Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Pioneer
Date: May 3, 2005
As leaders of all Western nations
descended upon Vatican City early last month, there was little doubt they
had come as much to pay respects to the departed Pope as to ensure that
a White European succeeded as Bishop of Rome. In the weeks preceding Joseph
Ratzinger's elevation, some Cardinals hinted to religious correspondents
of Western news agencies that they were under pressure. The surprise, if
any, was that many Christians across the globe actually expected the election
to reflect the numerical superiority of Catholic communities in other continents.
Those seriously hoping for a Latin
American or African Pope, something akin to a non-Arab becoming Grand Mufti
of Mecca, simply failed to comprehend the relationship between faith and
power. Misled by post-Second World War rhetoric of universalism, secularism
and multi-culturalism, they could not see the abiding kinship between the
Church and political power in all Christian nations, notwithstanding a
formal separation of powers. Christianity powerfully undergirds Western
civilization, a fact its ruling elite never loses sight of, unlike India,
where it is fashionable to use Euro-centric jargon to undermine the native
ethos.
Monotheistic traditions are definitionally
religious imperialisms in which power is a tightly controlled affair, rarely,
if ever, departing from the aims and ambitions of their core sponsors.
In the West, the rise of secular authority took the Church to the far corners
of the globe. From failed leader of the Crusades, the Church allied to
secular power virtually wiped out the native populations of the Americas
and Australia, enslaved large parts of Africa, and battled native resilience
in countries like India and China. It is certainly no accident to always
find the Church in close embrace with genocidal dictators like Adolf Hitler
or Papa Doc.
The half-billion Catholics scattered
in different developing countries have political, economic and social aspirations
opposed to those of the dominant Western world. Belief in Jesus and his
unnamed Heavenly Father (could scarcely be the Jewish Yahweh) could hardly
compel Western powers to accept a Pope who might confront them with a contrary
political agenda.
Ratzinger was a natural favourite
as he was the Cardinal who closed Latin American seminaries preaching "liberation
theology," a home-grown mix of Christianity and Marxism that enthused the
region's poor in the 1960s and 1970s. Ratzinger came down heavily upon
priests like the Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez, who fathered the movement,
and drove his own student, the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, out
of the priesthood.
A Latin American Pope could have
triggered off a revival of liberation theology. This could even cause the
monolithic Catholic Church to fragment along national lines, ending its
centuries-old transnational power and reach. Little wonder that Ratzinger,
holding the (renamed) office of Grand Inquisitor, handled it with such
exemplary intolerance. An African Pope may similarly have spawned a mushrooming
of Pentecostal Churches (the old African creeds reworked under the garb
of Christianity).
An European Pope was certainly reassuring
to Western nations that use the Church as an instrument of political intervention,
notable examples being Poland and East Timor. Paradoxically, this may make
the Church more brittle and hasten its much-prophesied end, as the virus
unleashed by liberation theology has mutated in a deeply unsettling manner.
Unknown to most Indians, a growing body of theology in the West argues
that non-Christian faiths are a legitimate part of the Divine scheme, and
that the Church should curb its evangelical thrust. Rooted in the Greek
philosophy of kinosis, this school argues that at Creation God emptied
His powers into the universe and withdrew. The Church should similarly
empty itself of its ambition for universal dominion, and care only for
the flock already under its charge.
To my mind, this view marks the
beginning of the unravelling of the evangelical church, both Catholic and
Protestant. Unsurprisingly, Western nations that use evangelization as
a tool to subvert nationalism in other countries wish to keep kinosis theology
at bay. Ratzinger is their man because he condemned priests espousing this
view. Protestant America favoured his ascension despite his calling other
Christian denominations spiritually deficient, because a Catholic Church
that accepts the doctrine of non-conversion for the sake of inter-faith
harmony would amputate the right arm of Western political diplomacy.
Predictably, at his very first Papal
visit outside the Vatican to the Basilica of St. Paul in southern Rome
(once you leave St. Peter's Square you are in Rome), Benedict XVI committed
the Roman Catholic Church to a fresh conversion drive: "The Church is by
its very nature missionary, its first task is evangelization. the missionary
mandate from Christ is more current than ever."
Ratzinger, it may be recalled, had
overruled a written accord at the Millennium Peace Summit 2000, in New
York, where 1100 representatives of different faiths pledged that there
should be no bloodshed in the name of religions, as they were but different
routes to one God. He released a 36-page doctrine, Dominus Jesus, stating
that placing any religion at par with the Roman Catholic Church was "crossing
limits of tolerance." Non-Christians, he declaimed, cannot get salvation
because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the son of God.
We in India can expect Benedict
XVI to go on the offensive. He is already on record calling Buddhism an
"auto-erotic spirituality" that offers "transcendence without imposing
concrete religious obligations." Hindu dharma, on the other hand, offers
"false hope" as it guarantees "purification" based on a "morally cruel"
concept of reincarnation resembling "a continuous circle of hell." Ironically,
modern Christian scholars claim that the Church in the fourth century purged
Christianity of a deeply held belief in reincarnation in order to impose
totalitarian control upon the faithful!
Still, it will be interesting to
see how Benedict XVI deals with Islam, the sister monotheism that he cannot
avoid confronting head-on. Dialogue seems an unconvincing route to take,
given his past record. Yet as Islam batters Christianity in both its old
and new pastures, the new Pope will have his task cut out trying to reassure
the faithful.
Already Europe is realizing that
unilateral gestures to Islam only whet its appetite for more. A decade
ago, Europe's largest mosque came up within a mile of the Vatican. Yet
in Saudi Arabia, as many as one million Catholic workers, mostly from the
Philippines, do not receive church services as the kingdom does not permit
the practice of any religion other than Islam. Ancient Christian communities
in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Turkey have declined steeply.
Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem were once Christian majority cities. Baghdad
had a robust Christian community, and Lebanon was 70% Christian till the
1930s, but is now only 30% Christian. The community is under siege in northern
Nigeria, southern Sudan, Indonesia, the southern Philippines and Pakistan.
Islam, however, is marching ahead
in Europe. Many European cities have either become or are slated to become
Muslim-majority cities due to rising immigration. These include Bradford
in Britain, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Marseilles in France, and some
German towns. Should Turkey join the European Union, its Muslim population
will rise by algebraic proportions. Many Europeans now want the Pope to
make conciliatory gestures towards Islam conditional on Christians receiving
greater liberty in Muslim countries. Apparently it is only in India that
religious freedom degenerates into license at the cost of the native community.
