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What drew me to that lecture was not so much my Catholic grounding, which no matter how generously measured against the Church’s calendar and rituals, let alone  to its exacting tenets, is sure to be found decidedly spasmodic at best, downright truant at worst. I belong to failing, fallen Man.

So many questions
What drew me to that lecture was the profile of this Filipino priest whose name I cannot remember. He was presented as a proponent of liberation theology, itself a brand of Christian witness marked and coloured by social consciousness. In the 1970s and 1980s, this contextual brand of theology was very much in vogue world-wide, and was particularly appealing to the heady sensibilities of immediate post-independence Zimbabwe. The fervour of nationalism and the liberation war was still strong, very strong and insistent, and most of us sought to give a name both to what had just happened or not happened in our country. Had we fought a just war? Had we fought a people’s war? Had we fought true to the tenets of a liberation war as adumbrated by Marxist theorists and African revolutionaries? Had we laid a clear basis for subsequent class warfare, itself a sequel to the omnibus national liberation that mobilized all classes around common enemy, common origin, common skin colour? Had we galvanized all social forces?

When I see a guerilla…
How about the Church, a debate made inevitable by the fact that Zimbabwe-Rhodesia dressed itself in a collar of holiness, right at the helm, right up on high? Or worse… that UDI had proclaimed itself as a blow struck for Christianity? What had happened to the Church? What had not happened? Above all, what could have happened to and through the Church? The “could” part exercised most of us and with the likes of Reverend Banana, himself the new country’s President, the “could” part of church and Christian conduct both was bound to be topical and compelling. Reverend Banana had controversially declared in one of his sermons: “When I see a guerilla, I see Jesus.” This seemingly frighteningly irreligious claim he pegged on a well-known verse in the Bible proclaiming that greater love hath no man than that he lays down his life for another. Something like that…. Here was a just-ended revolution struggling to fit itself within canons of the Church, of belief. It was self-search, a critical part of overall identity construction for the new nation which had to find its own moral bearing, its own moral bourn wither it would tend.      

Bullet and regnum Christi
Liberation theology had had a deep root in Latin America where deepening social malaise had created fertile ground for leftist views, indeed had triggered widespread violent and convulsive popular responses from below and beneath an unjust, and as was the fashion then, from an occupied or indentured State. Latin America paraded pimp states, all beholden to Washington in all her blighting tentacles. The Church found itself in sharply polarized socio-political circumstances where hereafter scriptures failed, where here-and-now witness begged. The Church had to pronounce itself; it had to make choices, indeed to take a stance one way or the other. In the case of Nicaragua, the liberation struggle in that country which had been waged against Yankee Imperialism, had actually enlisted Catholic priests who saw no contradiction between wielding and firing a gun of struggle, and serving the whole divine project of founding regnum Christi, the Kingdom of Christ. A good many of these priests joined the Sandinistas, with at least one actually becoming a Minister of Government, once that revolution triumphed. There was Father Miguel de Escoto, or something like that. All now lost in the mists of time!

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Rite for the noose
But the Vatican was not too pleased with this popular and loud aberration in its crib. It made efforts to suppress it, to ex-communicate those iconoclastic priests. The Vatican never quite succeeded, then or now. Instead, the Vatican triggered a deep debate in the Church, a deep debate in a Church which itself had, through its own misconduct, raised the very issues which this theology grappled with. The Catholic Church had a mis-governor, a slaver, a perpetrator of atrocities and abuses, a war-monger, a landlord, a rite beatifying the hangman’s noose, indeed the last prayer and supper before colonization. It had been a party, sorry the party to iniquity and thus could not throw the first stone. Except it was now being pelted by its own, an embarrassing assault which had taken centre stage at its Second Vatican Council in 1962 where one Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens, a Belgian prelate, had interjected from the floor urging for an introspective Catholic Church. The Church needed a “central vision” which he saw as subsisting in finding an answer to a central question the world had put to the Church: Church of Christ, what do you say for yourself? I felt the question is so key that it is a fitting title to a piece through which I hope to respond to a part of my readership which has repeatedly exhorted me to address the issue of the Church and the Zimbabwe Question. As shall be apparent shortly, I have a decent enough pretext for such a discussion. But first back to the Filipino Father….  

