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The document, “A Call to Solidarity with Africa”
was developed by the Committee on International Policy
of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
(USCCB). It was approved by the full body of bishops
at our November 2001 General Meeting in Washington
DC.
The document is more than appropriate and is generally
well received. Delegations of American bishops routinely
visit Africa. Pope John Paul II has featured his papacy
visiting as well as bringing together at the See of
Peter the various churches, especially the “suffering
churches” around the world, giving them recognition
for their histories and unique contribution to the
powerful witness of the universal church.
No church, be they the churches formerly behind the
Iron Curtain or the former Soviet Union, be they the
churches in India or Africa, or the Central and South
Americas, need feel that they are a distance from
Peter or far from the solicitude of the whole church.
What prevents the Church from being of greater service
to Africa is, often, the political climate between
nations and governmental policies that work an interference
with communication between the churches of both the
developed and developing worlds.
Africa is the mother continent. Scientists tell us
man originated on what is today the African continent.
Africa was among several major churches in early Christianity
that evidenced a mature and highly ordered catholic
life and worship.
Significant too is the Diaspora of peoples of African
descent scattered over the globe especially in the
various countries of the Americas.
Everywhere the Pope has gone he has seen black faces,
experienced black faith and the agonies and fears
of black peoples worn down by the stubborn remnants
of the European and African slave trades, the ravages
of plague and disease, governmental corruption and
delayed progress.
In certain respects Africa has been like a ball tossed
and kicked around when she has been vulnerable and
unable to care for herself. Foreign powers have left
behind a legacy of greed and degradation and contempt,
which Africa has been unable to recover from.
In the meantime, the world has become a global village
thanks to advances in communications and technology.
The ease of travel makes it possible to travel from
the U.S. to Africa in the space of twenty-four hours
and be with brothers and sisters of the sub-Saharan
regions where Christian faith has been effectively
sown by the missionaries and is growing by leaps and
bounds.
A document of this nature, first among its kind,
is appropriate by reason of what the Church in America
has to offer Africa and what Africa has to offer the
Church in America.
While the churches watch the haggling over American
governmental policy with its hesitancy to acknowledge
the priority of the African nation and its concerns;
a rubric has already been established for the churches
when St. Paul asked the church at Corinth to come
to the aid of the church in Jerusalem. While the Churches
are limited in resources we can never shirk from the
miracle that can happen from sharing just a few loaves
and a couple fish. Let us not see material and financial
aid as the only kinds of aid that can be given Africa.
Let us also bank on the gifts of faith and solidarity,
shared ministry and that communion that is indigenous
to Catholic faith and praxis.
Institutionally, the Church has been present in Africa
for some time. As noted in the introductory literature
to this Conference, the most viable institutions providing
social services are those operated by the Catholic
Church. In areas of intense conflict, the church continues
to serve the needs of the people with great courage
when governments and other political organizations
fail. The Catholic Church in Africa has more than
116 million members out of 350 million Christians.
More than 10,000 parishes and 75,000 mission stations
are located in Africa.
Catholic Relief Services –[CRS]… our
largest organized effort in Africa supports programs
in 36 sub-Saharan countries with a total annual commitment
of $140 million dollars. CRS works with local church
partners and others in the areas of health, agriculture,
education, finance, the HIV/AIDS crisis, reconciliation
among ethnic groups and tribes, poverty eradication
and peace building. We are proud of the works of CRS.
May this organization sponsored by the U.S. Bishops’
Conference be around for a long time. Yet, given this
impressive partnership assistance, Africa’s
needs remain profoundly beyond the Church’s
capacity to correct.
