Commentary Burning a Roman Catholic church, or any church for that matter, is a hateful, criminal act. Nothing can excuse it. Nothing. I’m an indigenous Métis man. In The Pas, Manitoba, across the Saskatchewan River from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation territory, I took part in several sweat lodge ceremonies. I attended pow wows, wrote about the brutal rape and murder of Helen Betty Osborne, a young Cree woman, and reported on the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry (1988–1991). In the badlands of South Dakota, I sat alone at night during my vision quest. Since then, I’ve returned to the Catholic church. The recent attacks on Roman Catholic churches in Canada horrify me. But perhaps more than the actual burning of churches, it is the rationalizations on social media that are the most frightening of all. Activists in First Nations communities are trying hard to convince everyone that these hate crimes are somehow …