Attacks on Priests

by Editor · February 10, 2016

South African Catholics were shocked this month to learn of the brutal attack on a Cape Town priest in his presbytery during an apparent robbery.

Fr Charles Prince required emergency surgery to save his eyesight after he sustained several head injuries in the sadistic assault by the criminals who did not care whether their victim would live or die.

Alarmingly, the robbers knew that they were assaulting a priest. Before entering the presbytery they had broken into St Anthony’s church in Langa, attempting to steal the tabernacle.

We may give thanks that Fr Prince was spared the fate of the priests and nuns who were murdered by criminals in the past two decades or so.

Catholics still feel the grief of losing to violent crime priests and religious such as Fr Mathieu Ceyssens OMI, Fr Eammon O’Neill, Sr Theodelind Schreck HF, Fr Albert Pelemann OSB, Fr Michele D’Annucci CSS, Fr Bongani Eric Shozi, Fr Declan Collins SDB, Fr Manus Campbell OFM, Fr Gerard Fitzsimons, Sr Clementine Brantschen OSV, Br Benedict Mkhize TOR, Fr Allard ‘Mako OMI, Fr Ernst Plöchl CMM, Fr Lionel Sham, Fr Daniel Mahula, Fr Louis Blondel M.Afr., Fr Senzo Mbokazi, Sr Mary Paule Thacke CPS, Sr Stefani Tiefenbacher CPS and others.

Clearly the notion of attacking and even murdering priests and religious people who have dedicated their lives to serving God and his people is no longer is a taboo in South African society.

Especially priests who live solitary lives in their presbyteries are in danger of being regarded as fair game by criminals who have no scruples.

But we should beware of being caught up in a mood of panic. The attacks and killing of priests and religious still have the power to shock us so profoundly because they are still relatively rare. Perhaps the taboo against attacking people of the cloth still retains some currency.

Nevertheless, the attack on Fr Prince is a stark reminder that our priests and religious are not safe. Every parish should be prompted by Fr Prince’s ordeal to initiate a review of their pastor’s security arrangements.

Geography provides no assurance of security. While Fr Prince was attacked in a poor township, the last serious assault of a priest in the same city, that of Fr Andrew Cox, occurred in the very wealthy suburb of Constantia.

The violence against priests and religious brings into sharp focus the corruption of ethics in our society, a degeneration which finds expression especially in the brutish crime against the innocent and defenceless, especially children.

Women are regularly raped, children, toddlers are violated and killed, and those who offer their lives vocation to the service of humanity are robbed and murdered, leaving an indelible stain on our nation’s moral fabric.

The sources of crime in South Africa are diverse. Poverty certainly plays a role, but most poor people do not commit crimes; most often they are the victims of it. Crime in South Africa percolates not from poverty but from society’s decaying moral fabric.

This decay is evident on every level: on dusty township streets as much as in corporate boardrooms and, deplorably, in government, even at the highest level.

Crime is trivialised when the friends of the mighty are required to serve only small fractions of their jail sentences; when those who broke laws are feted as martyrs when they go to prison; when the president of the nation claims to be innocent of charges of corruption but has fought tooth and nail not to answer these charges in a court of law.

Crime is trivialised when criminals armed or white collar find protection in their communities through collaboration, tolerance, apathy or fear.

Crime is trivialised when there is one set of justice for the wealthy and another for the poor.

We must be outraged by the moral malaise of a country where lawlessness is being taken for granted, from street thuggery to business and politics.

However, in our outrage we must not preach vengeance nor declare resignation. Rather we must focus on what needs to be done to restore to our society the ethics that may liberate us from the terror of criminality.