An African Priest on Safari in Darkest Canada Fr Stan Chu Ilo Originally published in Issue  VIII of Vulgata, July 2002.

On his arrival at Pearson airport for World Youth Day, the Holy Father spoke glowingly of Canada. He told us that “Canadians are heirs to an extraordinarily rich humanism, enriched even more by the blend of many different cultural elements. But the core of your heritage is the spiritual and transcendent vision of life based on Christian revelation, which gave vital impetus to your development as a free, democratic and caring society, recognized throughout the world as a champion of human rights and human dignity.” It is very significant that these remarks of the Pope came barely one week after the United Nations, in its annual Development Index, placed Canada third in the world for standard of living. As a first time African visitor to Canada, I have been touched by three realities discoverable in Canadian culture: the high standard of living of a majority of the people of this country, the apparent openness and hospitality of Canadians, and their love for freedom and good life. It is evident that today, Canada like most Western countries is enjoying a measure of relative prosperity and economic stability. This did not however come by pure chance but is the result of deliberate planning guided by the hand of Divine Providence. There is thus a discernable evidence of a culture of hard work and commitment, which was bequeathed to present day Canadians by past generations, and which was formed on the basis of a Christian heritage.

As a priest, I have keenly observed the life of the Church in Canada during the two months since my arrival here from Rome. Here, I have been confronted with a complex paradox. The Catholic faith appears to be in reverse gear; the faith here is deep in the elderly, stale in those in the middle years; irrelevant to the young people: it does not catch the imagination of many. Church attendance is very poor, the church is never full for Mass on Sunday and the elderly occupy the majority of the pews. This reality shocked me coming from Nigeria where most churches are not able to contain the throngs of faithful who come to daily and Sunday Masses in great numbers.  In a survey in 1992, it was discovered that in Canada, only 18% of fifteen to nineteen year olds attend Church, compared to 23% in 1984. Only 39% attend church on even a monthly basis. In Quebec which is the only province in Canada with a Catholic majority, church attendance has dropped to 24%. Quebecers who used to be among the most faithful church goers in the world are now among the least, and most only come to Mass for weddings and funerals ( see Martin Ralph, The Catholic Church at the end of an Age, pages39-41). The questions I kept on pondering in my heart are: why should a Church that gave birth to a great Catholic tradition of faith, spirituality and education decline so rapidly that parishes are closing because of lack of priests and the absence of the faithful? What factors are at play in this decline of Christianity in Western countries?

The fact that the Holy Father linked the rich humanism of Canada to a vision of life based on Christian revelation is instructive because the height and depth of Western civilization is intimately connected with Christian tradition. If however Western societies subsist on the pragmatic standard of pleasure, wealth and power, they will be in the danger of losing the moral and spiritual foundation on which their freedom, democracy and economic relations stand. We must recover once more the depleted spiritual foundations of the Western world, and we can do this only in the Catholic church whose teachings on morality and faith have remained consistent with the teaching of the Lord and the tradition of the apostles for more than 2000 years. It is only in this way that the Catholic Church in Canada can obey the Holy Father's call to build a new kind of civilization founded on love.

The Civilization of Love

According to the Holy Father, the emergent tendency in the new millennium is the clash between the culture of death and the culture of life (or civilization of love). “We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life; the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life’. We find ourselves not only ‘faced with’ but necessarily in the midst of this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it...”  (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, no. 50)

Already in his first address to the United Nations, he noted that the answer to the fear, which darkens human existence at the end of the 20th century, is a common effort to build a civilization of love. The Western world today needs an organic synthesis and a prophetic renewal. There is widespread loss of the transcendental dimension of human life accompanied by confusion in the ethical sphere about fundamental values of life, family, sexual relations, business ethics, and inter-personal relationships. The collapse of the Twin Towers has shown once more the failure of the works of man to defend him and the need to build a new world founded on love and peace. Unfortunately, Western liberal democracies, in their attempt to separate God from the state and the life of the citizens, have left many people without a divine compass. Today, God is dismissed from philosophy and politics, even though the great Western philosophers who gave rise to Western democracy knew of no foundation for human rights and freedoms outside of God. Indeed, Alexis Tocquaville who studied American democracy wrote that the resilience of Western democracies lay in the righteousness of the citizens whose moral flame on the ideals of politics were fired from the pulpit.

