CNS STORY: South African archbishop disputes charges of racism in church

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CNS Story:

SAFRICA-RACISM May-22-2007 (560 words) xxxi

South African archbishop disputes charges of racism in church

By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg has disputed charges of racism in the placement of priests in his diocese and said he does not understand "why an African priest would be so keen to serve a white parish when the need is greater in the African community."

It is "not necessarily false to claim that the allocation of priests in parishes in the Diocese of Johannesburg is done along racial lines," the archbishop, who is president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, said in the May 16-22 issue of the Cape Town Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross.

"We are not necessarily colorblind. In the placement of priests, reality is taken into consideration," he said, noting that Johannesburg Diocese has 30 African (black) priests and 50 African parishes, 44 white priests and 46 white parishes, and eight mixed-race or Indian priests serving eight parishes.

"There is a greater need for priests in African parishes. Most of the African priests serve two parishes," Archbishop Tlhagale said, noting that they speak their parishioners' languages fluently "and understand the culture of the parishioners."

While some white priests prefer to work among white parishioners, "a significant number" choose to work in black townships, he said. Also, most suburban parishes in the diocese "have an increasingly healthy racial mix," he said.

In April, the Pretoria News quoted an unnamed Johannesburg priest as saying that, if the church in Johannesburg were audited, the audit would show that black priests work only with black communities despite their preparation to work anywhere.

The newspaper also quoted allegations that South African seminaries accept candidates according to their color and segregate them.

"Our seminaries are no longer segregated," Archbishop Tlhagale said, noting that "there simply are no longer many young white men coming forward to train for the priesthood. That is the stark reality."

Father Dabula Mpako, a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Pretoria, claimed in the Pretoria News report that churches in black communities are still seen as missions, not as parishes like their white counterparts, and that Catholic schools in white areas still have better resources than those in black areas.

"Black parishes are urged to become self-reliant communities," Archbishop Tlhagale said, noting that "this is an integral part of their dignity as a community. An attitude of entitlement is certainly not part of a self-sustaining church.

"The newspaper pointed out that traditionally white Catholic schools have better resources than black Catholic schools. So what?" the archbishop said in the article.

"If black parents want their children to be educated in their Catholic schools and not state schools, then they have to find the means to do so," he said, noting that "it is below people's dignity to keep harping back on the sins of apartheid."

Apartheid, South Africa's system of forced racial segregation, officially ended in 1994 with an all-race general election.

The archbishop said "it will probably take another generation before we see the emergence of a genuine South African nation shorn of all racial epithets.

"For example, when the government seeks to redress the inequalities of the past through black empowerment programs, young white South Africans cry foul. They feel that they are being discriminated against because of the sins of their fathers," he said.

END

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