Religion: Catholics in Africa

Priests passing through the lobby of Washington’s Shoreham Hotel last week found themselves directed to the specially set-up bar (beer and soft drinks) by a sign advising: “Getting wild? You’ll be tamed at the Lion’s Den.” Except for this convention-style japery, the eighth annual meeting of Roman Catholic mission-sending societies was occupied with sober reports, many of them dealing with a single mission area: Africa.

New York’s (and TV’s) Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, No. 1 U.S. Catholic-missions official, gave the keynote speech (“The future harmony on the organ of humanity will be played on the black keys of Africa”), but the meeting’s impetus came from an encyclical issued last Easter by Pope Pius XII, in which he warned that “atheistic materialism has spread its virus of division through various regions of Africa.” At least one speaker, Father J. Alfred Richard of the White Fathers, linked Communism with the spread of Islam. Communists seek to weaken a powerful enemy, Christianity, said Father Richard, by fostering the spread of Islam, because they feel that modern Moslems have suffered a loss on conviction, lack bolstering authorities for their faith.*

A heartening sign for the church: there are 1,500 native African priests, including 25 native bishops, supplementing the work of 9,000 Catholic missionaries, and the native clergy is growing at the rate of 200 to 300 new priests a year. U.S. Catholics were chided by Father Ralph Wiltgen of the Society of the Divine Word for a “certain smugness” about their financial contributions (about 70% of the total) to Catholic missions and for the small U.S. representation (5%) among mission clergy and lay workers.

One U.S. Catholic singled out for praise at the conference: St. Louis Real Estate Man Oliver Lafayette Parks (an old airman who founded Parks Air College, donated it after the war to the Catholic St. Louis University). Parks received the church’s World Mission Award for popularizing mission work. His program: an organization of about 1,200 businessmen, each of whom donates 25¢ a day to missions by cutting the price of his lunch or otherwise not spending a quarter, offers a daily prayer for missions.

*Of 220 million Africans, 90 million are Moslems, 90 million are animists. The 40 million Christians include roughly 19 million Catholics, 12 million Protestants and 8,000,000 members of Eastern Orthodox churches.