The Bishops of the United States call our nation’s
lack of serious attention to the needs in Africa a
scandal. The bishops are committed to bringing assistance
to the Catholic Church in Africa with our resources
and to do all in our power to lobby governmental agencies
to situate Africa among U.S. strategic interests with
international trade and investment, debt forgiveness
and to promote among the policy makers a more even
U.S. governmental response to problematic situations
around the world, including Africa, instead of picking
and choosing among the nations for reasons of political
expediency. “Our faith demands it. Our sisters
and brothers are asking for our help. Our world needs
this effort. The United States has special responsibilities.
We can make a difference … we stand with the
Church in Africa; we seek to call attention to Africa’s
problems and potential; we want to amplify the voices
of Africans, so that they can be heard by a sometimes
distracted world…”
“The U.S. Catholic bishops have called on the
government of the United States for an additional
$1 billion dedicated to poverty reduction in sub-Saharan
Africa, which would bring U.S. assistance as a percentage
of its aid budget …to just above the bottom
third of donors.” Yet, secular investment in
Africa is further frustrated by the actions of questionable
government leaders and unstable regimes that force
potential investors to think they are pouring money
down an empty well or their investment is, at best,
at risk.
Since the era of the European slave trade and colonialization,
the Western world still has to thoroughly overhaul
their assessment of Africa’s potential in the
following areas: Africa’s contribution to the
global economy, global progress, global politics and
the spread of the monotheistic faiths on the continent.
Racism peculiar to Western peoples has yet to process
and receive effectively the dignity of black skin.
The dominant culture experiences a visual and emotional
dissonance when a black person enters their space.
This remains an insidious blockage to positive and
affirming human relations cross racial and skin color
lines. This situation of the human condition continues
to plead for the grace of Christian witness and personal
and corporate conversion. Racism, unfortunately, infiltrated
church praxis in America resulting in a hesitant outreach
and evangelization of African Americans. Racism hampers
our politics, our social outreach, our national and
international negotiations. Western nations have not
given back to Africa anything amounting to a third
of what was taken from Africa with the slave trade,
colonization and conquest. It will take generations
to undo much of this in order to insure Africa on
a course of self-determination.
Remarkably, in 2003, African peoples are still living
under conditions where there is lacking safe drinking
water, where basic health care is lacking; people
living in sub-standard and unstable shelters where
electricity and basic telephone communication are
absent and where certain government leaders are bent
on leadership styles that ignore standard accountability
measures, especially in places, where the wealth of
Africa has hardly filtered down to the common masses.
In my own travels in Africa, particularly Nigeria
and Uganda the glaring differences between American
and African infrastructures as regards roads, hospitals
and adequate housing are so obvious as to promote
among common citizens some pretty misinformed ideas
about poverty in Africa and material prosperity in
America.
On this side of the globe, we have blocked out the
air-waves coming from Africa. News from Africa is
confined to topics of war, conflict and various coups,
disease and famine. Seldom, beyond National Geographic
specials, do we have visual images and news reports
of Africa’s glory in its people, its artistic
achievements, its history, rich terrain, natural resources
and religious faith. This lack of thorough reporting
is an injustice to not only Americans but also the
members of the African Diaspora here in the Americas.
What can we do Church-to-Church?
The constitutional disinterest between church and
state makes it hard to gauge the impact of official
church pronouncements on topics of global justice
and peace in governmental affairs in this country.
The voice of U.S. bishops is heard in Washington DC
probably as effectively as the voices of the various
African episcopal conferences are heard by their governmental
constituencies. But, here and there, our message gets
though, however subtle or direct. Here and there a
political figure, the likes of a Nicodemus, asks for
a meeting at night to have us explain the Church’s
position on issues of social justice and human rights.
In the meantime, despite traces of racism found within
our own ranks in the Church in America, what concrete
steps can we take to stand with Africa? I have some
recommendations for further conversation and development
with our African brothers in the episcopate and the
various departments of our episcopal conferences.
I suggest we:
1) . continue to aid and assist the African Church
through the U.S. Bishops’ agency of CRS-Catholic
Relief Services. This agency is a most vibrant witness
to mission outreach of the bishops of the United States
in almost one hundred countries around the world.
