Maravi

‘Insults’ from Catholic priests

‘Insults’ from Catholic priests
By Editor
Thu 19 Nov. 2009, 04:00 CAT

It is extreme dishonesty for George Kunda to accuse Catholic priests of having joined the tirade of insulting the President.

And we challenge George to produce any evidence where a Catholic priest has insulted Rupiah Banda or anyone else for that matter. We have no doubt that George will not be able to produce any such evidence. George is simply telling lies. He is a liar.

Probably George is mistaking the honest and legitimate criticism that comes from some Catholic priests as insults. To George, any criticism of Rupiah and his government is an insult. To George, criticism of those in government per se is non-existent. Anything else is an insult. They are incapable of being criticised without feeling insulted or rancoured about it. In fact, all the time the impression they create is that to criticise is to insult or curse in the biblical fashion.

It is quite true that acceptance of criticism implies the highest respect for the human ideal, and that its denial suggests a conscious or an unconscious lack of humanity on our part. Intolerance must surely rank as one of the worst forms in human affairs.

George and his boss should learn to take pride in their critics because a society without critics is a human hell where leaders indulge their anarchical instincts without moral compunction. They steal public funds, they abuse power and secure for themselves and their friends acquittals and refuse any meaningful legal process to hold them accountable.

What is distinctly lacking in George and his friends is a culture of tolerance and humility which places the humanity of others before self and accept that all citizens have a right to participate in the shaping of their destiny directly without fear of reprisal or of being called all sorts of names.

What George and his friends need to learn is to humbly accept their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness for the times they may have wronged others. Remorse, apologising are the conditions for forgiveness and reconciliation between people. George has told a lie about Catholic priests. George and his boss have told many lies about us. George has gone to parliament to make all sorts of insinuations against us that he cannot repeat outside the House because he knows they are not true and he will be sued. But George has never had the decency or the moral courage to apologise.

Today George wants to accuse Catholic priests of not promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. But what George does not know, or if he knows he is trying to ignore, is the fact that a faith and a life which are authentically Christian cannot fail to blossom in a love which constitutes truth and promotes justice. True faith touches on our beliefs, feelings and actions, our head, heart and hand.
The Catholic priest, just as much as his Church, has both the right and duty to participate fully in building a just and peaceful society with all the means at his disposal. A priest is not fully rooted among his people if he doesn’t try to establish justice. It is said that faith of itself, if it does not have works is dead (James 2:17).

No one can deny the fact that Catholic priests in this country speak for the poor, the voiceless. And like Jesus did with the Pharisees, Catholic priests have never hesitated to take on the powerful, the arrogant on behalf of the poor.

The poor deserve preferential attention, because in them the image of God is obscured and violated. For this reason, God becomes their defender, loving them.

No one can deny the fact that poverty in this country is the impoverishment caused by the unjust political, economic and social structures. It is therefore very important to maintain and strengthen democratic structures in this country if we are to enjoy a peaceful and developing future. It is probably for this reason that it is said “development is the new name for peace”.

This surely calls for our priests’ effective and committed action as individuals and as Church to promoting reconciliation, justice and peace. But we also know that if peace is to be established, the primary requisite is to eradicate the cause of dissension between people.

It is encouraging that as the Catholic Church in our country is growing – both in numbers and in faith – we can begin to deal with the central and cross-cutting issues like those of justice and peace.

The wish of a Catholic priest is to see a government that serves people, especially the poor, not the other way around. Aided by the Catholic Church’s social teaching, our priests believe that sustainable and integral human development can be promoted in ways that truly serve the Zambian people, especially the poor. For they know that true peace in our country means true justice where there is fair sharing of resources and the benefits from economic development really improve the lives of all the intended people, especially the most vulnerable ones.

We are defending the work of the Catholic Church and its priests because we believe that this church’s social teaching can help to make the church in our country relevant and credible amidst a situation of many problems but also many potentials.

There is need for George and his friends in Rupiah’s government, including Rupiah himself, to learn to listen and dialogue with others and share their views with others. And this is not a matter of choice for them. It is a must. We say this because dialogue is rooted in the nature and dignity of human beings.

If George is a Christian, he should know that the participation of Christians in political life is to be guided by Gospel values of respect for human dignity, human rights, common good, social justice, solidarity, integral development and special concern for the poor. For them, politics is not a “dirty game” where all sorts of lies like the ones George is telling can be peddled but is a genuine way of being at the service of others for the integral development of the country.

For them, political involvement and demanding expression of the Christian commitment of service to others is cardinal.
Politics need people with credibility because their presence in the political arena can bring Gospel values to the political process and not the lies George is bringing to it.

Moreover, peace in a nation is the fruit of that right ordering of things with which the divine founder has invested human society and which must be actualised by people thirsting after an ever more perfect reign of justice.
The pursuit of justice must be a fundamental norm of all our politicians and our government.

The Catholic priests are speaking the way they do because their Church values the democratic system in as much as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate. All citizens are called to participate actively and responsibly in the governance of their country. Individual citizens are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common good.

Government is a very important institution which cannot be left to the whims of the likes of George and his boss because the government is the instrument by which people co-operate together in order to achieve the common good.
There is need for a conversion of heart and for the transformation of the social structures in order to build our country. The government is expected to operate for the benefit of all. It has a duty to serve the people and to equitably distribute goods and services among all the people. An authority is needed to guide the energies of all towards the common good.

It is this great role that government plays that makes it important for every citizen to pay a lot of attention to what George and his friends are doing on their behalf. And for this reason, no individuals or institutions that are part of public life should escape scrutiny and criticism. No individual or institution should expect to be free from scrutiny and criticism from those who give them their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t. And doing so is in no way an insult. One who looks at criticism as insults is not fit to be in public service.

Instead of fighting everyone, George and his boss should learn to build coalitions. And by building coalitions, we are not talking about their criminal deals with the likes of Frederick Chiluba and other mercenaries they hire to denounce their critics. We are talking about coalition-building with independent minded people. Coalition-building is the essence of democratic action. It teaches interest groups to negotiate with others, to compromise and to work within the constitutional system. By doing so, they learn how to argue peaceably, how to pursue their goals in a democratic manner and ultimately how to live in a world of diversity.

It is said that democracy is in many ways nothing more than a set of rules for managing conflict. At the same time, this conflict must be managed within certain limits and result in compromises, consensus or other agreements that all sides accept as legitimate. An over-emphasis on one side of the equation can threaten the entire undertaking. If those in government exert excessive pressure to achieve consensus, stifling the voices of the people, the society can be crushed from above.

A democratic society needs the commitment of citizens who accept the inevitability of conflict as well as the necessity for tolerance, recognising that all citizens have the right to participate in the affairs of their country.

But as that great Latin American revolutionary Hugo Chavez observed the other day, “Only consciousness frees the human being from the tyranny of the time. It can also be said that there is a force as powerful as consciousness that is called love. In the words of Christ, when we love one another, the human being is able to get over the miseries of egoism and the chains of short-sightedness”.

Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, GEORGE KUNDA, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 1:40 PM