The church fell short of God’s glory

Editor, SO, the men (their leadership is always exclusively male) of “God” think churches exhibited a “general weakness and poor judgment” when they allied themselves with the genocide ideology? Huh! The churches were part and parcel of the genocidal machinery, and many in its senior ranks were similarly senior decision-makers in the political structures that conceived, planned, prepared, organised and executed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. As a consequence, the churches did not merely “exhibit general weakness or poor judgment”. Their leaders and too many of their clergy acted evilly in violation of God’s most commandments, “Though shall not kill”, “Love thy neighbour as you love thyself”, in the case of some clergy whom the Catholic Church continues to protect from the laws of man, they also violated the commandment not to covet other men’s women by raping young defenseless women. Let us not even refer to the murder of so many children and the exhortation not to even spare the youngest Tutsi babies despite Jesus’ command to “Suffer the little children”. In addition to their deliberate violation of the most fundamental of God’s laws, the same churches—through the actions of too many of those institutions’ leaders and a large proportion of their clergy—are guilty of wholesale capital crimes in violation of society’s laws. What is more, to date, the largest and most powerful among them—the Catholic Church—willfully and arrogantly refuses to deal honestly with that sinful and criminal record or its central role in preparing the ground and sowing the seeds that led inexorably to the Genocide. Without that essential mea culpa the future of the Catholic Church in Rwanda and the wider region is clouded. I acknowledge the exceptional nobility and heroism of many ordinary Catholic priests, nuns and simple Christians who acted according to the tenets on which the Church claims to be based. Their humanity is the more extraordinary as it would have been easier to take the road of least resistance and join in the killings or, at any rate, not risk their own lives by helping the designated victims. There were people like these from all religions and even non-religious people, proving humanity and morality to be more universal than religious. The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda has tried to claim credit for such individual heroism, even as it rejects responsibility for the far greater number from its ranks who acted abominably, insisting those should be condemned as individuals not as its representatives. This is like trying to eat your cake and having it too; it just doesn’t fly, especially considering the Church’s pivotal role in propagating the ideology that led directly, first to pogroms and eventually to genocide rather than preaching the love of your neighbour so fundamental to Christ’s message. The obstinacy of that same Church in its refusal to recognise its central role in our country’s tragic history, including making genocide morally acceptable, the massive involvement of its clergy and other officials in the killings themselves, the continuing protection of clerical genocide suspects and the poisonous hostility of the Vatican and its many nebulous affiliates and allies against the people who stopped that Genocide mean nobody need apologise for calling out the Church for its massive violations of its own professed values. I myself was born and raised in a very devout Catholic family and followed a very Catholic upbringing. It is painful to admit that the Church in which I believed in so much is nothing like what I thought it was. I don’t think I left it; either it is the one which left me, or I was always mistaken in thinking that when it preached love it meant it as most humans understand it. Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda Reaction to the story, “When the church fell short of God’s glory” (Sunday Times, May 18)

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The church fell short of God’s glory