African archbishop frankly criticizes Western attitudes at synod

An African archbishop attending the worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops frankly criticized Western attitudes toward his continent Wednesday, lambasting imposition of foreign cultures on African people.

Africans "have come of age," said Nigerian Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama. "We should be allowed to think for ourselves."

"We are wooed by economic things," said Kaigama, who heads Nigeria's Jos archdiocese. "We are told if you limit your population, we're going to give you so much. And we tell them, 'Who tells you that our population is overgrown?' "

Kaigama, one of 36 African prelates attending the Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops as the heads of the continent's bishops' conferences, spoke Wednesday at a Vatican briefing.

Following are the archbishop's full remarks, which took about four minutes of the hourlong briefing.

We are confronted with some issues, and sometimes [they are] quite perplexing. We recently had a big conference on pro-life issues, and in that conference, we came out very clearly to ascertain the fact that life is sacred, marriage is scared, and the family has dignity.

We get international organizations, countries, and groups which like to entice us to deviate from our cultural practices, traditions, and even our religious beliefs. And this is because of their belief that their views should be our views. Their opinions and their concept of life should be ours.

We say, "No we have come of age." Most countries in Africa are independent for 50, 60, 100 years. We should be allowed to think for ourselves. We should be able to define: What is marriage? What makes the family? When does life begin? We should have answers to those [questions].

We are wooed by economic things. We are told, "If you limit your population, we're going to give you so much." And we tell them, "Who tells you that our population is overgrown?" In the first place, children die -- infant mortality -- we die in inter-tribal wars, and diseases of all kinds. And yet, you come with money to say, "Decrease your population; we will give you economic help."

Now you come to tell us about reproductive rights, and you give us condoms and artificial contraceptives. Those are not the things we want. We want food, we want education, we want good roads, regular light, and so on. Good health care.

We have been offered the wrong things, and we are expected to accept simply because they think we are poor. And we are saying poverty is not about money. One can be poor in spirituality, poor in ideas, poor in education, and in many other ways.

So we are not poor in that sense. We may be poor materially but we are not poor in every sense. So we say no to what we think is wrong. And time has gone when we would just follow without question. Now, we question. We evaluate. We decide. We ask questions. This is what we do in Africa now.

[Joshua J. McElwee is NCR Vatican correspondent. His email address is jmcelwee@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @joshjmac.]