www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Fr. Greely at it again

The Limits of Tolerance
Liberal theologians welcome Africans and South Americans--as long as they don't talk back.

BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
Wall Street Journal
Friday, December 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON--Last week, Andrew M. Greeley, the well-known liberal priest and sociologist of all things Catholic, gave a celebrity interview to his fans. Though his main interlocutor was Robert Orsi, the chairman of the religion department at Harvard, Father Greeley also took some questions from the audience, most of whose members were gathered here for the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion. One person asked about the potential for the lay group Voice of the Faithful to transform the church, another about whether nuns should return to wearing habits. Then a middle-aged woman in the back of the room asked Father Greeley about the changing face of the Catholic Church. The greatest growth in the world-wide Catholic population, she noted, has been coming for some years from new believers in South America and Africa, and the trend shows no signs of abating. What effect would this have on the church?

"We will depend on them for vitality," Father Greeley predicted. "But they will continue to depend on us for the ideas."

To judge by a murmuring restlessness in the crowd, more than a few audience members were surprised such a remark. It seemed--how to put it?--patronizing. Do people in the Global South have no ideas of their own? Is theirs a faith of pure emotion? Catherine Barsotti, a professor at Centro Hispano de Estudios Teol�gicos outside of Los Angeles who attended the talk, told me afterward that Father Greeley is, generally, "a voice of sanity in the Catholic Church, [someone who is] trying to get the church to hear people it doesn't like to hear." Which is why, she added, "I can't believe he meant what he said."

When pressed, though, Father Greeley didn't take back his remark. Instead he went further, waxing eloquent about how people in South America have a "whole different approach to religion." He marveled at the way that Catholics in Brazil ask people from "all different faiths" to pray for a sick child. He recommended going to Mexico "if you want to find out what the church was like before Trent." (He was referring to the 16th-century council that codified so much Roman Catholic doctrine.) He claimed that Mexicans "have patron saints for pickpockets and prostitutes." Catholicism in Mexico is "a religion of joy and celebration. We have much to learn from them." Yes, it sounds like a compliment, but the condescension--those people and their quaint ways--is unmistakable.

Timothy Shah, a senior fellow in religion and world affairs at the Pew Forum, believes that Father Greeley's attitude is "fairly widespread" among academics and theologians in Europe and North America. (We are the smart ones; they are mere folk co-religionists.) He cites the recent controversy within the Episcopal Church over the issue of homosexuality. When African primates declared at the church's 1998 conference that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture," the American bishop John Shelby Spong, of Newark, N.J., suggested that African Christianity is backward: "They've yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we've had to face in the developing world."

Mr. Shah does acknowledge that much of the wealth and many of the educational institutions within the major churches are located in Europe and North America. But, he argues, it's "just simple ignorance to assume that faith resides in the [Global South] but not reason." As John Paul II wrote in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." It's hard to imagine the two wings attaching themselves to different continents.

In response to Father Greeley's comments and those of other scholars who agree with him, Mr. Shah cites the proliferation of institutions in Asia, South America and Africa that combine intellectual firepower with a serious faith commitment: Pentecostal universities in sub-Saharan countries, evangelical and Catholic schools in the Philippines and South Korea and South Africa. Then there are the many seminaries and universities in North America and Europe that have been set up by Christians from the Global South like the Oxford Center for Mission Studies founded by an Indian theologian, the Rev. Dr. Vinay Samuel. The center's governing board includes Kwame Bediako, a Ghanaian Presbyterian minister and the author of several impressive books on African Christianity.

But persuading North Americans and Europeans to have more respect for newcomers may be a losing battle, according to Philip Jenkins, the author of "The Next Christendom." Mr. Jenkins laughs knowingly when I ask him about this problem. "Every time there has been a shift in Christianity, older churches have always adopted this very patronizing attitude." He points to a dialogue that occurred in Constantinople in 970 between a leading cleric of the Orthodox Church and Liutprand, the Italian bishop of Cremona. The Orthodox cleric called Liutprand's beliefs "too young," suggesting that (in Mr. Jenkins's words) "the new churches simply do not have the intellectual capacity to understand the sophisticated theological debates then roiling the advanced world." Liutprand replied that the older churches are more decadent and prone to heresy. Indeed, Mr. Jenkins observes that often "new churches are the defenders of orthodoxy."

