www.scross.co.za
May 30 to June 5, 2012
Profile of Cardinal Schönborn
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Book reviews: Christ in Rwanda, and Jesus’ world
Intimidation still rife in Zim BY CLAIRE MATHIESON
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REE and fair elections in Zimbabwe, which have been mooted for as early as this year, will be impossible until political reform has been accomplished, Catholic Church commentators have warned. Jesuit Father Oskar Wermter of Harare said the feeling on the ground, in a highdensity area like Mbare where he lives and works as a parish priest, is one of fear. “People still remember the harassment and violence of 2008. They are afraid elections in 2012, before a new constitution has been introduced and new electoral laws been promulgated, might be as violent as in 2008. This feeling is fairly widespread. Even now there is low-level violence,” he said. The Church is working to help make a difference in the area. Fr Seán O'Leary, director of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute (DHPI) has a full-time worker on the ground working out of Bulawayo. The institute works through Matabeleland, a region in the west of the country. “We are in the process of identifying monitors both for the referendum on a new constitution and eventually elections,” said Fr O’Leary. He said elections are a process and not simply an event and the monitoring has to begin now. “However, the situation presently of low intensity state violence is not conducive for free and fair elections,” he added. Fr O’Leary said there are serious and urgent needs to address in Zimbabwe since the Global Peace Agreement (GPA, signed in 2009 has not been fully implemented and “in my view no referendum or election should be allowed to take place before the full implementation of the GPA”. He said the political partisan security sector; the manipulation of the poorer sector of society to commit acts of violence on behalf of the ruling party and the demilitarisation of key institutions like the judiciary, media and electoral commission needs to be addressed, he said. There needs to be “an end to selective application of the law in favour of the ruling party.”
“Needless to say that under such conditions there are no free and fair elections,” said Fr Wermter. “The electronic media are still 100 % under state/party control. So the conditions for the competing parties are very uneven, especially in the rural areas. Independent newspapers exist, but are too expensive for the majority. They do not reach the rural areas. Community radios try to get broadcasting licences. But so far not one such radio station has a licence.” Fr Wermter said that President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF “does not want any positive development for which they cannot take credit and use it in the campaigning in their own favour”. Fr Wermter told The Southern Cross of party leaders, called “chefs”, who use the many unemployed young men in the area “to terrorise the population: they stopped the building of a service station and shopping centre by beating the construction workers up and threatening them—if they don’t stop, worse will happen to them,” the workers were told. According to Fr Wermter, the site in question was to be used as a flea market with the distribution of stands to traders dependent on party membership. “The party controls places like this.” Fr Wermter said locals are being forced to attend party meetings and “this will be worse once campaigning starts in earnest. So people are afraid.” Fr O’Leary said the role of the Church was essential as local churches have access on a weekly basis to a huge constituency where they can inform, educate and in doing so prepare people to make informed decisions around the referendum and elections. Fr Wermter agreed: “The Church must keep educating the people through Justice and Peace groups and activities, get people used to democratic behaviour by being democratic itself, on parish and diocesan level. The leadership must continue to speak about democratic principles and conditions for fair elections. “The Church must continue to insist on Continued on page 3
Cardinal decries post-spear racism STAFF REPORTER
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ARDINAL Wilfrid Napier of Durban has called on President Zuma to redirect his leadership and adopt a new dialogue on reconciliation and dignity. “Let us all make every effort to be the South Africa we want to be and want to become,” he said. Cardinal Napier, spokesman of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, made the statement in the aftermath to the “furore” over the painting “The Spear” by Brett Murray which he said “has exposed a number of fault lines in our South African civic discourse”. The cardinal said he was horrified with the tone and temperament of the language used around the painting. “We need honest, respectful and clear dialogue in South Africa—we have lived with enough violence in word and deed.” Cardinal Napier also said the call by the Nazareth Baptist Church (Shembe) for the stoning of the artist is “not in any way a position of the Catholic Community, or
indeed, I suspect, of the broader Christian Community”. The cardinal called the church’s call “tantamount to hate speech and is a very clear incitement to violence”. “Let the courts decide—this is why we have an independent judiciary and laws that are not arbitrary,” the cardinal said. Cardinal Napier also said he was concerned at the use of the language of race, which has “once again allowed us to default to the easy position of blame without having to make any effort to understand or to attempt a broader dialogue”. “Let me be clear. I don't like the painting, its graphic subject matter or the slur on the character of the president,” he said. “But simply reducing this incident to the level of race is a sad indicator that we have, once again, allowed the easy card to be played because it serves to deflect us from the real issues of national reconciliation and the building of a community that chooses the Highest Possible Good rather than the lowest and basest human instincts,” Cardinal Napier said.
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Was Christ’s blood shed for many or for all?
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Special Catholic Education issue: June 6
Next week The Southern Cross will publish its annual 16-page CATHOLIC EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT. It will look at issues such as whether Catholic schools are still Catholic, where to send one’s children, what makes a good teacher, tertiary education, new initiatives, anti-bullying strategies, the role of sports in education and much more.
Cardinal Wilfrid Napier and Rene van Zyl, principal of St Henry’s Marist College in Durban, are taken on a circuit of the college’s quad by “ricksha-man” William, as pupils look on. This formed part of a cultural element in an annual meeting of the senior management of South Africa’s Marist schools, three of which are in Johannesburg and one each in Durban and Cape Town. As KwaZulu-Natal was this year’s venue, the theme was “We are the People of the Sky”, taking its cue from the word Amazulu, which means “People of the Sky”.
Vatican backs health care for all
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HE Vatican has praised efforts by governments to provide universal and affordable health care access and coverage, noting that policies based on the principles of equity, human rights and social justice ensure the best care for the most people. Governments also should recognise and support the work of nongovernmental organisations, including the Church, in their efforts to provide wider health care access “without obliging them to participate in activities they find morally abhorrent”, said Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, head of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry. The archbishop made his comments to
senior government health care officials attending the World Health Organization’s annual World Health Assembly in Geneva. Archbishop Zimowski urged all 194 member states “to aim for affordable universal coverage and access for all citizens on the basis of equity and solidarity”. He reiterated Pope Benedict’s call for “real distributive justice which, on the basis of objective needs, guarantees adequate care to all,” while adding that health care should never “disregard the moral rules that must govern it”, a veiled reference to a US government policy which would force Catholic employers to faciliate health care coverage for artificial contraceptives and sterilisation.
Pope: We’re on the winning team BY CINDY WOODEN
‘W
E are on the Lord’s team, the winning team,” Pope Benedict has told members of the College of Cardinals at the end of a luncheon he hosted to thank them for their friendship and support. At the end of the meal in the frescoed Sala Ducale of the Apostolic Palace, the pope told the cardinals that St Augustine once described history as “a battle between two loves”, love for oneself and love for God. The pope hosted the meal as a way to thank the cardinals for their best wishes and expressions of support on the occasions of his 85th birthday on April 16 and the seventh anniversary of his election on April 19.
“First of all, I want to thank the Lord for the many years he has given me; years with many days of joy, splendid times, but also dark nights. Looking back, I understand that even the nights were necessary and good, a reason to give thanks,” he said. Pope Benedict told the cardinals he knows the phrase “the church militant” is “a bit out of fashion” today, but it still reflects a truth about the place of a Christian in the world. “We see how evil wants to dominate the world,” and how it uses cruelty and violence, but also how it “masks itself with good and, precisely in this way, destroys the moral foundations of society”. The “church militant” is called “to struggle against evil”, the pope said.—CNS