A Culture of Freedom

Especially harmful today is the idolization of structures, especially religious, political and social institutions, which serve the interests of the few. This has often led to religious fundamentalism and unbridled nationalism. The abolition of God from society in the name of freedom, creates room for new gods. Islamic fundamentalists , atheists, corporate moguls and sexual deviants are all now building altars in an attempt to create a viable alternative to Christianity.

We also  find a widespread idolization of freedom. Many Christians are questioning the teachings of the Church in faith and morals, making recourse to the supremacy of "conscience" to justify their dissent. Obviously, there is need for submission to the promptings of conscience, but there is the higher need for clear formation of conscience along the lines of revealed truth. Genuine freedom is the outstanding manifestation of the divine image in us and must flow from communion with Christ. As St Augustine wrote, “the beginning of freedom is to be free from doing evil”. We must find the origin and ultimate destiny of human freedom in God. Today however, freedom is being unhinged from its divine moorings so that the individual no longer considers the good to be done, but only the satisfaction of desires that neglect both the needs of the community and the stirrings of the soul. As Lord Acton said, freedom is the highest ideal of man, the reflection of his divinity and so, as Avery Cardinal Dulles observed, human freedom and divine law must conspire to the same end if we are to create a truly sane society. Freedom must not be torn away from the truth of our being or the good of our humanity. It is a lack of authentic freedom which is at the root of dissent from the teaching of the Church, and this dissent forms the basis for a tower of moral confusion. We are reaping the fruits of this new kind of freedom, a freedom alienated from responsibility and sacrifice, in the growing incidence of divorce, drug addiction,  suicide,  depression and violence which have become a new way of exercising human freedom. Many people, especially the young, have lost confidence in political, religious, legal and even educational institutions, which interfere with their desire to exercise freedom without restraint. As a result they experience rootlessness, anonymity, a loss of identity, and a diminished sense of human dignity. As Pope John Paul II warned in an address to the Bishops of Ontario while they were visiting Rome in 1999,  the danger of a one-dimensional world without God is that it puts people into the hurtful prison of their own small worlds.

A Culture of Fidelity

In the early years of the Cold War, the great Canadian statesman, Lester B. Pearson, presciently pointed out the resurgence and vitality of non-Western societies. He was pointing out the danger of losing the heritage of Canadian civilization and the need to recover the bases of this civilization, which are ultimately Christian. Thus the challenge of the day is that of fidelity to timeless values which easily dissolve in the accoutrements of mass civilization, mass culture and the ‘new proletariat’ of the megalopolis.  Although in the early 1990’s the Harvard expert on world strategy, S. P. Huntington, postulated that the emerging tendency in the world would be the clash of civilizations, it is in fact logical to argue that the greatest challenge to most civilizations arises from internal challenges to its own fundamental bases, and not the external affront from other civilizations. The greatest challenge to Catholicism in Canada is not the Chinese government that suppresses the work of evangelisation in China nor the Islamic fundamentalists that give a violent face to Islam, but Catholics who fail to live up to the challenges of their faith. It is not Moslems that abuse young Catholics nor do Hindus fight the Church on issues of abortion, contraception or women's ordination. Rather, the scandals and dissent that threaten the Church arise from within her own flock. The challenge of the day is internal renewal, and the Pope recognizes this when he calls on us to undertake a new evangelisation with new zeal, new methods and new expressions. We need a renewal rooted in tradition, but not blind to the changing realities of the day. The doctrines do not change, but the ways of expressing them and the ways of receiving and living them often do.