Building from the banks
This priest was fascinatingly anecdotal in his homily. His first act was to philosophically laugh at the myth of Christians as bridge-builders. “Except when you build a bridge, you start from one of the two river banks. You can’t start from the middle of a swift-flowing river,” he asserted with an obvious smirk on his face. He left many brains in the lecture room making embarrassing, self-chastising strides from the so obvious to the elusively profound which this simple analogy and common sense had triggered. “Ehe nhai,” came the collective exclamation from the audience, a laughter fully wrapped in uneasy laughter of haughty ignorance just exposed. The Filipino cut in, further and finally home: “It cannot be about building bridges. It is about from which river bank: the people’s bank or from the bank of the oppressor.” Most of us were left groaning, vainly banking on an early conclusion to this fascinating lecture that showed how short we were, short of common sense. We who had just won a war that needed so many words, so many arguments to persuade and win hearts and minds. I immediately remembered a catholic wartime document titled “The Man in the Middle.” Where would be the man? Which would be the middle? I still wonder.  

Christ is the answer…
Yet more was coming. “As you leave the rich part of Manila,” continued the visiting priest, apparently appealing to my geographical ignorance, “…as you leave the rich neighbourhood for the bustling slums of poor people, for Manila’s hurrying slums of fetid garbage and decaying fetuses, slums of punching, felling effluvia, you approach and then drive beneath an imposing structure atop which runs Manila’s locomotives.” I wondered where this sly man of God was taking us to this time. He continued: “A Christian zealot had daubed the façade of that ponderous structure with red ink to scribble a message with an eye for permanence. His busy brush had pinned the message quite high up for the ruining garbage, quite bold and legible enough for erasure, indeed quite too well sited to escape notice. It stood there, in unchallenged permanence. Or so he thought. It piously read: “Christ is the Answer”, capped by an exclamation mark.

So, what is the question?
But the Devil always lurks in idle minds. More so in godless cities like Manila under a shining dictator perfectly made in the US. Little urchins wielding pairs of naughty hands and some stolen paint, felt challenged by this holy proclamation. Was the Christ of this sentence so heavenly perched, was he not seeing their poverty, their suffering? The sentence had to be challenged, both semantically and by way of its high placement. The urchins heaved themselves up for a matching reply. Quite how, only He that resides above could say. But not quite higher than the holy sentence… only civilly just below it to allow for a visual conversation. In very poor but vengefully legible and readable black paint, the urchins wrote: “What is the question?” Much like Zvakazarurwa, the Book of Revelations, nothing else followed after that sinful intervention in bold black. The social bible had penned its last book, last word, to an emphatic full-stop. So began a deep, divisive debate outside the crib of a Church so used to bowing heads, shut mouths…. 

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When the church is not God
I am a curious Catholic, which does not make me a good believer. I don’t know what Father Wempter calls me, since I hear each time you seem to dissent to his sacral thoughts, he quickly reaches for the word “communist”! It may be a reflex he carried over from Rhodesia, with its “red peril collective psychosis. I question things, particularly those done by the Church, in the Church, all in the name of God and Christ. I query its liturgy, particularly the whole paraphernalia around it which I find implacably alien, implacably western in the middle of an African country, African believers. Some priest once queried that, to massive hand rapping by the Church’s eager conservatives. When I queried these things in my Church, I used top feel sinful, feel well on the road to damnation. I had fully convinced myself that the church hierarchies were the divinities we worshipped, divinities who washed away our sins. Never mere men, sinful men looking for redemption for themselves and for their brethren. Sinful man like you and me. It was only when I reached an understanding that beneath those awe-inspiring robes of holiness lay mere mortals, mortals of myriad sins, indeed mere men of frailties, that I then realize one could – should in fact – guard the Church to give to the Lord.

The Word, versus word
And as with all social institutions, guarding means keeping a healthy, skeptical distance from its ways and men. After all, the church is not the clergy alone; it is clergy and the laity. After all the Word is not necessarily the words of the clergy. This recognition that the church errs; that it is a human interpretation of God’s Will to mankind, is in fact what gave rise to Protestantism and variant Christian movements which broke away from the Vatican. The search has always been for a more direct relationship with God, unsoiled by human imperfections, by specific overweening cultures seeking to elevate themselves to the Godly. Schism is a social offence; it is not an infraction of a beatitude. This is why criticizing the church could very well be holy, depending on its foundation and purity of motive. I am a curious Catholic.

