Maravi

Reflections on Fr Bwalya’s reflections

Reflections on Fr Bwalya’s reflections
Written by Editor

Citizens, priests like Fr Frank Bwalya, give us a lot of hope that although evil may be on the rampage temporarily, the good must win the laurels in the end.

We need priests to be the conscience of our society, the moral custodians and the fearless champions of the interests of the weak and downtrodden. Being a good Christian, being a good religious person of any faith or persuasion is a great force and it can help one have command of one’s own morality, one’s own behaviour and one’s own attitude.

Fr Bwalya has shown us that a priest has both the right and duty to participate fully in building a just, fair, humane and peaceful society with all the means at his disposal. A priest is of little value to his congregation if he does not try to establish justice.

What Fr Bwalya is doing is truly a revival of early Christianity, with its fairer, more humane, more moral values. It is truly in line with Christ’s teachings of humility, selflessness and loving thy neighbour. The ideas of social justice that Fr Bwalya is pursuing fit in perfectly well with his duties as a Catholic priest. As we have stated before, we believe that Christ was a great revolutionary. His entire doctrine was devoted to the humble, the poor; his doctrine was devoted to fighting against abuse, injustice and the degradation of human beings. And we are truly living at a time when politics has entered a near-religious sphere with regard to man and his behaviour. We also believe that we have come to a time when a priest can enter a political sphere with regard to the interests and plight of his congregation and their material needs.

It is clear to us that the line Fr Bwalya has taken is very correct and deserves our respect and support. We need only to look at history to see that the Church has survived the collapse of many powers that once were thought to protect it or to use it. And the current social doctrine of the Catholic Church, reaffirmed by Vatican II, has already rescued it from the clutches of the powerful, of abusers, of oppressors – the forces to which it seemed bound for some time in the past.

What Fr Bwalya has taught us is that when a system ceases to promote the common good, the priest must not only denounce it but also break with that evil system. The priest must be prepared to work with another system that is more just and more suited to the needs of the day. Fr Bwalya says that “since the relationship between the state and the Church is for no other reason than for the welfare of the people who are at the centre of these two institutions as both citizens and believers, the Church shall, at all times act within and with the state on all the issues of common concern that safeguard the welfare of the people while performing her basic fundamental duties…by always openly and courageously speaking out on issues affecting the welfare of the voiceless poor and helpless majority of Zambians whenever the common good of the people is at stake”. This holds true for all Christians, for all their leaders in the hierarchy, and for all the churches.

Today, the world insistently calls for recognition of man’s full dignity and for social equality among all people. Priests and all persons of goodwill cannot but go along with this demand, even if it calls for the greatest sacrifices on their part, for harassment and arrests and detentions.

The people are hungry for justice. And Jesus teaches us that we cannot love God without loving our fellow humans. We shall be judged by that same standard that the Bible talks about: “I was hungry and you gave me food…in so far as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:35-40).

And all the great religions and philosophies of the world echo this sentiment. The Qur’an spells out the last and ultimate test to which humans must submit when they are judged by Allah. What is that test? “Have you redeemed the captive, fed the orphan in his need or the beggar on your doorstep, and lived your life as a rod of mercy?” (Sura 90,11:18).

Jesus took all humanity upon himself to lead it to eternal life. And the earthly foreshadowing of this is social justice, the first form of brotherly love. What a priest can appropriately contribute is a humane vision of the human being and of humanity, a vision that situates the process of development within the human vocation.

Throughout the course of centuries, human beings have laboured to better the circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and collective effort. To believers, this point is settled: such human activity is in accord with God’s will. In the design of God, all human beings are called upon to develop and fulfill themselves, for every life is a vocation. If this is true, if full, integral and authentic development liberates human beings, then it is included within the human vocation. And if development exists within our vocation, it has the value of salvation. Not only what is done for the love of God, but everything which contributes to growth in humanity, everything which makes a person more human and contributes to human liberation, contains the value of salvation and communion with the Lord.

The creation of a just and fraternal society is the salvation of human beings, if by salvation we mean the passage from the less human to the more human. In all this, we are only retrieving the most ancient tradition of the Church.

Every human being of goodwill should be committed to changing a social order that is cruelly unjust. To refuse such a commitment would be to make oneself an accomplice of injustice. If priests do not commit themselves to changing a system that prevents most persons, most human beings from achieving personal fulfillment, then they are not helping humanity to live out its vocation and attain union with God. Priests cannot evade their commitment to social change. They must, like Fr Bwalya, involve themselves in this effort. Thus, the outlook of priests cannot be restricted to personal religious practices or to an individualistic morality; they cannot fail to re-examine their conduct within the framework of the structures prevailing in this world. If they fail to do this, they would be bearing witness against the gospel. They must confront the reality of today within the reality of the gospel, living always as wayfarers open to change and ever on the move.

Our priests are leaders of the Church but they are also the product of a society that has taught them to look coldly on the plight of their impoverished fellow citizens. In the light of the present situation, our priests must draw nearer to the poor for only then will they be able to change their situation radically. And in this regard, the limits of self-sacrifice must be set by real love, not by the standards of a society that tends to maintain the present situation. We say this because the poverty situation in our country today is the product of unjust socio-economic structures that must be changed.

The presentation of the gospel message presupposes a solid knowledge of the real situation in which its audience lives. Social, political and economic factors must be part of this knowledge, insofar as they affect human lives. To attain such knowledge, there must be a thoroughgoing analysis of the situation in which the Church and today’s human kind are living.

The spiritual life of the community and the individual must be guided by the signs of the times, on the basis of such factual analysis. A spirituality that is unconcerned about temporal realities is always alienating to the extent that it does not induce Christians to love the ones who are living through the same moment of history. The priest should help his congregation to discern, interpret and respond to the signs of the times. Historical situations and happenings send out a call to us and expect a response from us. Today’s situation calls for the priest to join the cause of the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed, and to work on behalf of full human development. This is exactly what Fr Bwalya is doing.

Only close experience will teach the priest the magnitude of the problems that afflict the majority of his congregation, the majority of the people. Therefore, our priests must transform the way they work so that such contact really takes place. Without such contact, they cannot really identify with “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties, of persons of this age, especially those who are poor”. These are our humble reflections on Fr Bwalya’s reflections from his detention cell.

Labels: FRANK BWALYA

posted by MrK @ 2:52 AM