The new evangelization, which the civilization of love offers to Canadians, must take place in what Pope John Paul II, referring to Acts 17 calls the ‘Areopagi’ of modern society. The danger is that the values promoted in each of these ‘Areopagi’ are human ends, structures of sin and of oppression that lead to an exploitative view of the person, abuse of human freedom, and ethical relativism; giving rise to abortion, euthanasia and other allied evils. Into these structures we must bring the gospel message. We are called upon to rediscover the superiority of spirit over matter, to strike a balance between culture and faith, scientific knowledge and metaphysics. We must use the machinery of cultural influence to promote a new lifestyle, calling all people to pass from indifference to concern for others in fidelity to the teachings of Christ.

A Culture of Life

The growing secularisation of Western societies which occurred in the peak of affluence and prosperity, is the main cause of the decline in the consideration of the things of God and the Church. This has created a crisis of truth, a crisis of freedom and a crisis of faith, which define the landscape of Canadian life both in the Church and in secular culture. We may not be able to fully expose these deep crises, but the Holy Father has laid the road map for supplanting them by proposing that; “In a world of great social and ethical strains, and confusion about the very purpose of life, Canadians have an incomparable treasure to contribute -- on condition that they preserve what is deep, and good and valid in their own heritage.”

The term, civilization of love, was first used Pope Paul VI, in his concluding address during the Holy Year of 1975. Civilization in this context pertains to human culture. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “civilization belongs to human history because it answers man’s spiritual and moral needs. Created in the image and likeness of God, man has received the world from the hands of the creator, together with the task of shaping it in his image and likeness. The fulfillment of this task gives rise to civilization, which in the final analysis is nothing else than the humanization of the world.” ( Pope John Paul II, Letter to Families Vatican: LibreriaEditriceVaticana, 1994, p. 41.) Thus when we talk of civilization of love, we are referring to a culture of love, a Christian culture,  that spurs human history to transcend its own limits and sins until reaching its final fulfillment in Christ. One could argue that the crises of truth, freedom and values are etched in human cultures; they are indeed highly relevant to the cultural analysis that John Paul II makes in most of his social encyclicals, however we are called to transcend these crises in order to bring about a new kind of culture.  Christian culture makes us understand that life is not an egoistic passion, but a gift to welcome with gratitude; that it is not an arbitrary game, but a project of love; that it is not a meaningless accident, but a vocation to be realised; that it is not a problem that is hard to resolve, but a mystery to be contemplated with humility and wonder. (Jesus Christ Word of the Father, by the theological-Historical Commission for the great Jubilee of the Year 2000,1997, p. 140).

There is something distinctive about Christianity, not only in its origin, but also in the ethical demands it makes on Christians and the hope it offers to them. Christians, though they live within different cultures defined by time and place, create a religious and cultural originality of their own. This culture respects human life, promotes universal brotherhood, and offers hope by opening the doors of love, concern and solidarity to all, especially those most in need, in a world that is increasingly hardened, wicked, cold, violent, hate-filled and selfish.

A Culture of Healing

Way back in the 4th century, in the era of Caesero-Papism, Christianity was integral to social life. It became the ‘cultus pullicus’ and so was able to protect and preserve the social order through her moral ferment. The church has thus been called ‘the healing centre of society’, ‘the crown of society’ etc. In the Medieval Ages, St. Augustine wrote about the stark contrast between the civitas Dei (city of God) and the civitasterrena (city of earth.) There is a dialectical tension between the values of the city of God incarnated in Christianity, and the vices of men carried in the vessels of a secular culture. The same tension is described again in the contrast between the civilization of love and the culture of death, the structures of sin and the structures of love. In our times, there are palpable signs of the percolation of negative values in our society, which reflect a failed or misplaced value system. The new civilization emphasizes the correct scale of values: the primacy of persons over things, of being over having. It places emphasis on the personalist and communalist dimensions of human existence, rather than the utilitarian and individualist dimensions; it provides a basis for healing culture and plants morality in the centre of human freedom.

