese bishop

Roman Catholics in Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk received a special visitor this past week: Bishop Murray Chatlain, the Bishop of the Mackenzie diocese.

Chatlain, 48, replaced long-time Bishop Denis Croteau four years ago.

And, as Chatlain explained during an interview inside Cambridge Bay’s “Our Lady of the Arctic” Catholic church, he’ll stay in his current position until he’s 75.

That commitment to the North — a lifetime one — wasn’t an easy for the Saskatchewan priest to take on.

Before Chatlain’s name was added to a list of three priests to be submitted to Rome for possible appointment, he was asked if he wanted to leave Saskatchewan for Yellowknife to lead the Mackenzie diocese.

“Because it’s a northern diocese, pretty much “extreme clergyish,” they contacted me, and asked would I be open at all,” Chatlain said.

He asked for a month to mull over the move, said yes, and then waited another year to learn that he had been selected, with a telephone call from the Vatican.

He describes that call as “weird,” because a priest rarely gets the word that “Pope Benedict is asking you to be bishop.”

His ordination took place within three months and he moved to Yellowknife.

Now Chatlain spends about half of his time on the road, visiting some of the 38 communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut which are part of the sprawling diocese.

Often Chatlain fills in for priests who are away — that’s because there are only nine priests for the entire diocese and each one looks after four to seven congregations.

The Mackenzie diocese has been struggling for years to find priests — in 1950, there were 60 priests for a population of 12,000 Catholics. In 2002, like today, there were only nine for nearly 25,000.

Overall, there’s a shortage of priests willing to serve in the North where, unlike other workers from the South, they earn less money because the congregations are also poor, Chatlain said.

So, he’s had to look very far for priests, to Nigeria, which has sent three to the Mackenzie diocese, and to India, the home country of another priest in the diocese.

“They’re willing to give but it takes along time to be part of a community,” he said — and none will make their home permanently in the North

And, even with support, these priests from far-away don’t find it easy: “it’s a huge stretch for them” to be away from everything that’s familiar.

While there’s no regular priest assigned to Cambridge Bay or Kugluktuk, Chatlain tries to visit once a year and a priest also usually visits about three times a year.

While in Cambridge Bay, Chatlain presided over masses, spoke to youth preparing for their first communion, and visited local people.

Cambridge Bay usually depends on lay leader Vicki Aitaok to lead its services — and Kugluktuk, where there has been no resident priest since Father Lapointe, who lived in Kugluktuk for 50 years, retired in 1992,  relies on local lay leaders as well.

The relationship of these two Kitikmeot communities with the Roman Catholic Church has sometimes been strained. Kugluktuk’s history with the church is long, but checkered, starting with the murder of two Oblate missionaries in 1913.

And, more recently, some former residential school students who say they were abused at Catholic-run institutions during the 1950s and 1960s no longer attend church.

In these two Kitikmeot communities sometimes there are only a handful present for Sunday services.

But Chatlain says the problem of dwindling attendance at church — not just at Catholic churches but at all churches — results from the secularization of society, where “almost any excuse will do to avoid going to church.”

In some areas, particularly places like Africa and Asia where there is competition with other religions, church attendance is “rocking,” Chatlain said.

And it even remains strong in some NWT communities in the Mackenzie Diocsese where the churches are regularly packed.

As for how to revitalize flagging congregations, Chatlain doesn’t have a simple answer.

“There’s forms of the church which die all the time, like religious communities — they blossom and they thrive — and movements, like the Catholic Workers movement. They have tremendous energy for a while,” he said.

And then they fade away.

Maybe the lack of “spiritual food” will be felt someday, he said, with some of the local people coming forward to assume leadership roles.

Chatlain would like to see the Roman Catholic Church bend on its rigid requirement for priests to be celibate, because having local priests would be “the ideal.”

“It’s just so hard to find an aboriginal person to be a leader, a priest and be celibate,” he said.
In the meantime, Chatlain says he’s isn’t discouraged.

“For now, there needs to be a valuing of the culture and the strength of the people who have been here for thousands and years. That needs to be part of our theology,” he said.

Although he’s not sure how things will evolve in the future, Chatlain brings up the Biblical story of Ezekiel who looks over the “valley of the bones,” sees the breath of God come, and “it puts on sinew and the meat comes on, and the people are there again.”

“I really have a belief that when it’s time the spirit will bring life again in the right ways. I think it’s important for us to be listening and to be present in the right places right now, but we can’t force a revival,” he said.