At dinner tonight, Slava made a remark wrought with irony. “I think I might become Catholic when I return to the states.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Well I really consider myself a heathen, but I really am struggling find anything I can do as a heathen that I can’t do as a Catholic.”
It makes the four of us gathered at dinner nearly roll over in stitches.
And I needed a good laugh after today, because I’m mostly disappointed.
I have seen a lot of the good and bad in the Church, but today I saw a lot of the bad. I visited two parishes, Rango and Kansi. If you have downloaded Google Earth onto your computer you can view my pictorial of the parishes by clicking here.
I’d never really spoken with a Rwandan from a religious order, but today I did. “This is great!” I thought, “I’ll be able to see how a religious order handled the genocide.”
But what I encountered was the continual mixed baggage that I have found everywhere with the introduction of Christianity to Africa. The promotion of sound religious doctrine is important, but the African people often have very little ownership of the Christian religion. The people are so poor, they often don’t have the money to give to the Church for its maintenance, and even if they do have the money, they feel such contributions are unnecessary, because in a missionary culture, foreigners have always provided the assistance that the Church needed.
Today, I actually saw the tithing cards for a parish that calculated the amount of money certain parishioners gave to the Church for the entire year. Recognizing of course that most people make less than $200, I was still a bit shocked to see that the majority of the cards had the equivalent of 50 cents in US currency written on them for the year. (Or as Fr. Emmanuel and I like to joke, not even one bottle of beer.)
There is a big concern facing the Catholic Church in Rwanda. Many Christians are leaving the Catholic Church, and becoming Protestant. There are many reasons why this is happening in Rwanda, but I would like to emphasize the financial reasons. The Catholic Church in American and European are struggling financially. With that struggle, support from Western countries for the Catholic Church in developing countries is drying up. Bishops throughout Africa are pushing self-reliance and accountability, but these are not big selling points to a congregation mostly living in poverty. Protestant churches and ministers, on the other hand, are still being heavily subsidized.
I don’t want my observation to stir up any resentment between Catholics and Protestants for our missionary tactics, and this is not a debate about who is right or wrong. The dilemma that I am trying to illustrate is that church-goers seem to follow the money, not the faith. As long as Africans continue to flock to churches that are provided for them, without regard to their personal investment, there will never be a sense of responsibility, or religious integrity, to either Catholic or Protestant Africans.
And although I can say many positive things about religious orders in the Catholic Church, I have to be honest. They are also really good at stunting the religious, economic, and social growth of the places they serve. For example, in Rongo parish, when the diocese lacked the funds to pay the very modest, but promised stipend, to the catechists of the parish, the religious order paid the catechist for the diocese. The religious order didn’t challenge the diocese to live up to their commitments, nor did they request diocesan accountability. Instead, the religious order stepped in for the diocese, and covered the cost.
The same is true of the salaries designated for the clergy. Rather than challenge the people to take responsibility for the financial requirements of their own pastoral care, the religious community supplements the requirement. When church buildings need maintenance, but cannot raise the funds, the religious order uses its own coffers to supply what is needed. With mission priests and nuns, there always comes the additional luxury of foreign supporters (family and friends) who can provide money for specific projects, send candy or sweets, or donate left over vestments and sacramentals (mandated by Rome) that the parish could not otherwise afford.
One sometimes wonders, “Are the parishioners there because they believe in Christ, or because there is a chance for a free hand out?”
I guess we’ll never really know. Growing the Church in a mission land is at least as difficult as raising adolescent children. If you keep giving them everything they need, they never grow up. If you force them to starve, you are stuck with impoverished children, ignorant of how to survive in an adult world.
But the affluent coddling of missionaries, who oddly seem to fear weaning their parishioners towards self-reliant responsibility, is not the real complaint that I would like to foster from today’s encounters. The real complaint has to do with a form of latent hypocrisy.
From the pastor at Rango, I got a bit of runaround. As I said, that in which I was most interested today was learning about the dynamics of an international religious order in the midst of genocide.
“We remained strong. Diversity was our strength. Because of the diversity we share as a religious community, we never thought of people as Hutu or Tutsi. Everyone was considered equal.”
This was music to my ears. Diversity as the source of strength! I love that conversation! But I pressed onward.
“So what did your community do when the various international embassies ordered ex-patriots out of the country?” I boldly ask.
“We forced our embassy contacts to also take the Hutu and Tutsi confriars.”
“Wait… let me get this straight. While there was a genocide going on, you protected one another… by leaving together?”
“Yes. We made sure that every confriar was safe. We did not lose a single brother.”
I wanted to scream! What about the (not dozens, not hundreds, but…) thousands of “brothers” and “sisters” who you left behind in the parish you supposedly were charged with pastoral care? What about their spiritual needs? Hell! What about their physical needs? Death does, after all, manifest itself in physical form. You turned your back on them, and let them die. Then you want a pat on the back for coming back a few months later with the praiseworthy mission of helping the country recover? Why did you abandon them in the first place?
At the end of the day, I am really torn. What do I believe? The Church makes a point of celebrating martyrs, those who did not fear the complications that were a result of their religious beliefs. On the other hand, dead priests can’t say Mass very well. Dead priests can’t say funerals. Dead priests can’t lead a country toward reconciliation. Dead priests can’t do a lot.
I’m also mindful of St. Peter. When he first faced the choice to follow Christ to his death or flee…well… he fled, just like this religious order. (Has anyone noticed how I painstakingly haven’t told you the name of the religious order to which I was talking today? I’m really not on a crusade against religious orders. I just believe that there is integrity to be found in weighing the good with the bad.)
The truth? Well… I don’t really know what the truth is. I appreciate a great deal the charism that religious orders have had in the Church. Their willingness to serve as missionaries in the most difficult of circumstances deserves great praise. I also know what it is like to work for a parish once sponsored by a religious order. I have done that for the last seven years. They take pride in making things work when the parish itself is not working. (We were one million dollars in debt, and collecting less than half of our operating budget in weekly offerings). When the religious order leaves, which they did in the case of my parish, the result is a malfunctioning parish which doesn’t know how to care for itself.
The Church in Rwanda would not exist if it wasn’t for missionaries of religious orders. The Church in Rwanda wouldn’t have so many problems if it wasn’t for missionaries of religious orders. The Church in Rwanda contained religious orders that turned their backs on the very people they baptized and married, as crisis covered the land. The Church in Rwanda would lack the necessary priests and nuns to clean up the mess of genocide, if it wasn’t for missionaries from religious orders.
It is a chaotic mess that doesn’t make much sense. Are they really living as Catholic are called to live, or are they a bit heathens? Or is Slava right in her humorous take on Catholics and heathens… can someone really tell the difference?