Africans can sometimes surprise Western liberals. I’ll never forget the surprise that a Nigerian seminarian stirred up in a conversation, when he asked what those men were doing in line outside a K of C hall in Connecticut. (We were in the car on the way to the Traditional Latin Mass, by the way, which this particular African called “the Ancient Rite.”)
“They’re in line for a soup handout.”
“Why?” He asked.
“Because they live on the streets and can’t afford to feed themselves.”
Indignant at beholding able-bodied men in line for free handouts, the diminutive little Nigerian declared to us surprised white Americans, in his wonderful accent, “Saint Paul says that if a man does not work, he should not eat!” (He was correct.)
When Africans weigh in against Western decadence, they can’t be called the same names that tradition-minded Europeans (or “Euro-Americans”) can. Decadent whites can’t quite figure this out, which is very funny.
Here is another incident of “white surprise.” Mindful of Sandro Magister’s caveats on media manipulation of the Synod, I cite John Allen, writing from his new(ish) post at the Boston Globe:
In the mounting Catholic debate over whether a ban on divorced and remarried believers receiving communion and the other sacraments should be relaxed, bishops from Africa are invoking an argument against change that wouldn’t occur naturally to most Westerners: polygamy.
According to several cardinals who spoke to the Globe in Rome, African prelates told their brother cardinals last week that they’ve been trying to break the hold of polygamy in their cultures by insisting that the church regards marriage as a bond between one man and one woman for life. Anything that appears to blur that message, they said, won’t help that effort.
The African voice in the debate, in other words, appears to bolster the conservative side.
Of course, Allen has to muddy the waters with statements like this:
Catholic rules presently hold that if a believer divorces and is remarried without obtaining an annulment, a declaration from a church court that the first marriage was invalid, then that person is excluded from receiving communion.
Rules? How’s this one: “Catholic rules presently hold that it’s not licit for a husband to beat his wife.”
It is the legal positivist that thinks rights and duties flow from human positive law and not from the nature of things. Change the law and — voilà! — change reality.
Only that’s not the way it works. Maybe the Africans can teach us a thing or two about reality.
