Campagne Semaines Pascales 2001: Contributions

1 – I feel very honoured and grateful for the invitation addressed to me to be with you today, and to say a few words as well. We of Bamenda certainly consider ourselves very privileged that the International Circle for the Promotion of Creation (CIPCRE) included our own locality among the venues chosen for this year’s Easter Weeks Campaign. CIPCRE has organised this year’s Campaign together with the following partners :

To all the Organisers of this great event which brings Moslems, Protestants and Catholics together in a joint battle for Justice and Peace, I express my deferent gratitude.

2 – The theme of this year’s Easter Weeks Campaign is : Let us fight against Tribalism and Corruption in order to promote a transparent Management of Public Affairs.

In the Introduction to the Animation Handbook for this Campaign, the Organisers say that it is not sufficient to raise awareness and to denounce the evils Tribalism and Corruption. “We must act and the Easter Weeks Campaign is a convenient framework, not just for sensitisation and awareness (raising), but also for effective and concrete mobilisation and commitment. That is the goal we want to achieve through activities organised in Bafoussam, Bamenda, Douala, Garoua and Yaoundé”.

3 – The witness and example of individual men and women of integrity who reject Tribalism and Corruption in their own personal lives is very powerful, and should never be underestimated.

However, because these evils have become a way of life in our Society, because many of our fellow citizens have come to believe that evils are here to stay, and because they have so eroded our consciences that many no longer consider them as grave and unacceptable moral evils, it must be acknowledged that our struggle against Tribalism and Corruption will not make any significant headway unless we stand together. That is why initiatives such as the Easter Weeks Campaign 2001 deserve the unqualified support and involvement of our Churches and Ecclesial Communities and of the Moslem Community acting together.

4 – In their Pastoral Letter on Corruption, the Bishops of Cameroon said, inter alia :

“Corruption and the theft of public property is part of what Pope John Paul II calls social sin in the Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliato et Paenitentia and the structures of sin in the Encyclical Letter Sollictudo Rei Socialis.

Our country, it would seem, functions according to the norms of corruption. It would appear that each one of us is obliged to corrupt or be corrupt. We are forced to live with corruption, and to accept it in our daily existence. In this way we re-enforce it all the time. It would seem we can do nothing to shake it off. Let us, however, listen to the teaching of the Holy Father :

“The sum total of the negative factors working against a true awareness of the universal common good and the need to further it, gives the impression of creating in persons and institutions, an obstacle which is difficult to overcome.

If the present situation can be attributed to difficulties of various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of “structures of sin”, which,… are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people’s behaviours”. (Sollicitudo Rei Sociallis, 36).

“Whenever the Church speaks of situations of sin, or when she condemns as social sins certain situations or the collective behaviour of certain social groups, big or small, or even of whole nations and blocks of nations, she knows and she proclaims that such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins. It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause or support evil or who exploit it ; of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference ; of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world… The real responsibility, then, lies with individual”.

(Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, N°. 16). The expression “everyone does it” will never, therefore, justify that I, a free and responsible person, should become a participant in the dirty scandal of bribery and corruption and the theft of public funds”[1]

An individual person working alone, in isolation, is not likely to succeed whatsoever in the struggle to dismantle the structures of sin. Only concerted and sustained action, such as that which you want to generate through the Easter Weeks Campaign, will stand a chance of success in the fight against such structures.

5 – “There is also the fundamental problem of catechetical teaching about the moral conscience and about sin, so that people can have a clearer idea of the radical demands of the Gospel… Many of the faithful have an idea of sin that is not based on the Gospel but on common convention, on what is socially “acceptable”. This makes them feel not particularly responsible for things that “everybody does”, and all the more so if these things are permitted by civil law.

Evangelisation in the third millennium must come to grips with the urgent need for a presentation of the Gospel message which is dynamic, complete and demanding. The Christian life to be aimed at cannot be reduced to a mediocre commitment to “goodness” as society defines it ; it must be a true quest for holiness”[2]

Unless we make an all-out and sustained effort in our Churches and Ecclesial Communities to form the consciences of Christians from their tenderest years, we shall never succeed in the struggle against Tribalism and Corruption. In this regard, Sacred Scripture provides us with very explicit, eloquent and powerful aids in our struggle.

6 – All of us are aware of the horrendous evils which have afflicted and continue to afflict many parts of Africa on account of Tribalism, an evil which the Bishops of Cameroon publicly denounced in a Pastoral Letter some years ago. You have rightly pointed out in the Animation Handbook that the evil of Tribalism rears its ugly head even in our Churches and Ecclesial Communities. We have to acknowledge, with regret, that, at times, the irresponsible conduct of some pastoral agents (priests, for example) contributes, consciously or unconsciously, to aggravating the situation. That is why, as Christians, we must begin by eradicating tribalism from our own personal attitudes and behaviour, and above all, from the structures and modes of operation in our Ecclesial communities.

I believe that we need to make the important distinction between Ethnicity and Ethnocentrism.

“Ethnicity, in itself, does not connote a negative attitude. On the contrary, ethnicity indicates a gift of God which makes us different one from the other for our mutual enrichment. It is God who makes each one what he is. Ethnicity gives us our social and cultural identity as well as our security. The individual finds his roots and values in his ethnic group… What is wrong and must be rectified without delay is the perversion of this God given gift into an instrument of contempt, rejection and exclusion of others”[3] It is when Ethnicity is perverted, distorted, and manipulated so that it becomes Ethnocentrism, or Tribalism, that conscientious Christians and Moslems must stand up together and say : No.

7 – The well-known French Statesman, Georges Clemenceau, twice Prime Minister of his country during the first two decades of the last century, was an atheist, a militant anticlerical, and one of the greatest enemies of the Catholic Church in his country. On one occasion, he said : “If all nominal Christians were real Christians, there would no longer be a social question”.

I salute the Organisers of the Easter Weeks Campaign 2001 for what they are doing to wake us up from our lethargy so that we may assume our responsibilities in the effort to eradicate these social evils from our society. By so doing, they want to help us to cease being nominal Christians, as Georges Clemenceau called us, in order to become genuine, committed, and caring Christians.

[1] - Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of Cameroon to Christians and all People of Goodwill on Corruption n° 8

[2] - John Paul II, Letter to Priest for Holy Thursday 2001, n° 15

[3] - Statement by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (April 14-18, 1997) on the Crisis in the Great Lakes Region, in CATHOLIC INTERNATIONAL, Vol. 8, August 1997, PP. 356-357.