It is rare to learn of a crystal clear clash of
mind-sets in the Church in Africa but the ongoing tussle between Rome and the
priests and people of Ahiara diocese in Nigeria, over the appointment of their
new bishop, is one. Ahiara is not only a diocese, it is a geographical unit of
a particular people – tribe, if you like but resist the overtones of the word –
the Mbaise people. They felt marginalised by the dominant Igbo society of
eastern Nigeria and recall how they were at ease and affirmed by the former
bishop, Victor Chikwe, himself a son of the Mbaise soil.
After his death in 2010 it took three years for Pope
Benedict to appoint a successor, an Igbo. “There was no consultation or
dialogue with the priests or the people of the diocese as to what kind of
bishop was needed to continue the legacy of the much-loved Bishop Chikwe.” (Stan Chu Ilo, Tablet 29 July 2017). Rome had reasons for the decision made but we
can only guess what they were. The Mbaise people are “among the most highly
educated in Nigeria” and had developed a strong sense of identity over against
the dominant culture that surrounded them. Chu Ilo proposes they picked this up
by imbibing the mind-set of their Irish missionaries who came from a country
dominated and exploited by the English for 700 years. Rome may have been
nervous of encouraging the progress of this self-affirmation which the people
enjoyed under Bishop Chikwe. To remind them they belonged to a universal Church
Rome may have felt it necessary to appoint an outsider.
In the middle ages Archbishops of Canterbury were
sometimes from France and at least one of them, Theodore of Tarsus (St Paul’s
birth place), came from what is now Turkey. But we are not in the middle ages,
a time when people had not yet developed a sense of identity linked to a
particular culture and place. Today people are much more aware of themselves as
belonging to a nation or – within a nation – a tribe. They want their leaders
to be “one of them.” Tribalism may be
affirmative but it can also be divisive. And this is what makes Rome nervous.
So here we have a clash; a clash between
universalism and localism, between imposition from outside and listening to the
people inside and between a fixed mind-set of centralised authority over against
determined resistance at the local level. It is revealing that the local
priests protest; “We are not disobeying the pope. What we are saying is that we
should not be suppressed. They (presumably the people round the pope) are
subverting the truth.”
To judge by news media sound bites it looks like the
pope calling to heel some recalcitrant priests. But the more we go into it the
more we see this is an issue that cannot be solved by the weight of authority
alone. There will have to be dialogue – in this and other cases that are
bound
to come. CTING MIND-SETS
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