2) . It behooves us to galvanize a missionary corp
of doctors, nurses and health care technicians to
spend sabbaticals in Africa to assist areas bereft
of health care.
3) . We can continue to help educate select African
clergy for the African churches as well as African
clergy through continuing education opportunities
here in U.S. seminaries, colleges and universities
offering them hospitality and experience in pastoral
service.
4) . We can offer African clergy broader pastoral
experience in parishes, chaplainces and other fields
of the pastoral ministry by a trade between African
clergy and American clergy for a half-year to a year
at a minimum or longer depending upon the agreement…
of mutual educational benefit to our churches.
5) . A few American bishops and their dioceses adopt
an African bishop and his diocese; trade visits with
their people, and/or offer financial assistance to
projects in an African diocese. Some American Catholic
parishes already have sister-parishes and missions
in Africa and Central and South America. Where this
is happening it should be expanded.
6) . Diocesan Schools Offices can assist with donations
of school supplies and equipment for elementary and
secondary Catholic schools in African lands.
7) . Similar to the national collection taken up
for the Church in Latin America and the Church in
Eastern Europe, the Committee of the United States
Bishops’ Conference on International Policy
is considering the recommendation of an annual collection
for the Church in Africa in response to an increasing
number of requests that the U.S. Bishops and Catholic
Relief Services are receiving for assistance for the
pastoral needs of the Church in Africa. Obvious to
us are the specific challenges confronting the Church
in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that require support
for infrastructure, e.g., construction of pastoral
centers for education, health care, religious education,
and church administration, in order that pastoral
programs might be more effectively implemented.
8) . We should exercise an exchange of bishop-participants
between our episcopal conferences particularly with
topics germane to our mutual assistance, global and
political concerns.
9) . We should assist with education and catechesis
of the faithful about Africa to overturn the neglect,
indifference and apathy that features the U.S. governmental
response to the African continent.
10) . Together, we should assist the younger generation
of African students studying here in the United States
with correlative education in the Church’s Moral
and Social Teaching in an effort to prompt promising
young Africans to take community and political leadership
posts back home and thus overturn an older leadership
of an older mentality that is frustrating human progress
in Africa. We want to foster in Africans educated
here in the United States the desire to return home
and become part of the solutions that will build a
more solid future for Africa.
These suggestions represent things we can do and
do well thus heeding the summons of the Bishops of
the U.S: “Africa should be given special attention.”
These suggestions can also assist in breaking down
stereotypical assumptions between us that are so prevalent
about Africa and Africans; America and Americans.
Much of these fictional assumptions are nurtured by
a persistent racism that fosters lack of contact,
skewed communications and biased journalism.
What does Africa offer the Church in America?
“Africa is full of joyous hospitable and generous
people from whom the world has much to learn about
what it means to be human” Africa practices
a faith that is tried by adversity and persecution,
a faith that has produced martyrs and countless others
destroyed by genocide, war and that paranoia that
emanates from political greed and degradation.
Africans in majority numbers do not have those distractions
that dismiss faith and religious practice to the level
of options and scorned by intellectual critique and
ecclesiological debate.
Priests and religious who work or study in the United
States are, by and large, examples of another valid
dimension of Catholic life and consecration, exhibiting
their joyful sense of dedication and service, a genuine
sense of mission; their solid faith and sense of loyalty
to the Church are all appreciated.
As a bishop of the Church, I personally, look forward
to a future of even stronger collaboration between
the Church of America and the Churches of Africa.
This is a prophetic document that raises, nevertheless,
a certain apprehension in one who reads it, for the
American bishops have committed themselves to certain
ideas and strategies that surface from every other
sentence on these pages.
It is an arduous task creating a document of this
scope. The document appears small in its final construction
yet power emanates from its pages. May our work and
collaboration proceed unto the good of the whole church.
†
September 22, 2003
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