In keeping with the theme of the prior post on Africa and the undeveloped world, here’s a column in which a Catholic priest and sociologist – who has been writing for at least 40 years – is kind enough to accept the faith of southern hemisphere believers, as long as they leave the thinking to him.
The Limits of Tolerance is on the the Wall Street Journal’s free site OpinionJournal – Taste Here’s an excerpt, but it’s worth reading the wole column:
"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 Teológicos 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.
… 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."
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