Father Greeley isn't exactly known as a defender of orthodoxy, of course. But he is ostensibly a believer in the multiculturalist ethic--hearing "people the church doesn't want to hear." Well, up to a point.

Ms. Riley is The Wall Street Journal's deputy Taste editor.

I don't see it as a losing battle. Fr. Greely's response is pretty much that he wants the "lesser folk" to use their bodies to make babies while the "higher folk" use their minds to formulate ideas. People with this mindset see the two as incompatible, which means they choose not to have children in favor of their thoughts. On the other hand, while they are pondering the problems of the world, those "lesser folk" of every nationality and color are out their using their brains and their bodies to build cities, towns, families, and lives of faith. They will prosper and they will grow. They will have the last laugh as the "thinkers" die off without ceremony and the do-ers live on and formulate a new generation of believers.

Fr. Greely also fails to recognize the other ancient Churches, those much more senior than the American Catholic Church, including those of the Antioch, Mosul, Alexandria, India, Armenia, etc.

In fact, the Churches of South America and Mexico are older than the United States as well.

The only real 'superiority' the US, Canada, and Europe have to the rest of Church is $$$$.

I agree it sounds patronizing, and yet how many major worldwide influential(not just regional) South American and African theologians are there? Perhaps because most people are not aware of many this is why Greeley made this remark.

This is certainly not to say they're incapable of producing them, but at this point what we hear about most are the poor more superstitious believers (they're more colorful), the bigamist priests and those who become priests solely because it is the best career option.

Not to say every Eurocentric priest is in it for the right reason, but for every euronut there're tons of Western saints and theologians to offset the misguided. Latin America and Africa are not able to offset the kooks with numerous saints and theologians.......yet.

Peace,
Cynthia

I am surprised by this remark, how many North American saints are there? How many from the United States?

South America and Mexico has far more canonized Saints than the US, perhaps even Canada, combined.

To date, I think the US only has seven canonized saints, and the first three were French missionaries "from" 'New York' (loosely speaking): SS. Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil and Jean Lalande. St. Frances Cabrini was Italian and died in Chicago a citizen of the US. The recent additions are St. Katherine Drexel and St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (also French), Pope Benedict canonized Mother Theodore Guerin (again, French).

The OCA of course recognizes St. Alexis Toth, the early Russian missionaries, and some early bishops as Saints.

Michael Thoma,

You missed three... Sts. Jean de Brebeuf (martyred by indians,) John Neumann (bishop of Philadelphia,) and Elizabeth Ann Seton (New York?)

The Shrine to St. Rose Phillipine Duchesne is in West County St. Louis.

Michael Thoma, I wasn't aware of the saints, thanks for mentioning it.I was only aware of four, so how's that for ignorance? Is the average North American or European Catholic even aware that there are so many South American and Mexican saints?Do they even know all of the American saints? What about African saints? I'm sure there're some, and I've read some very inspiring works from African Catholics,but I really seriously doubt most North americans or europeans know African saints besides Augustine exist.But, I could be wrong.If all this is common knowledge then Greely's remark is puzzling.
But if not, again, the impression left is that mentioned above-colorful, superstitious people.(Though it does seem that a priest would be aware of most of the saints.)

What theologians do seminarians study, and aren't most of them, other than church fathers, western european?Perhaps I'm wrong but it would seem that seminarians , are the ones influencing religious education, writing in the major journals and participating in the debates about church issues. I still think that those are the people Greely is thinking about.Maybe it is offensive, but if the non-western european saints and Doctors of the church are unknown , again I don't include the Eastern Church Fathers,and the non-european major theological movers and shakers that have and are influenced/ing church doctrine are not known, then it is easy to conclude that Western Europeans (and I include Canada and the US in this group)have a monopoly on ideas and non-euro people have a monopoly on faith. Again, I don't say they are not capable of it, nor am I saying that the above is true, but I can see how that conclusion could be reached.






Peace,
Indigo