Missionaries now: Quo Vadis, SA Church?

By Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa

The image of a typical missionary has changed over the years, which prompts me to ask what is the role of missionaries in South Africa today?

The question has become slightly blurred because the implantation of the local Church has made significant strides. However the fact of the matter is that missionaries are still the cornerstone of the Catholic Church in this country. Many are still in control of financial, human and material resources. In many of our Church institutions they still provide the bulk of the intellectual capital. They use their international connections to support the local Church.

In many religious orders and congregations they continue to exercise enormous influence. There is nothing unethical about this, save to say that empowerment for the indigenous lay and ecclesiastical leadership needs to be speeded up.

On the positive side, missionaries built schools, educare centres, universities, teacher training colleges, hospitals, clinics, seminaries, welfare and charitable institutions. From these emerged some of the best leaders in the country. Through their rich experience, Church-run schools and other institutions of learning provided high quality and holistic education.

That laudable work continues today, a contribution that has also been recognised by the present government. The Church contributed to feeding the hungry, clothing the orphans, healing the sick, educating the ignorant, instilling hope in the poor. Through seminaries, scholasticates, religious orders, congregations and lay associations, missionaries helped in the moral and spiritual development of our nation, a contribution not always easy to quantify. Evangelisation and pastoral ministry was at the heart of these initiatives.

Another role played by individual missionaries was their participation in the struggle for democracy, freedom and justice. Some were imprisoned, harassed by the apartheid security police, or even expelled from South Africa. This part of our Church history has yet to be thoroughly researched and recorded. We owe it to future generations.

The flip side is the way some missionaries — both Catholic and Protestant — brought their European cultural baggage with them. So successful was this endeavour that African theologian Meinrad Hegba could say: “There are very few individuals with enough personality to escape the moulding, which tends to turn [indigenous leaders] into simple purveyors of an off-the-peg Christianity, bishops and priests more Catholic than the pope, and pastors more Protestant that Luther or Calvin; who regard it as their duty to perpetuate the religious infantilism of their fellows in the name of fidelity and unity.”

Churches with this kind of leadership inevitably suffer from stagnation. Their pastoral initiatives lack dynamism and vision. At best they maintain the staid legacy from the missionaries; at worst, they manipulate that legacy in a way that would make the good missionaries turn in their graves!

It is of paramount importance that missionaries and local Christians form a viable authentic partnership that is based on respect for each other’s cultures and to make the Church relevant to the modern world in a manner that the Second Vatican Council had intended. This partnership rests on the conviction that both parties are equal givers and recipients.

Partnership means a generosity of spirit where the indigenous people and the missionaries give one another space to grow, develop and blossom! Foreign missionaries ought to support the development of a new local Church.

Nelson Mandela once invited the people of South Africa to reconstruct and develop the soul of our nation. He urged the Church, political authorities and civil society to work together to promote the common good in every sphere of our lives.

Jesus Christ is still concerned about the spiritual, physical, psychological, cultural and economic well being of his people. Since the Church is intrinsically missionary in character missionaries should no longer be regarded as foreigners but as adopted sons and daughters of Africa as well as partners in the African Renaissance in all its aspects.

The critical challenge is how to transform the local Church in a manner that will make it a true expression of our faith that will be both Catholic and indigenous.

We should reject a facile and uncritical indoctrination by engaging in liturgical gimmicks which amuse inquisitive foreign tourists but add no value to our faith and spirituality. Inculturation is not an event but a process. It calls for research, orderly experimentation and a bold humility.

Both foreign and local Christians can play an important role in this noble enterprise. Now is the time to take this project forward and give our Church an African face.

Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa is a former secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference. He is currently president the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa.