From a Eurocentric pope, a remarkably African message

by John L Allen Jr on Nov. 19, 2011

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Cotonou, Benin

If one were to survey African Catholic leaders about their most pressing social challenges, responses would likely focus on their struggles against corruption and religious intolerance. As it happens, those were precisely the two themes raised today by Pope Benedict XVI, in a highly anticipated speech to government and religious leaders at Benin’s Presidential Palace.

For an octogenarian German pontiff often accused of being Eurocentric, it came off as a remarkably ‘African’ message.

(The charge of Eurocentrism continues to dog the pope. Just last week, veteran Italian journalist Marco Politi published a new book, Crisis of a Papacy, arguing that Benedict is insufficiently attentive to the “global and geopolitical” dimension of his role.)

Heading into this morning’s speech, Vatican aides had dropped hints that it shaped up as a centerpiece of the trip. Benedict’s broad theme was Africa as a continent of hope, which he insisted is not “mere rhetoric” but rather “a personal conviction which is also that of the church.” The pope noted that hope seems to be stirring in many parts of the world; he made an indirect reference to the Arab Spring and to the birth of a new state, South Sudan, in Africa.

Yet surveying the socio-political realities of the moment, Benedict conceded, it can be depressingly difficult to make the case for optimism.

“There are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and death,” he said.

Benedict called upon political leaders to embrace good governance and eliminate corruption, thereby giving people a reason for hope. “Do not cut them off from their future by mutilating their present!” he said.

Those words carry special resonance in Benin, a country rocked last year by its own Bernie Madoff scandal in the form of a ponzi scheme perpetrated by one of the country’s major investment houses. The “ICC Services” meltdown drained five percent of Benin’s GDP, costing thousands of small investors more than $330 million.

For observers here, the fact that Benedict spoke this morning before some of the same political and commercial leaders in Benin who presided over the ICC Services fiasco lent his words special subtext.

More broadly, many analysts believe affluent nations could meet the Millennium Goals, throw open their markets, eliminate subsidies, and pay the Tobin Tax in full, but it would make little difference to global poverty if the resulting transfers of wealth simply end up in the pockets of corrupt elites. Estimates of the total cost of corruption worldwide are in the neighborhood of $500 billion to $1 trillion, dwarfing the total amount spent by Western nations on overseas development assistance. The World Bank Institute reported in 2004 that countries which limit corruption and improve the rule of law can increase national incomes four-fold, calling it the “400 percent governance dividend.”

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In that context, Benedict’s strong appeal this morning for government to serve the common good corresponds with the top social justice priority of the African church. It’s also reminiscent of his last African outing, in March 2009, when he said in Cameroon that “Christians must never remain silent in the face of corruption and abuses of power.”

On the subject of inter-religious dialogue, Benedict XVI was equally impassioned.

“Everyone of good sense understands that a serene and respectful dialogue about cultural and religious differences must be promoted,” he said. “No religion, and no culture, may justify appeal or recourse to intolerance and violence.”

“Aggression,” the pontiff said, “is an outmoded relational form which appeals to superficial and ignoble instincts.”

Though the pope did not directly reference religious violence in some parts of Africa, sometimes related to attempts in majority Muslim areas to impose Islamic law, he did insist “conscience is a sanctuary to be respected.”

That message too carries special weight in Benin, a country that’s 27 percent Catholic but with substantial pockets of Muslims, which has so far avoided the Christian-Muslim violence that’s marred its larger neighbor, Nigeria. The country’s president, Thomas Boni Yayi, is a Christian Evangelical who comes from a Muslim family.

When Benedict said that “Africa can offer all of us food for thought” on inter-religious dialogue, this may be part of what he had in mind.

As Benedict sometimes does when he is especially invested in a subject, he offered a simile to drive home his argument. The different cultures and religions, he said, are like the fingers on a hand, each one different but all essential to make the hand work. When they work together, he said, it’s a hand that can be held out in friendship.

“What could be more beautiful than a proffered hand?” Benedict asked. “Our hand too can become an instrument of dialogue. It can make hope flourish, above all when our intelligence stammers and our heart stumbles.”

“Hatred is a failure, indifference is an impasse, and dialogue is an openness!” the pope said.

In a typical touch, Benedict XVI suggested that dialogue can take many forms, including “cooperation in social or cultural areas” even when strictly theological exchange doesn’t seem possible.

In a sign that Benedict’s message of dialogue may find receptive soil in Benin, the country’s national TV broadcaster this morning carried a report on a prayer meeting organized last night in Cotonou by a major Evangelical church to pray for the success of the pope’s trip.

Relations between Catholicism and some of the multiform Evangelical and Pentecostal churches in Africa are sometimes strained, and just yesterday Benedict warned that Catholics should not “imitate” these groups, which sometimes blend Christianity with elements of traditional tribal religion.

Yet the Evangelical pastor quoted on Benin television insisted, “We are all together with the pope.”

Benedict XVI delivered the speech before a crowd of several hundred diplomats, politicians, and religious leaders gathered in the main hall of the Presidential Palace. Among the dignitaries in the front row were James Knight, U.S. Ambassador to Benin, and Mathieu Kérékou, who once ruled the country as the officially Marxist “People’s Republic of Benin” from 1974 to 1989.

In his remarks to the pope, Benin's President Thomas Yayi Boni vowed to base the policies of Benin on Christian values, a rhetorical trope that’s common in Africa but relatively rare in the European political discourse to which Benedict is accustomed.

Boni used a bit of verbiage that raised some eyebrows among locals. He referred to his current term as president as his “second and last,” indicating that he plans to step down. Although the constitution of Benin limits the president to two terms, there has been speculation here that Boni might attempt to amend the constitution to remain in power.

His comments this morning seem to suggest that’s not the case. As a reporter for a local paper put it, “He said it, and he said it in the presence of the Holy Father. Now he’s stuck with it.”

Just before the pope's arrival this morning, there was a reminder of the chronic challenges of development in some African societies. The power went out in the Presidential Palace, as the local electrical grid was momentarily overloaded. Quickly, however, on-site generators kicked in, and power was restored.

NCR senior correspondent is traveling with the pope in Benin. Below are a list of stories he has filed so far. Watch the NCR website for updates throughout the weekend.

In my country, we have an old

Submitted by Outsider (not verified) on Nov. 19, 2011.

In my country, we have an old saying, that, transleted freely, is something like this: "Words? They are scattered by the wind." Pope Benedict is very good with words. But perharps he'll need to read a little more. If he has time to spare in the plane, I would sugest this one:

Louder than words
Silence Speaks: Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, John Courtney Murray and Thomas Merton
Robert Nugent
Paulist Press, £11.99
Tablet bookshop price £10.80 Tel 01420 592974

In a polemic directed against Martin Luther in 1526, Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great pioneer of modern biblical scholarship, promised: “I shall bear with this Church until I see a better one, and it is forced to bear with me until I myself become better.” The forbearance that Erasmus offered did not match any forbearance that he hoped to receive from the Catholic Church, to which he remained loyal. After his death in 1536, Erasmus’ reputation within the Catholic Church continued to decline. The first papal Index of Prohibited Books (1559) singled him out with an exacting censure not applied to any other proscribed author. Throughout the sixteenth century, Erasmus had the unique and dubious distinction of appearing twice in the Index as updated by successive popes: once under first-class heretics, whose works were all banned, and once under second-class heretics, who were subject only to a ban on specific titles, which in some cases could be read once corrected by a competent authority. Today, several scholars emphasise Erasmus’ commitment to the Catholic Church and tradition; some see him as a precursor of Vatican II. In 1997, the University of Notre Dame in the United States established an Erasmus Institute for advanced studies in Catholicism.

