Fifty years after the Second Vatican Council was meant to represent
the beginning of a "world church" in the Catholic Church, the Catholic
Church is still predominantly Eurocentric in her teachings, structures,
and personnel.
The shift in the center
of gravity in world Christianity from the West to the global South, and
the changing demographics in world Christianity, demands that the
Eurocentric types and models of church and Christianity need to be
abandoned.
African Catholicism, like
all local Catholic Churches throughout the world, can only flourish
when it has the freedom to mine local and cultural resources and to
develop its own narrative of faith and life, while embracing the
positive heritage of Catholic and Christian history.
In the West, many
Catholics are calling on the future pope to use his authority to address
the causes and consequences of the clerical sexual abuse crisis. Other
issues which many Western Christians see as needing urgent action are
clerical celibacy, the place of women in the church, the problems of a
high rate of divorce, the place of homosexuals in the church, the
anguish of divorced and separated Catholics, the use and abuse of
authority in the church, and some of the polarizing arguments on
abortion and contraception.
However, sometimes these
problems in their Western variants are presented as the universal
templates to view the challenges facing the Catholic Church in all parts
of the world. Similar problems do exist in African Catholicism, but
they manifest themselves in different ways and for different reasons.
In African Catholicism,
for example, there are few incidents of pedophile priests, but that does
not mean that the church in Africa does not have its own demons with
regard to sexual misdemeanors of its clergy with adult females.
Many Africans value
families because having children is the only way an African achieves
personal immortality, by becoming an ancestor. As a result, the concern
of some African Catholics for the church to have an open and honest
discussion on celibacy is not driven out of concern for the loneliness
or isolation that priests suffer in the West, but rather by the belief
that having a wife and children culturally enhances one's humanity and
is a good thing for the community and the individual priest.
Some African Catholic
priests and bishops who secretly have had their own children were driven
not simply by some unchecked and repressed libidinous upsurge, but by a
cultural pressure to procreate and thus guarantee ancestral life beyond
death.
Most African Catholic
women do not wish to be able to become Catholic priests like their
Western counterparts. On the other hand, many African women in the
Catholic Church are silently bearing the weight of an African brand of
Catholicism that reinforces a traditional African patriarchal mentality
that women should not have a voice, and that they should be subordinate
to men.
African Catholic women
would like to see the end to all kinds of sexual, physical, and
emotional abuses of women in marriages, sexual harassment and
exploitation in public offices and in some churches, and the suppression
of the rights of women in African society.
African Catholic women
are praying for a future pope who will encourage African religious
leaders to commit themselves to defending the rights of women to
inheritance, land and to divorce, so that gender equality and respect
for the dignity of the African woman can be achieved.
Whereas abortion and
contraception are divisive issues in Western Catholicism, most African
Catholics embrace this teaching because most African cultures reject
abortion and contraception.
However, African Catholics are more
concerned that the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS should be
understood as a therapeutic means to protect and preserve life. It
should be seen in this light as actually a morally legitimate pro-life
act, rather than anti-life.
African Catholics look
forward to the future pope introducing new and effective measures to
check the seeming absolute powers and privileges of African bishops and
priests.
There is a troubling clericalism in African Catholicism that is
similar to, and in some cases worse than, the dictatorial tendencies,
corruption and lack of accountability among African politicians.
Many Africans hope that the future pope will challenge his fellow
African bishops and priests to become the voice of the voiceless.
The poverty in Africa is
shocking and sinful; the social condition of the continent is
perplexing, and the human suffering is not only unacceptable, but also
inexcusable.
The reason that religion is so central to Africans, and for
the appeal of Catholicism, is because most Africans believe that God
can intervene in their longs nights and dark days of suffering and
uncertainty about the future.
Many Africans hope that
the future pope will challenge his fellow African bishops and priests to
become the voice of the voiceless, and to not live above the people or
exploit their vulnerability.
Religion, and
Christianity in particular, has become for many Africans a shopping mall
where they experiment with all kinds of solutions to their existential
problems. Many might argue that African Christianity lacks depth because
people's allegiance to one church or religion is not firm: an African
Catholic can consult with an African traditional healer in the morning
and take the same problem to a Pentecostal pastor in the afternoon, and
then bring the same issue for prayer at a Catholic Mass in the evening.
However, in an atmosphere of so much suffering and pain, the search for
religious options becomes a viable pathway.
African Catholics expect
the next pope to raise the bar of ethical, prophetic, sacrificial, and
servant leadership in African Catholicism -- and to hoist the banner of
righteousness and moral rectitude, and political activism and
solidarity, to lift millions of Africans from the pit of poverty so that
they will have a voice and contribute in building a better society.
The African church
should be a church of the poor, a church with the poor, a church for the
poor and a church that is on the side of the poor so as to give them a
voice.
Africans, like most
Catholics, hope that the future pope will be a humble, holy, wise and
compassionate servant leader, who is able to communicate the teachings
of the Catholic Church with compassion and tenderness.
Such a pope must also be
a listening pope who will not be afraid to engage the modern world, in
order to discern the signs of the times and embrace the beauty of the
new revelations which God is manifesting in today's world.