Nwachukwu Egbunike | Thursday, 7 February 2008
A case of ingratitude
The recent protest against the pope at a Roman university looks to an African like biting the hand that fed you.
It is no longer news that Pope Benedict XVI had to cancel his visit to La Sapienza University in Rome to inaugurate the academic year for what the Vatican Secretary of State called a lack of the "prerequisites for a dignified and tranquil welcome." Richard Bastien in Where did universities come from? described the incident as being not simply the rejection of "a religious institution but of the very foundations of Western culture". I rather see it as a case of ingratitude.
I am not oblivious to the right of the 67 academic staff (out of 4,500) and some of the student body to protest. Nor do I think that they should be forced to sit through a ceremony they would rather not attend. Nevertheless, in the part of the world where I come from, there is a saying according to which one does not deny a guest entrance to the house, especially when (s)he has been invited. In this case, the pope is not just any type of visitor but a link to the past which made the present of this particular university possible.
Africa seems to have a lot to offer the West. We may be plagued by
hunger, disease, wars, political instability and a host of other evils,
but the typical African will not offer to bite the hand that fed him --
not even to prove his modernity or 'secularity'.
I recall with nostalgia the visit of John Paul II in 1982 to the first university in Nigeria -- the University of Ibadan. The university is a secular institution founded by the British colonists and initially affiliated to University College, London. In that august visit, the pope addressed the university community who held various religious and ideological convictions. The university authorities -- both students and professors -- were certainly not all Catholics. As a matter of fact, the majority of them were Christians of different denominations (Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals), members of African traditional religion, Muslims and atheists. Being members of an intellectual community that prides itself on the pursuit of knowledge, they saw the pope's visit for what it was and did everything to make it successful.
This African hospitality is not only reserved for popes alone. The high school I attended in South East Nigeria -- Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha -- was founded by Anglican missionaries. The school bears the name of one of them, Archdeacon T. J. Dennis. Although the school was forcefully acquired by the state during the dark era of military dictatorship, we the alumni still refer to the Anglican Bishop on the Niger as the proprietor. Naturally we still retain the school song - an anthem from the classic Anglican hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern. The school also hosted the then Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) Archbishop Abiodun Adetiloye. Some of us, non-Anglicans, not only participated but were proud to do so. The frenzy that preceded the visit was so contagious and one would have thought that we all were Anglicans.
This attitude is not only engrained in the African value system of showing affection to strangers, foes and friends alike, it is also a manifestation of our gratitude, a way of saying thanks to the thousands of missionaries who flocked to the continent to labour and die there. They were not cowed by the bleak prospects of converting and educating those who had no relationship with them and could not even pay them back.
We bear a debt of appreciation to these church men/women because they were instrumental in phasing out many harmful practices in my country. Mary Slessor, a Methodist missionary, is revered in Calabar, Nigeria for her efforts in stopping the killing of twins. Now twins are celebrated. How can one forget the labours of many Irish priests and nuns who set up schools that expanded our world view and provided many Africans the opportunity to get better jobs? Nor can one but be ever thankful to the men and women who improved the lot of the Nigerian woman. Blessed Cyprian Tansi, a Catholic priest, had to confront the attitude of regarding women as the property of their husband in Igboland, the abuses associated with widowhood and the excesses of polygamy. Does this positive regard for the church mean we are less African? On the contrary, it solidifies our identity as a people.
Given this background (and this is not being priggish or naively claiming to possess a superior culture) I was shocked to learn that the faculty and students of La Sapienza University refused to receive a guest -- on the pretext of the university's secularity, supported by the trumped-up charge that Benedict is not "friendly to science". It defies logic because the truth is that their university was founded by Pope Boniface VIII and only later developed as an institute of the Italian state. No amount of semantics can change that, any more than they could change the fact that many from my generation who were non-Anglicans profited from the magnanimity of the Anglican Church.