Robert Nugent would probably recognise Erasmus as a kindred spirit for the four ­twentieth-century Catholic thinkers, two Frenchmen and two Americans, who constitute the focus of his book. Erasmus might serve as a better “patron saint” for theologians in the mould of Teilhard, Congar, Murray and Merton than, as Nugent proposes, the twelfth-century Peter Abelard. Their story is much like that of Erasmus. They willingly accepted forbearance when the obligation of silence was imposed from above (Erasmus, while alive, admittedly was never silenced), but they received little or no goodwill in return. Eventually, a more appreciative spirit prevailed, and they attained the recognition that was their due as men committed to the Church. The influence of Congar and Murray on Vatican II was decisive. Teilhard’s case, however, is not as clear. The warning about his writings issued by the Holy Office in 1962 remains in place, and yet Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 saluted Teilhard’s “great vision”.

Silence Speaks breaks no new historical ground. Its four central chapters, which rely on a reading of select primary sources and, in the case of Murray and Merton, rather heavily on secondary sources, are revisions and expansions of previously published ­articles. Nugent surely did not intend to be innovative. His book serves as a timely reminder of a well-known chapter in the recent history of the Church. Consider that, in 2005, an American bishop justified the removal of Merton as a prominent exemplary figure from the American Catholic Catechism because apparently young people did not know who he was.

For those who require a reminder of the historical tensions between individual theo­logians and the Magisterium, or for those who approach the topic for the first time, the book is eminently accessible and concise. Brevity is a bonus in the stories of anguish. In his introduction, Richard Gaillardetz, a prominent American Catholic ecclesiologist, inaugurates the sombre tone that pervades the book. Despite the impact of Vatican II, the “inquisitorial atmosphere” of the first half of the twentieth century still lingers today.

Nugent follows the same pattern of analysis for each subject. After a brief introduction to the figure in question, he presents the struggle with authority and concludes with the ­struggle’s resolution. For Teilhard, Congar, Murray and Merton, the nub of controversy is clear: the stands they took, respectively, for evolution, for ecumenism, for religious liberty and against nuclear war. The first two aroused the suspicions of Rome. Murray did as well, but much of his embattled situation was a consequence of personal disputes with a few American theologians. Dom Gabriel Sortais, abbot general of the Trappists, ensured that Merton became a “silenced monk”. Nugent does not play devil’s advocate by exploring the objection of antagonists.

The focus is clearly on the vexed conflicts of the silenced, not the objectives of the silencers. The suffering was acute, palpable in the chafing at authority. Teilhard, the Jesuit cosmologist, once despairingly confided: “In a kind of way I no longer have confidence in the exterior manifestations of the Church … Some people feel happy in the visible Church; but for my own part I think I shall be happy to die in order to be free of it – and to find Our Lord outside of it.” We encounter this startling outburst from the diary of Congar, the prolific Dominican theologian: “The ‘Holy Office’ in practice rules the Church and makes everyone bow down to it through fear or through interventions. It is the supreme Gestapo, unyielding, whose decisions cannot be discussed.”

Nugent’s epilogue offers consoling wisdom. He obviously admires the need of his four subjects “to maintain their own integrity and personal responsibility” as they spoke to the Church. The responsibility expressed itself in obliged and accepted silence, obedience and loyalty to the Church. These values ensured the effective communication of truths and continue to deserve imitation. Silence still speaks admirably today. That Nugent breathes not a single word about his own conflict with ecclesiastical authority is a source of admiration and a sign of loyalty to the Church that he and all Catholics of goodwill love.

"“What could be more

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Nov. 19, 2011.

"“What could be more beautiful than a proffered hand?” Benedict asked. “Our hand too can become an instrument of dialogue. It can make hope flourish, above all when our intelligence stammers and our heart stumbles.”

“Hatred is a failure, indifference is an impasse, and dialogue is an openness!” the pope said.

Dialogue? Openness? Is this the same Pope who sacked Bishop Morris surrounded by secrecy while coddling bishops involved with covering up child abuse? The many examples of words contradicted by deeds leads me to a very unpleasant word: duplicity. Which is the real Benedict XVI? Did he write these words himself? Baffling!

'“There are too many scandals

Submitted by Daishin Sunseri (not verified) on Nov. 20, 2011.

'“There are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and death,” he said.'

It seems to me that the pope was actually taking about the catholic church in this quote.

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