African Traditions Help Catholic Church Grow in South Africa
Episcopal News Service. June 13, 2003 [2003-139E]
'You'll be surprised at how little of Rome there is in the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa,' says Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, one of the world's youngest cardinals and head of the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa.
The church is growing fast with new places of worship being built every year. Part of the reason for this, say Napier and his colleagues, is the 'Africanization' of the church--the incorporation of African culture and style into a formerly very European style of liturgy.
'We have a lot more dancing and singing in our church than most other Catholic churches, and we've brought in a lot of new music,' says Buti Tlhagale, the newly appointed archbishop of Johannesburg. 'Our people have also adopted new robes and dresses and headgear with an African feel. But non-African Catholics shouldn't fear this development; it's not exclusive and we're not becoming a sect.'
The process of adapting indigenous traditions, called 'inculturation' by the Catholic church, received official encouragement at a 1994 Synod for Africa held at the Vatican in Rome.
Napier says, 'The Gospel would become irrelevant if we didn't take into account the way people understand it from their own cultural point of view and express their religiosity through the rituals of the church.' But Napier stresses that the essence of the Catholic faith is not affected by the process of inculturation, merely the way people express themselves.
An estimated 3 million of South Africa's 43 million people are Roman Catholic.
George Daniel, archbishop of Pretoria, suggests one important reason why Africans feel at home in the Catholic church are similarities between the Catholic tradition of saints and the African veneration of ancestors. 'We find in some of our liturgies that people kneel down at the beginning of mass and invite the ancestors to be present,' Daniel says. 'I have even, on occasion, invited the ancestors of the Catholic church in Pretoria, the former bishops and archbishops, to be present at a ceremony. It's a close link with African culture, and since we allowed that, people have been flocking to mass.'
Moreover, the popular understanding of the Virgin Mary as interceding with God is very compatible with African views, says Dr. Madge Karecki, a Franciscan nun and senior lecturer in missiology (study of mission) at the University of South Africa. 'A child would not often speak directly to his father, but go through his mother,' she notes. In ordinary African family life, says Napier, 'the mother is someone you particularly relate to in time of need or when you want something done, or if there's something very deep and personal you need to discuss.
'I've carried a lot of this into my understanding of where Mary fits into my religion. Almost like asking Mary to say a good word to God on your behalf, because she is closer to him.' For Karecki, the Catholic church's rich culture of ritual fits in closely with African culture and its ancient traditions for every occasion. 'Rituals speak to the whole person, not only to the intellect,' she says. 'We need tangible signs.'