Religion and Ethnicity? What of it?

Events of the past few weeks have caused me a crisis of faith. I know. Shocking isn't it.

The thing is my experiences have been so diverse, well, it is hard not to think of these sorts of things.

So picture it - Toronto on a Sunday afternoon. It is a beautiful day. The sun is shinning and it is starting to get summery warm. You drive downtown for the afternoon to go shopping, have lunch with a friend and maybe even head off for an afternoon at a local museum or are off to the movies.

Then you, of course, toward the end of the day decide it's about time to head home. You head toward the Gardiner. But you are told that the Gardiner, the highway artery between home and the big city, is closed. "Is there an accident?" you think.

Well no but there are a lot of protesters. "About the Tories?" "Over Stephen Harper's policies?"

No, the protesters are upset about the Tamils. "...Tamils?" Yes, in Sri Lanka.

Toronto is the only city on earth that can be shut down by a protest initiated by a known terrorist group, as recognized by the Canadian and American governments. The Tamil Tigers have fought for their own separate state in northern Sri Lanka for over 30 years, but have recently surrendered and seen their militant political leader killed by the Sri Lankan military. Toronto has, in the weeks leading up to the surrender, experienced a myriad of protest clogging our streets, the provincial government and our highways. Only in Toronto.

Now flash forward to Boston this past Saturday. I had offered to volunteer for a mere 5 hours as part of a corporate volunteer program - it was a great opportunity to give back. Until I learned where my corporate volunteering would take place. Catholic Christian Charities part of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Really? A corporate organization is going to make me volunteer for a religious organization? Moreover, a religious organization that has been marred in turbulence since accusations of child abuse became publicly known only a few years ago? This in the country espousing the separation of church and state? Only in Boston.

So what do these two seemingly contradictory events, in two different towns have in common anyway?

In reality they have much more in common, but it is what separates them that makes it interesting. You see, although part of the Boston mainstream now, there was a time when the Catholic church (even in Boston) was looked down upon as the religious institution of the Irish and the Italians - to all protestant accounts "the heathens of the state." On paper the US may have been about separating church and state, but the reality was that Washington and New York were run by the protestants, with a few Jews on the side. One only need hear of the awe at JFK being elected as the first Catholic President in the 1960s to understand the rank and order of where the Catholics fell, even in Boston.

By today's standards, one might more easily see the connections with the Tamils. Although not an inherently religious organization, like the Catholics of Massachusetts, they too are a hyper marginalized organization as the Catholics once were. Hyper, of course, because of the fear and dread around their actions, their fundraising (at home and abroad) and the militancy of their organization. One only need think of the actions of Fenians at the turn of the last century to think that they too, like the Tamils, would likely have appeared on lists of terrorist groups.

But, flashing forward to today does make the difference. In Toronto, it was a known terrorist organization that was willingly allowed to take over our streets. There was no back fighting, largely no arrests and certainly no clubbing, shooting or other defensive police action. The Tamils willingly took a weakened city, one where few have the guts to speak out against anything. Torontonians love the status quo. A city weakened by the largess of what they faced, the knowledge that these were Canadian citizens for the most part and that this was a heightened "political" situation with the cameras following the every action of the protesters.

In Boston, spending a day working for the Catholic church was considered no biggie for pretty much the same reasons: the largeness of the organization, the sense that it is at its heart an American organization (not one controlled from Rome), and it is a "political" organization as well with the cameras turned on it since the accusation of the early 2000s - one that is in the constant "do gooders" mode. The Catholic church in Boston has become yet another grand old dame of the town. Bostonians love clinging to their strongholds - all the things that set them apart from...well...everybody.

And yet. My religious charity work was forced upon me, a non-Catholic, without a second thought. The actions of the Tamil protesters was thrown in the face of Toronto with many a second thought, hysteria and not a few angry drivers.

Who is more right? Hard to tell. Who is more wrong? Even more difficult to differentiate.

One can only wonder to think that in 100 years from now if some corporate organization in Boston is marched off to volunteer for a day with the Tamil relief organization. Or if the Irish will once again take to the streets of Toronto in protest, because being the good monarchists that we are, they wish for a united Irish state one free of Britain and Canada does not seem to care about it. Yes, one can only wonder. Isn't it magnificent. Isn't it remarkable.