Pray With the Pope: January 2018

by Chris Chatteris SJ · December 31, 2017

Pope Francis greets a young Rohingya refugee from Myanmar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, during his visit there in late November. (Photo: L’Osservatore Romano/Reuters/CNS)

General Intention: That Christians, and other religious minorities in Asian countries, may be able to practise their faith in full freedom.

There are clearly some problem countries that Pope Francis has in mind with this prayer intention. The forced expulsion of the Muslim Rohingya minority from Myanmar would be one. His diplomatically difficult visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh in late November was a courageous gesture of solidarity with a minority which seemed to have been left defenceless.

North Korea, where any form of faith other than atheism is suppressed, would be another place where religions, any religions really, are marginalised and actively persecuted by an atheistic state led by a bizarre and insecure young dictator.

Nor should we should forget the overwhelmingly Catholic Philippines where there is a substantial Muslim minority, some of whom say that they want more political autonomy. Not that the Philippines is quite in the same category of dictatorship as North Korea, even though the present strongman, Rodrigo Duterte, is hardly a strong supporter of human rights or Catholic social teaching!

What these complicated Asian situations underline is that everyone is a minority somewhere and a majority somewhere else. Hindus are a minority in Pakistan even though they are an overwhelming majority in India. Buddhists are a minority in India, even though they are in the majority in Myanmar. Christians are a minority in all Asian countries except in the Philippines.

One would think, therefore, that because organised religions in Asia all feel the burden of oppression where they are minorities, they would be more sensitive to other minorities where they are a majority. Often it is not so, unfortunately.

There is a human tendency to take out our vicissitudes of minority status in one place by pushing around other minorities in places where we are a majority.

No Bullies Wanted

A lesson all faiths everywhere have to learn is how not to be bullies where they are strong and secure. We need to get together and agree that we will uphold and protect each other’s rights across the geographical board.

It sounds simple but there are a couple of complications.

Firstly, there are politicians, especially in this age of thug-like leaders, who are quite happy to exploit religious differences for their own political advantage. Here we believers have to show real greatness of soul and rise above the destructiveness and divisiveness of identity politics.

Secondly, there is the reality of competition. We must frankly acknowledge that competition is a fact of our religious faith.

For some faiths, especially Christianity and Islam, adherents have the duty to bear witness to and spread their beliefs and way of life. It is part of our Christian Gospel that God has commissioned us to preach to the unconverted and bring in new believers, and the same is true for Muslims.

Bearing Witness Can’t Mean Restriction of Other Faiths

This puts us in competition with each other and it adds to the temptation to restrict the freedom of other faiths when they are in a minority and cry foul when we ourselves are restricted.

What our pluralistic religious world needs, therefore, is an agreement — tacit or formal — that all faiths have the freedom to propagate themselves within the limits of respect for human rights and the good order of society. We need rules for this competition.

We also need a kind of referee, and in practice that referee will have to be the secular state. We may not like that very much, but it is probably the only reasonable referee we will get to prevent “foul play”.

The Secular State Must Control Religious Oppression

Of course, this means that, as believers, we will have to work out a positive theology of the secular state. The theological leap is to consider the possibility that God has the power to work through secular rulers.

We can look to Isaiah and the startling reflection on how God was at work through the Persian imperial rulers.