The civilization of love seeks to create a culture where the Christian faith informs both individual action and cultural forces, where God’s will is faithfully lived out and where culture is transformed in the light of the gospel. However, this transformation must be properly understood in order to distinguish it from a cultural imperialism that destroys or replaces, rather than healing, culture. Many people in Africa see Christianity as synonymous with Western culture, however true Christianity is not bound by culture, and nor does any earthly culture ensure the preservation of Christian civilization. Western culture, although it is immersed in Christianity, is now being derobed of her Christian origins. In our day, both Europe and North America are increasingly abandoning Christianity as the nexus of Western society, replacing it with secularism and technological advancement. Therefore the Holy Father sees the West as in need of re-evangelisation: the civilization that once preached the gospel to the world has itself become mission territory. There is the need to renew a concrete sense faith and to create a communion of love in our parishes. The laity must be allowed to participate in the new evangelization by playing a greater part in Church life and by making use of their individual charisms. In the same vein, we need a renewal of the clergy since the faithful find it very hard to rise  above the spirituality of the clergy. Indeed, in every epoch, the decline of faith is the corollary of the spiritual sterility of the clergy.

Every culture is in constant need of the healing and redeeming love of Christ, which reveals its deep values under the influence of Grace. This is true for all human cultures, both those which have yet to be fully evangelized, and those who are in need of re-evangelization. When each human culture is thus transformed in the image and likeness of Christ, we can achieve something new: a civilization of love which is formed in the light of Christ, according to the values of Christianity.

A Culture of Communion

Man is the only creature that God willed for his own sake. Lived authentically, the Christian faith reveals in all its depth the dignity of the human person and the sublime nature of his vocation Christ is the source of the civilization of love and the human person is the centre of this civilization. In the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa “God is above all love and the fount of love.” The great St. John says this: ‘love is of God’ and ‘God is love’ (1 Jn. 4: 7-8). The creator has impressed this character also on us. ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (Jn. 13: 35). Therefore, if this love is not present, the entire image becomes disfigured. Christ who is the goal of history and the fulfillment of the aspirations of humanity is also the revelation of the Trinitarian Communion of love. Through his Incarnation in which he showed a generous solidarity with us; and by his Paschal Mystery in which the depth of God’s mercy and breadth of his love were manifested to us, Christ has put in motion an intense dynamic of intimate communion between God and man and among men themselves. The fact that man, ‘created as man and woman’ is the image of God means that he is called to live in a communion of love that mirrors the intimate communion which forms the centre of the mystery of the divine life. The civilization of love, based upon a communion of persons, takes a symbolic concrete form in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the most intimate communion of love between heaven and earth; a holy exchange which offers all the strength to build up God’s kingdom and to share, through Christ, in God’s own life and love. The civilization of love is a eucharistic civilization, called to make the reality of God’s love, incarnated in Christ, encompass, seize and possess the entire world. In order to do this, every Christian must translate their own experience of salvation into action, testimony, witness, mission and dialogue, so as to make this salvation open to all.

The civilization of love represents the whole ethical and social heritage of the Gospel. It calls us to create a Christian community where Christ can be encountered and in which we allow Him to recreate us in His own image and likeness. The recent success of World Youth Day has shown the power of the force of love. The Holy Father, who braved all odds to come and share his life with the young demonstrates an ethos of sacrificial love, and gives powerful testimony to transcendence of matter by spirit. In return, the pilgrims responded by recognizing the power of our Catholic faith and opening themselves to the reality of love in Christ. For one week, Catholics created a microcosm of the civilization of love in Toronto, with tremendous consequences not only for those who attended,  but for the people of Toronto who were touched by the joy and hope of the pilgrims, and of the Pope. We saw a city and a country open up in response to the love of Christ,  showing amazing Christian love and friendship to the pilgrims. Now, having seen the power of the new evangelization and of the culture of love put into practice, we must heed our baptismal calling and become the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World.