Why then did the students want to deny Benedict XVI access to their university? Were they afraid that he would declare a holy war and force all of them to become Christians? I think that their bias is fallout from the ongoing fierce battle in the West to confine religion to the closet. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case, as we have left God in the public square but shut him out from our private life. The vocal minority of this Italian institution have only succeeded in negating the concept of a university, which is a community of intellectuals who are open to the truth. It seems that what is presently being cultivated in these ivory towers is a group of dictators who will only listen to the version of truth that coincides with theirs. Who said that the monster of dictatorship is the exclusive preserve of African tyrants?
In any case their suspicions were unfounded. In the text of the address, which was read out at the commencement ceremony and received a standing ovation, Benedict XVI stated: "What does the Pope have to do with, or have to say to the university? Surely he must not attempt to impose the faith on others in an authoritarian way since it can only be bestowed in freedom. Beyond his office as Shepherd of the Church, and on the basis of the intrinsic nature of this pastoral office, there is his duty to keep the sensitivity to truth alive; to continually invite reason to seek out the true, the good, God, and on this path, to urge it to glimpse the helpful lights that shine forth in the history of the Christian faith, and in this way to perceive Jesus Christ as the Light that illuminates history and helps us to find the way to the future."
Africa seems to have a lot to offer the West. We may be plagued by hunger, disease, wars, political instability and a host of other evils, but the typical African will not offer to bite the hand that fed him -- not even to prove his modernity or "secularity". To have dredged up a pretext for rejecting a visitor who represents an institution that invested so much material and human resources to nurture a university into existence does not speak well of those professors and students at La Sapienza. Regrettably, they seem to reflect the wider Western society. Europe is gradually losing not only her roots but her sense of gratitude.
Nwachukwu Egbunike is a book editor in Ibadan, Nigeria.
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ck :-) said...hmmm…
...with deepest sympathies for a science community in the african wilderness. Definitely, a sad day; ...and a defeat in objectivity of expression, where “hunger, disease, wars, political instability and a host of other evils,” are not exclusive in africa. The same is true in our neck of the woods.
As with any long experiment in this imperfect world of ours, ...takes time, ...and lots and lots of patience and perseverance. Some may be longer than others. ...in the meanwhile, our sincerest prayers for our colleagues, ...and the Pope .
ck :-)
Philippines | Friday, 8 February 2008 at 10:06 am
Ikenna said...Well written follow up to the previous article on this topic. I recommend it to everyone who read and commented on the last.
Nigeria | Friday, 8 February 2008 at 8:45 pm
Ginger said...Well said Mr. Egbunike, well said… and it could not have been put better. And thank you too for drawing out context not often presented by the media, in its attempt to project a given agenda. This is the case for example with the relative number of students who protested, as against the total number of faculty - a fact borne out by how the students later received the text of the Pope’s speech - with a standing ovation!
Saying that Africa has something to teach the West should not been seen by anyone as derogatory. In the same way,if we in Africa decide to learn something from the West, it would simply be a wise thing to do in order not to ‘re-invent the wheel’, although I must say that nowadays we are careful what we ‘borrow’ from the West, seeing as how they are now being harmed by the same.
Should I give examples? Well, consider for instance the situation with the family. It used to be a thing of pride for families in Africa to bear many children, until we began to watch western soap operas on TV - it then became ‘un’-modern to have children; we used to take care of our aged parents until their natural death, expressing thus also our gratitude for the life they gave us - until we saw the west putting their old parents in ‘homes’; we used to dress up - until we saw the west undressing… and so on.
But now we know better.
Now we take the technology the West provides, but we sift through their morality; We learn from the examples of how they improve in business, but we still remember than when money is exhausted, we remain our brother’s keeper. There are some things that are not only African, but human and these will be useful to anyone.
In any case, this is not about Africa, but about Europe rediscovering its Christian past and being grateful for it. We in Africa would want Europe to teach us how to be grateful; on our part, for what the west has taught us.
