SIR – It was disheartening to read (December 4) of the post on the German Church’s official website ridiculing the Church in Africa. The post attributed the growth of the Church in the “dark continent” to the people being socially dependent and having nothing else but their faith. But if one is ultimately to be saved by faith, according to the belief bequeathed to Africans by the West, then one who has only faith has everything. This is regardless of the fact that Africa also has enormous human resources (substantially depleted by the trans-atlantic slave trade) and material resources that were substantially taken away when they were asked to close their eyes in prayer to the true God.
The post also attributes the growth of the African Church to low levels of education which makes people accept simple answers to difficult questions. Again, the Master of the faith bequeathed them by the West had declared that his teaching is not for the sophisticated but for “mere children”. Sophistication could lead to evolving ideologies such as Nazism and the consequent Holocaust.
Africans rightly feel betrayed when the words of the true God are turned on their head by the same West that made them annihilate their traditional beliefs and values for the superior God, as they were made to believe that they were “wanderers in the wilderness unto their eternal damnation”.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Ugo Ikwuka CSSp
St Gabriel’s, Archway,
London N19
SIR – I thoroughly agree with the central thrust of the excellent article by Ed West highlighting the huge cultural and religious losses, victims and martyrs caused by the Reformation (News focus, December 4).
Of course, the 20th century proved to be the period in history which saw the largest persecution and killing of Christians (not all of whom were Catholic by any means). Are we now likely to see this monstrous milestone surpassed in our own 21st century?
In the same edition you reported on the High Court victory of the British Humanist Association in demanding that their viewpoint be reflected in educational curricula.
Already, we face increasing onslaughts on the Church involvement in running schools and for the enforced sexualisation of schoolchildren through so-called “education”.
Christian medical staff can be dismissed from their employment for being opposed to state-sanctioned abortion and marriage registrars for having principled objections to same-sex marriage. Even guesthouse owners and cake manufacturers can be taken to court for upholding their Christian convictions.
Elsewhere, Christian employees are persecuted and disciplined for having the effrontery to wear emblems of their faith.
At the moment, of course, Christians in this country only face the loss of their livelihood, ability to uphold free speech and personal religious symbolism, and the right to raise their family according to their convictions, rather than the loss of their life or liberty. In Africa and the Middle East, Christians face direct persecution, martyrdom and expulsion from their homes, often by the adherents of militant and fundamentalist Islam.
Are Western governments and their increasingly secular electorates troubled by this development?
Yours faithfully,
Richard Eddy
Bristol, Somerset
SIR – The inference that many have taken from the recent “reflection” of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (report, December 18) is that Catholics should not seek to evangelise Jews, as they have a covenant with God of their own, which has “never been revoked”. In the absence of any corrective from Rome, one must assume that this is the inference the faithful are intended to take.
However, quoting the “reflection” itself, we are reminded that “the theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with Christ, whom Christians believe is Jesus of Nazareth, would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith”. Moreover, the reflection quotes Acts 4:12, that there is “no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved”. Given that, quoting again, “the Church is the definitive and unsurpassable locus of the salvific action of God”, one might have thought that evangelising the Jews was non-negotiable for Catholics.
The reflection confirms this by quoting Pope Francis as saying: “It is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah.”
It is fortunate that the reflection admits, albeit buried deep in the text, that which is patently obvious: it “is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church”.
Yours faithfully,
Deacon John Wakeling
Nottingham
SIR – I thank the two correspondents whose letters have been published since my article first appeared (Cover story, November 27).
Let me reiterate my main point: the Second Vatican Council’s providential purpose was to prepare the Church for a third millennium of vibrant evangelisation and mission. Everyone in the Church can and should contribute to that mission. But it is going to take a Catholicism that is considerably “beyond” the left/right categories of the past 50 years to be the Church of the New Evangelisation.
Those interested in what I think this Catholicism of the third millennium should look like – and how it both coheres with the deepest tradition of the Church and develops that tradition to meet the demands of proposing the Gospel today – can find a detailed description of it in my book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (Basic Books).
Yours faithfully,
George Weigel
By email
SIR – With all due respect to Fr Anders Nilsson (Letter, December 11), members of ISIS are not just any ordinary Muslims. They are terrorists whose interpretation of the Koran is extreme and who are inflicting unspeakable savagery on all who disagree with them.
Furthermore, it is not just in the Middle East but in many other parts of the world that ISIS are spreading their poisonous ideology and committing barbaric crimes, apparently with remarkable ease. If they are not crushed quickly, they will keep on getting stronger and make our planet a much worse place to live in.
Yours faithfully,
Joseph Seferta
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
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