Dear Editor,
Reports are that Bishop Francis Alleyne, OSB, of the Roman Catholic Church has led a team on a round of outreach to the local political parties. This is interesting, even commendable. On other levels, it provokes these different thoughts, which have been shared with him.
For starters, the tone and texture of these publicized engagements convey that the church is going out of its way to reassure the political rulers that it is present, but no more. It will not be a force; it will not be a force for change that is voluble and visible in an environment where atrocity piles upon ugly atrocity without cease. One of the Bishop’s lieutenants (a government defender, no less) did posit that he is about mildness and a loving approach. I agree fully. I say that this is laudable, but is viewed as frailty in the present context, and renders the church innocuous and inconsequential at a crucial time.
In practice, this politeness (and mildness) has progressed from the injuriously clinging to the cripplingly excruciating. From the perspective of a besieged, vulnerable government, this is reason for celebration. The rulers are comforted by this undeniable reality: The church is genuinely benign, is focused on maintaining a non-challenging posture, and is about managing non-agitation at all cost. But for the congregation of the hopeless, voiceless, jobless, and hapless this imbues with growing consternation, and extensive dismay.
Look closely: when the church needs to be firm, it is carefully bland; when it should be insistent, it is absent; and when it ought to stand up and stand out, it is content to sit down and stay put. It is content to sit down, even when threatened and insulted by the pompous. The best that it can do is to be a part of an amorphous mass. The church has cornered itself through strategic detachment, which contributes to its de minimis relevance in the social-political milieu. In the 20th century, the church was in the forefront; in the 21st the preference is to be somewhere behind the middle or nowhere at all. Nevertheless, the powers regard it with suspicion, because like a geriatric warrior, it still has instincts and the outline of potential musculature.
On the other hand, history has shown that real change is not a product of the polite and ultra-cautious. It will not work here. The PPP has the predilection, resources, and energy to talk all comers to exhaustion, while it keeps on outdoing itself through additional perversities. This society needs less talking, less cajoling, and less circling. It needs a warrior-monk; it will have to settle for the monk alone.
Thus the poor cry out: How long, as they seek a champion? The faithful wither and question: How much more? A deeply factionalized church will neither be moved nor impressed nor drawn together by press releases and conversations held in air-conditioned comfort. The truly concerned and affected in the church see all of this as too imitative of the opposition and civil society. Stop the shrinking from the hard perilous work of inspiring and gathering, and then channelling the pain and hopes of the suffering towards meaningful change; or at least the beginnings of it.
Having said all this I have learned from close encounters that the Bishop is a solid priest, a good shepherd, and a well-meaning person. But that which is demanded of him, and what this society expects of the local church, he would prefer that such passes by at a distance, a great distance. He understands the incorrigibly unbending thorniness of local circumstances, but they make him uncomfortable, if not recoil. It is the nature and way of the man.
This is regrettable. It is why I submit that the heavy lifting, the tough bartering, and the continuing ratcheting required by desolate citizens is done by those more prepared, more equipped, and more determined. Clearly, the church is not constituted currently in either the personal commitments or hard intensity to be the difference-maker it was before. A fundamentalist mindset is demanded; it is just not there right now.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