The mouth of the pontiff
I read the Bible a lot. I think it is a great book, made greater by its vast, elastic scope that accommodates most, if not all, human situations. King and plebian alike, these polar two each find a world to inhabit in the corpus of that great Book. As a curious Catholic, I have also sought to read the history of my Church as it has journeyed through turbulent history. That includes reading its encyclicals issued by successive pontiffs, each trying to grasp the Word, to evangelize the world within It. And these encyclicals can be massive treatise requiring laborious reading. But they are very profound in thought and expression. You get to know why the Catholic Church once ruled the world, and has such an abiding presence in every clime. By the way, an encyclical is a term used to describe a letter written by a Pope to a particular audience within the church and/or beyond. It is a directional document, one which is profoundly biblically reasoned. To that extent, its availability tends to coincide with major shifts in ministry of the Catholic Church. Or with an attempt at greater elaboration of such shifts. It comes in many languages of the world, but always carries a title in Latin, definitely dead outside but quite alive and kicking inside the Church. As this doctrinal document reaches different climes, it tends to get localized by colleges of bishops, in the form of what are termed “pastoral letters”. We have had such letters here, as issued by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ZCBC), or its predecessor, the Rhodesia Catholic Bishops’ Conference (RCBC). That way, the Church’s overarching homiletic ideology finds local troupe, local colour, local fervour.

That pastoral letter…
As I write, the Bishops have issued their pastoral letter for 2011. It is dated 14 January, 2011 and bears the imprimatur of Angel Floro, the Bishop of Gokwe, who sits on ZCBC as president; Alexio Muchabaiwa, the Bishop of Mutare who is the Conference’s vice president; Martin Munyanyi, Bishop of Gweru who occupies the seat of secretary/treasurer. To these office-bearers is added Robert C. Ndlovu, the Archbishop of Harare; Alex Thomas, the Archbishop of Bulawayo; Michael D. Bhasera, the Bishop of Masvingo; Dieter B Scholz SJ, Bishop of Chinhoyi and Albert Serrano, the Bishop of Hwange. There is also Patrick M. Mutume, Auxiliary Bishop of Mutare. Nine holy men all told, only three short of the biblical twelve before the defection and betrayal of Judas Iscariot.

Evolving trends ?
In content, the pastoral letter worries about “evolving trends” in Zimbabwe which it says “can lead to our loss of nationhood, the disintegration of our society and to the forming of degenerate militias with opposing loyalties”, that is if these evolving trends are left uncorrected. You comb through the letter for a hint of what these “evolving trends” which pose such dire and mortal danger to the Republic are, you do not get much joy. What you get instead is the banal bicker of political parties and politicians. Has the Word become Man, political Man? Or are these worrying evolving trends what you and me cannot see with our unholy, naked eyes? After all these are bishops who prophesy! Seers.

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How common is the good?
To ground its concerns, the pastoral letter draws authority from a decidedly heavy encyclical issued by Pope Paul VI, around the Second Vatican Council, in December 1965. It is opaquely called Gaudium Et Spes and please don’t ask me what that means! The pastoral letter heavily draws from it. From the Church’s ten principles, this letter zeroes in on the second principle, that of the Common Good. It defines it as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”  The Common Good “gives stability and is the source of security for a just order.” Further on, the letter draws from yet another encyclical, Populorum Progresso, issued in March 1967 by the same pontiff. It exhorts the church to fight misery and to struggle against injustice, stressing such a fight amounts to promoting “the human and spiritual progress of all peoples and, therefore, the Common Good of Humanity”. “Peace is something that is built up day by day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men,” adds the pastoral letter, quoting from the encyclical.

The bishops’ toothache
The ecclesiastical foundation laid, the letter proceeds to table the concerns of the bishops. These include their concern that “not all the tenets of the Global Political Agreement have been implemented, leading to the continued isolation of the country by most of the international community and the postponement of national healing, recovery, restoration and the enjoyment of fundamental human rights by all”; the persistence of political violence, intolerance, “hate language in the public media”, injustice, rigging of elections, fear, deception, etc.” The bishops take aim at a specific target: “It is disheartening that State media never really went out of its way to promote COPAC and its quest for a people-driven constitution. So too, national healing, reconciliation and integration, which are so vital for national well-being, never seem to be given so much serious media coverage.”

