In Africa, a vibrant yet conflicted faith
Some Catholics defy Rome, shaping church to continent's needs, customs
POORTJIE, South Africa -- Every night in the Mokhali house, the Payi house, and hundreds of other homes in the sprawling shantytowns south of Johannesburg, people give thanks in their prayers for the Roman Catholic Church.
Some may belong to other churches, but no matter: The Catholics have given them new life in the fight against AIDS, distributing free antiretroviral drugs, visiting their homes to take care of the sick, and giving food to orphans.
''If it wasn't for the church, we wouldn't have treatment," said Matumelo Mokhali, 34, who along with her 11-year-old daughter, Relebohile, started receiving the AIDS medication three months ago. ''I thank God that I am living."
As the Catholic Church prepares to enter a new era with a new pope, its African churches are carving out distinctly different paths than their sister churches on other continents, largely in response to the pressing issues of the poor among them. Across Africa, some of their biggest issues are related to AIDS, poverty, political tyranny, and how a parish retains its African flavor -- and stays relevant for its parishioners.
But Vatican rules and African realities often clash, and the fallout can be harsh and divisive, and at times prompt some in the church to make private decisions that go against Rome's dictates.
This is particularly true with AIDS work. The Vatican opposes the use of condoms in any circumstance as part of its opposition to contraception that hinders the transmission of life. But some priests and nuns privately distribute them anyway. There are other examples of colliding cultures: People remember one incident in which a priest slaughtered a goat during Mass -- a traditional cleansing ritual in Africa that some Catholics support, but that left church authorities aghast. It was an extreme example, several church officials said, of many incidents in which local customs have crept into liturgy.
''Sometimes, the church's teaching is one thing, and people's practices are completely different," said Zanetta Jansen, a sociologist and a member of the Church of Saint Martin de Porres, a largely black congregation in Pretoria's Sunnyside neighborhood.
Church officials from Senegal to Lesotho, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have said in interviews over the past two years that they distributed condoms in certain cases, including when one spouse is HIV positive and the other doesn't have the virus, or when people routinely have sex outside committed relationships. Jansen, too, has heard the stories in rural areas of South Africa.
Her interpretation is that ''the message of compassion and human empathy is as much a part of the church as is its doctrine. They don't want to condemn people if they cannot abstain" from sex.
This battle over the church's say in society, and its relevancy in people's lives, is occurring at a time when Africa's churches of all denominations are growing faster than any congregations since the earliest times of Christianity.
An estimated 390 million Christians worship in Africa today, about three times the total 35 years ago and roughly half the continent's population. Catholics account for about 120 million of the Christians; the Catholic Church's growth is nowhere near as strong as evangelical groups, but the power of its numbers was acknowledged by Pope John Paul II a decade ago when he said, ''It seems the hour of Africa has come" within the church.
While the Catholic Church's heart is in Rome and Christianity's spiritual center is in Jerusalem, the geographical center for Christians will soon be in Nigeria. Demographers call that the faith's ''center of gravity" -- the point on the globe where the same number of believers live to the north, south, east, and west.
That point is near the home of Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, who was raised an animist -- a believer in the spirits of the natural world -- in the Ibo tribe, but converted to Christianity. After a long Vatican career, during which he oversaw relations with other religions, Arinze, 72, now is a frequently mentioned candidate to succeed the late pope and become the first black pontiff in 1,500 years. Other prominent candidates are from Latin America and Europe.
Despite this vibrancy of Christianity in Africa, the Catholic Church is beset with several seemingly intractable problems. One involves tensions with Muslims, especially in north-south divides in Nigeria and Sudan. In Nigeria's central plateau area around the city of Jos, for example, violent clashes have erupted between Christians and Muslims on several occasions in the past five years, leaving thousands dead.
Another is that Catholic leaders often get little support when they speak out on social justice issues. In Liberia, Archbishop Michael Francis helped lead a successful campaign that eventually ousted President Charles Taylor; last month, Pius Ncube, archbishop of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, called for a peaceful uprising against President Robert Mugabe prior to the March 31 elections, but his was a lonely voice.
But the most pressing problem for the church in some areas is that evangelical and Pentecostal churches have been attracting Catholics into their ranks in large numbers with promises that preachers can heal their illnesses and with emotional services featuring born-again testimonies.
Nevertheless a Catholic service in a black African church is no staid affair, bearing almost no resemblance to those held in white parishes in the United States or Europe. At the Church of Saint Martin de Porres service yesterday, the 500 members' voices floated down the streets of Pretoria. Parishioners danced in the line to receive Communion. Mass lasted nearly two hours.
''Africans don't come to church to sit; they come to participate," said Father Craigh Laubscher, secretary of the Department for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue at the Southern African Catholic Bishop's Conference in Pretoria. ''I went to a church in Europe last year and it was dead. I wanted to bring everybody to Africa and show how we do things."
But limits exist. This was apparent three years ago when a priest in the Pretoria area sacrificed the goat during services. It spurred a review by the Pretoria-based Bishop's Conference on local culture spilling into the church's liturgy. One result was the outlawing of goat slaughters.
''That was liturgical abuse," said Sister Jordana Maher, the conference's national liturgical coordinator. ''The blood of goats would be useless" as a symbol during Mass. Not everyone in the church agreed with the handling of the matter.
In Orange Farm, Sister Elaine Pearton, who runs the Catholic AIDS treatment program there, said Catholic bishops should listen to congregations before issuing rulings.
The slaughtering of the goat, she said, was intended to show that the shedding of blood meant new life would go into the earth, which would then nourish the parishioners. ''The ruling by the conference split the parish in half," Pearton said.
The church's AIDS initiative, in comparison, has been relatively free of controversy, and much appreciated.
''The Catholic Church went into impoverished, marginalized communities, like Orange Farm, before the government set its policy to treat people, and that took a certain amount of braveness," said Mark Heywood, national treasurer for the Treatment Action Campaign, Africa's most active lobbying group for the expansion of AIDS treatment.
Heywood doesn't hold back his criticism on the church's position on condoms. ''It remains a terrible dent in their general response" that they are unwilling to compromise on sexual issues, he said. ''Whether a new pope leads to more conservative advocacy against condoms, or opens up the space, is an important question. At this point in the epidemic, these questions are so fundamental to the future of Africa."
In South Africa, Catholic groups now treat some 2,300 people with antiretroviral drugs, more than some African countries are doing. In Orange Farm, a collection of shantytowns with an estimated 1.5 million people, or more than the country of Botswana, fewer than 100 people are on AIDS treatment programs -- all in a Catholic-run program.
''We are caring for those abandoned by the rest of society," Pearton said one day last week, sitting in her Orange Farm clinic. ''The church, from its beginnings, has always filled the gap when there has not been enough assistance for people, and that is very much the case for people with AIDS."
One mile away along the rutted roads of Orange Farm, Beauty Payi, 69, is one of the church's indirect benefactors. She had been worrying that her daughter, Ruth, 35, would die soon of AIDS. Then they heard of the church's program. Now, after two months of treatment, Ruth Payi still moves around with some difficulty, but Beauty Payi has new hope.
''I pray for my child to be better, that God will increase the years of her life," Beauty Payi said, looking at her frail daughter, a mother of three herself. ''I thank the Catholics for helping her."
John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com. 