Nigeria | Saturday, 9 February 2008 at 12:59 am
TK said...It is a pity that intellectuals have allowed themselves to be dragged into a war between religion and science, such a war does not exist, for religion and science go hand in hand. This is a very good writeup!
Nigeria | Saturday, 9 February 2008 at 4:03 am
Chivuzo Offiah said...A very apt write-up. I am an African, and perhaps that’s why it’s easy for me to see (and decry) situations where due gratitude is missing. Gratitude is very important in the African culture. I’ll like it to be equally important in Western culture too.
Nigeria | Saturday, 9 February 2008 at 9:50 pm
A Oriku said...I will give credit to Egbunike for harping on - against all odds - about Africans’ sense of hospitability. This is an aspect of Africa’s highly romanticised ubuntu. But I must put in the caveat that Africa is not just a monolithic entity where traditions are cloned and equally received. However, whatever views the students and staff of Rome’s Sapienza University may hold about Pope Benedict, I think they should have allowed him to have his day, although again I think we should respect the will and thinking behind such a stance. (If you looked closely you would see a million spectres of Nietzsche’s mad men stalking the universities and even the streets of Europe everlastingly looking for a grand sepulchre in which to bury the burden of the embalmed corpse of god - so the protest against the Pope’s visit should have come as a surprise).
Even the brutal Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha welcomed Pope John Paul II to Nigeria in 1996 - although this was a political move made by a ruler who had become a pariah of sorts in the international community. The late Pope had had risen above being a mere political animal when he visited Nigeria - albeit apparently for religious reasons. And during a meeting with the dictator he told him to release those who had been locked up at the General’s pleasure. While I had long become irreligious even then, I was still impressed with the Pope’s frankness. I was even more impressed with how he oracularly foretold the death of the dictator, telling him to remember that he would leave his wife and children amongst Nigerians when he was no longer around. You would have imagined that the fairly middle-aged dictator would outlive the old infirm Pope, but he dropped dead only a few months after the Pope’s visit. To the very end the dictator did not take heed of the Pope’s Samuel-to-Saul-like warning.
United Kingdom | Sunday, 10 February 2008 at 1:49 am
A Oriku said...(This conludes my comment)…
Again I do remember a good few people saying that it was not African to speak ill of the dead after the death of the murderous dictator. General Abacha was a bad man, and in spite of the opinions of those who thought the dead must be revered, posthumous articles and essays about him were often scurrilous. I must conlude that just like any other people, some Africans do bite the hands that feed them, and some don’t. And African leaders like Abacha, since they don’t need to be fed by any hands, try their best to bite and savage suppliant hands of their hungry subjects.
-- | Sunday, 10 February 2008 at 1:52 am
Alexis B. said...This situation is not about Africa, but since it is written by a son of the continent, it gives us the opportunity to say what we think about what happened at La Sapienza University in Rome.
The word “Sapienza” comes from latin “sapiens, sapientis”, which means “wisdom”. Therefore, if we should translate the name of La Sapienza University in English, it would become “The University of Wisdom”. What a beautiful name for a higher education institution! Knowing that the University was founded by a Pope, it is somehow difficult to understand or to try explain the reason why the visit Pope Benedict XVI has been rejected. They ‘d better change the name of their Unversity into La SineSapienza University because their act is wiseless and show that they are narrow-minded.
As said Egbunike, “We, Africans may be plagued by hunger, disease, wars, political instability and a host of other evils”, but this should be counted for the ingratitude of most of our political leaders who are backed up by developed countries nations politicians. However individually, we do have a lot to show or teach to people from developed countries, because they have very narrowed knowledge about our continent, as they rely only on those news that stigmatize the continent, without any criticism. But yet despite our tons of problems, we are proud of our hospitality, and we really know how to praise and worship God our Lord!
Sometimes, I am very proud of being African.
Japan | Tuesday, 12 February 2008 at 5:23 pm
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