Pilfering the liberation struggle
Next, the letter makes a very curious juxtaposition of politically violence “in some provinces” on the one hand, and the liberation of Zimbabwe on the other, stressing: “The liberation of Zimbabwe was achieved through the efforts of those who were inside the country (both armed and unarmed), outside the country and by the international community. The claim to have monopoly in the liberation struggle by any single sector or party, is therefore, false and may be a misconception solely responsible for the abuse of human rights and the erosion of the sovereignty of the citizens in Zimbabwe.”                        

Structures of sin
Quoting Pope John Paul II, the bishops assert that “the people of Zimbabwe are reacting against ‘structures of sin’ in our society”. It traces the provenance of that sin personal, indictable failures, what it terms “personal sin, …[which is] always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove”. Paradoxically, the bishops quote the pontiff as urging believers to “give a name to the evils which afflict us”, but without themselves summoning the courage to name “the evil” which in their view afflicts Zimbabwe. May be they imply the sin. For the bishops, Zimbabwe needs to be saved by saintly politicians and heads of state in the mould of the late Julius Nyerere who is well on the road to beatification. What then follows is long desiderata: end corruption, end impunity, end intimidation, uphold human rights, reign in on security forces before, during and after elections, stop self-enrichment, etc, etc.

Bishops’ manifesto
Two requests deserve singling out. One exhorts political leaders to “prioritise poverty eradication by using proceeds from natural resources like diamonds, land, etc, for the development of the whole nation and all its citizens.”  The other implores “our political leadership in the coalition government to reflect deeply on the timing of elections bearing in mind the unhealed state of the nation and the fragile state of the economy. They shoulder a heavy responsibility to serve and save Zimbabwe. They must think and act in pursuit of the Common Good. In the event of elections, implement the SADC guidelines in full.” The bishops conclude the way they began, that is in a clear political interpellation, a potent political apostrophic address. Ironically, it is a conclusion which fires the prelates into a political campaign mood, apparently for an election they have just decried, an election they do not favour, or only suffer with heavy conditionalities. “Many of you, who have endured much, are beginning to show signs of losing hope as the political economic and social hardships, which should have disappeared by now, still persist. This is especially true of most people in rural areas who can hardly access foreign currency. Our situation is volatile. We can still move forward but can also just as easily return to our difficult past.”

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Blunders on the road to the Vatican
I have decided against citing the pastoral letter en passant simply because I think it is not only coming from an important institution; it is an augury of things to come. Let us situate this pastoral letter. Less than two weeks back, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was in Rome, hoping to reach the Vatican. As with many things, the man was not properly assisted by his staff which must know better. He wrote to Foreign Affairs instructing our Ambassador in Rome to fix an appointment for him with the Pope at the Vatican. The little detail his unhelpful staff could not remember is that the Vatican is a State, albeit a State within a State called Italy. To shore up this elusive but rigorously enforced distinction, world ambassadors to Italy can never enjoy dual accreditation to cover the Vatican. Countries either deploy ambassadors exclusively for the affairs of the Vatican, or they appoint another ambassador serving in another station which is not Italy and could be in Europe, to represent the Vatican as well. In our case, we cover the Vatican from France. The Office of the Prime Minister of this country must know this. But that is a small point of the matter.

Service from sanctioned ambassadors
The Prime Minister had apparently forgotten he had written to the European Union urging all countries under it not to recognize or accredit ambassadors redeployed by President Mugabe. Italy was one such European country written to by the Prime Minister. But for purposes of his trip and fixture, no such sanctioning letter existed and Zimbabwe had to have a fully decorated ambassador in place to place an appointment with the leadership of a country that had not accepted letters of recall of his predecessor and his letters of credence! This is the trouble with moves inspired by disdainful foreigners to unthinking native minds so easily moved by petty impulses against high offices and high games.

From TB Joshua to Pope
The Prime Minister who had also been to Bishop T.B. Joshua of Nigeria, sought a handshake with the Pope, less for holiness, more for a photo opportunity. He is a Methodist, itself a break-away from the Catholic Church. He never quite made it to the Pope. Mukuru akaperera kumaCardinals and that was that. Much of the effort was then redirected towards fundraising for his limping party. Obviously the local Roman Catholic Church had something to do with this flopped initiative.

A Protestant in the Vatican
On January 18, a mere four days after the bishop’s pastoral letter, US Ambassador Charles Ray, graced ARUPE College which is a Jesuit School of Philosophy training young Jesuit for priesthood. These up and coming trainees will then become priests or brothers destined to serve in mostly rural communities. They are the frontline of the Catholic Church in rural communities. Curiously, the invitation was to the representative of a Government whose Christian foundations are Puritan, and for the commemoration of Martin Luther King (Jr), the black civil rights leader and a Baptist Church reverend slain by racist white America, the fiery black rights activist now canonized by political America as part of self-legitimation and black containment. Since that political canonization, Luther King gets progressively painted white, whiter with each year he is remembered. I hope he is happy wherever he is. Whatever his state and mood, his fate illustrates what the ever angry James Baldwin once said. Stressing that long after Luther King’s death, blacks in America are still governed by “the slave codes”, he lamented that the “American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.” And with remarkable irony, Baldwin’s 1978 commemorative talk on Martin Luther King recalled an incident in Boston that same year where “young, white patriots attempted to bayonet a black American citizen with the American flag.”

With the tongue of white America
I don’t know which faith Ambassador Ray belongs to, but I hope he is Catholic. All the same Arupe found it fitting to invite him. Once there, he spoke with the tongue of White House, never the tongue of Luther or his black brethren back home in the deep, racist South of his and Luther’s birth. And the way to do it is to deliver an inert narrative on Luther King, without drawing deep lessons of America’s white racism as a persistent problem, both at home and abroad. It is to present white racism as a resolved problem in America, as a problem elsewhere in the world, well away from America. It is to present King as just “assassinated on April 4, 1968,” seemingly by an unknown, nameless, colourless assailant who is not a representative of white America, an agent of the American Government. It is to re-present Martin Luther King as a cow whip and prod in white hand to administer sharp punishment for errant behavior abroad, never as a pointer to America’s long, continuing hypocrisy that periodically needs black testimonies, black examples of “success” and “rise”. I found it curious that the Ambassador’s speech made no reference to the latest gun crime involving another political figure in America, at which six people died. It is a deadly recall, true today targeting a white woman politician, but tomorrow naturalizing a probable fatal shooting of an “incorrect” black politician who dares follow the footsteps of King. Why was drawing such a parallel so remote for the ambassador who fishes examples from Rhodesia of a remote past, apartheid of disguised present?

Making barbs of history inert
American ambassadors, more so if they are black, are paid to project racist oppression in America as bygone, as a bad memory, a bad past, never as a continuing contemporary challenge. True to mould, Ambassador Charles Ray makes that crucial transitional sentence which relocate this challenge to inertness of the past: “When we read Dr. King’s speeches and sermons, we hear him talking about a brighter future for all of us, in every country, not just America.” What follows from the Ambassador’s lips is “every country”, but not America. After all how can Luther speak to America when his life is being presented to the world by America itself?  Expectedly, the Ambassador adverts to Zimbabwe, to his Jesuits interlocutors to say: “In challenging times all over the world, the clergy have not been silent, but have been voices for hope and freedom, reconciliation and justice. Indeed, Zimbabwe has gone through and continues to face great challenges and controversies. In this era of change, I urge you to never let your voices be silent, but instead to let them rise to the rafters as King’s did, time and time again…. Like Dr. King, you are leaders of flocks who want and deserve a just and peaceful society. Your parishioners want to create progressive communities and better opportunities for their children, and you can guide them on the path to building this brighter future. Like Dr. King, may we not become silent about things that matter.” And things that matter are not left to individual Jesuit students to figure out. They relate to “democratic ideals such as freedom of speech, free and fair elections”, in short “civil rights”. And things that do not matter are left out, banished from the speech, minds and memories of the seminarians: sanctions, landlessness, sovereignty, a world free from American aggression, invasion and pillage.

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The opposition bank
It should not be difficult to see what some elements within the Catholic Church mean to do with that institution, as Zimbabwe slouches towards another poll. The groundwork is being laid, brick by brick, day by day. You do not need to be a prophet to know that the pastoral letter from the Bishops is a political statement made from a definite bank of the Zimbabwean political river. The statement abhors past suffering and the past is pre-inclusive where “structures of sin” were commissioned by the sinful conduct of an individual. It is past of no hostile actions from outside of the Republic. All evil came from within the political crib which can only be implied by when it lasted, by who it was not. Even then political partisanship obtrudes now and then. Such as when the backlog on the Global Political Agreement leads to “continued isolation of the country by most of the international community”. That statement cannot refer to sanctions as part of the outstanding issues, as such a postulate would indict “most of the international community.” It cannot be the issue of external interference, for that is what is being craved for under the guise of ending “continued isolation of the country by most of the international community”. The international community cannot be China, India, Brazil, Africa, Asia, Middle East with which Zimbabwe relates so amicably. It can only be Europe and America…. the West.

Dispersing ownership of the liberation struggle
Partisan politics do obtrude. As when there is a heavily connotative juxtaposition of political violence and the liberation struggle. Or when the burden of liberation is widely and thinly dispersed to “the efforts of those who were inside the country (both armed and unarmed), outside the country and by the international community”. It is as if the liberation struggle had no leaders, had no leading organizations guiding the whole process. It just happened the moment they were people inside and outside the country, armed and unarmed, people outside the country and “the international community”. Could this be the same “international community” from which the country is isolated? And did these people just emerge “armed”? What is meant by the “claim to have monopoly in the liberation struggle by any single sector or party”? Which other sectors, which other parties must claim the liberation struggle. The Catholic Church? The MDC formations? The British? The Americans? U-uh? Who else?

Which land, which diamonds?
Could this generalized populace the same hurting from sanctions? Could this generalized populace be the same to have demanded land, to be asking for the removal of sanctions which the pastoral letter so meticulously avoids? I said partisan politics obtrude. The Bishops want poverty tackled “by using proceeds from natural resources like diamonds, land, etc, for the development of the whole nation and all its citizens.” Which land? Communal land or that reclaimed through Third Chimurenga? Are the bishops implying embrace or acceptance of that action? Which diamonds? From Chiyadzwa or from Rio Tinto’s claims? What is the underlying principle when natural resources are used for the development of the whole nation and all its citizens? Are we about to see a radical social witness in the bishops, a recognition that Zimbabwe lays legitimate claim to all it has in and under its bounded territory? Or is what matters for this pastoral letter that which is not foreign controlled, foreign owned? You sense selective morality designed to damn a certain sector, a certain political party, for all that the bishops pretend to decry. For as long as Zimbabwe’s natural resources are in foreign hands, Christian morality and precepts do not apply or go dormant. But let a portion of those resources be reclaimed by Government, aa-ah, Christian morality kicks in with a vengeance.

What, which is State media?
Politics obtrude. References to the media by the bishops are to a sector, a party, never to all media which bear the burden of carrying messages, help suturing this riven country. It has to be the “State” media! To mean what? State-funded media? Which one is that? As I write, not a single media outfit in this country gets money from the State. None, which is why ZBC/TV is struggling to feed itself. Why is the boot on ZBC/TV and Zimpapers for Biti’s zero funding of the media budget of COPAC, National Healing or some such projects the bishops are so desirous of watching on television? Why are these media institutions, one a public company on the stock exchange, another surviving on viewership and advertising, expected to bear the national burden. Simply because time once was when the State used to fund one of them? Why are the bishops so out of touch, yet so liberally censorious? And at what point does the public media appropriately move in to promote COPAC business? During the adversarial stage of views gathering, well before there is a consensual draft? Which views would the so-called State media promote? What draft is there to talk about at this stage, indeed to present to the Nation without laying yourself open to partisanship? Have the righteous bishops paused to think or they are reflexively pitching for a political party?

The same old white church
It is so sad, very sad that my Church remains so ignorant, yet so partisan. Sadder that it remains steeped in white interest, which is why its language is the language of neo-colonial politics. Saddest that it still operates so far away from the poor, occupied and hurt, in spite of clear evidence of a hostile attack on the people by the West, or as if all the encyclicals on the global social concerns of the Roman Catholic Church, right back to Pope Leo XIII, are unreadable and should not speak to exploited and sanctioned Zimbabweans. Let’s us be fair to some priest and bishops in the Catholic Church. They supported the struggle, some of them, a few of them and their names ore known. Largely of Irish extraction, and taking enormous risks against the mother Church and the murderous Rhodesian war machine. As an official Church, the Rhodesian Roman Catholic church did not support the liberation struggle. It criticized certain aspects of settler racist Rhodesia. That did not make it a supporter of black liberation. Never. Let that be recorded so our bishops speak less overweeningly. Or seek to allocate a process the church was not a party to. The Church seems again at a crossroad, unsure or unwilling to pursue the common good. Which begs two questions: If Christ is the answer, what is the question. Body of Christ, what do you say of yourself?”  Let the debate begin. Icho!