18, December 2019
Cardinal Sarah’s profound meditation on the God of love 0
Having mentioned an interview between the late Sir Jonathan Miller and Norman Lebrecht in a recent blog on Advent, I am now thinking of another cultural giant who has recently died: Clive James. A friend has drawn my attention to an interview first broadcast in 2001 between James and the novelist Piers Paul Read in the former’s TV series, “Talking in the Library”.
James makes an interesting contrast to Miller, for whom religious belief appears to have been a matter of utter indifference. James, a cultural and literary highbrow – and a serious poet – who spent much of his life and energies in a lowbrow milieu such as television, recognised the power of the Christian faith, even admitting to Read that “If I were capable of belief, I’d be a happier man.” For him, as with so many of those who reject faith, the “insoluble problem” is how to square evil and the God of love: where was God in Nazi Germany, he wanted to know, further stating “I am with Ivan Karamazov” – a reference to the passage in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that always haunts those who read it, whether Christian or not. Describing himself as a Manichean, he believed “Evil has a mind” and that Hitler was “Satan’s representative”. Yet it seems James had not chosen, or been driven, to pursue the matter any further.
Such comments always make me ponder the gap between Christians and someone like James, prepared to go so far in recognition of the mystery of evil, but no further. It reminds one that faith is truly a gift, something utterly outside and beyond mere human and intellectual understanding, however rich and well-informed it might be.
As I am a book blogger I should mention here that I have been reading the third volume of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s trilogy, titled The Day is Now Far Spent (Ignatius). For those who have not come across the first two books, they are God or Nothing, and the Power of Silence. Like them, this volume is framed in a long “conversation” with the French journalist Nicolas Diat, and also like them it is in a different league from almost all current spiritual books, probably because it is written in a very direct and personal style by a man who is patently holy.
Sarah is not writing as a theologian or an academic but as someone whose life is simply immersed in prayer. His triptych (as he prefers to describe his three books) is a profound meditation on the God of love, alongside his palpable anguish at the current sexual abuse crisis in the Church – the “mystery of betrayal”, as he describes it. Indeed, his foreword is headed “Alas, Judas Iscariot” and he calls his writing “the cry of my soul!” It is not the territory of a TV show.
Sarah is conscious that “In a little while I will appear before the eternal Judge…what will I say to him then?” Addressing the faithful directly, he challenges them: “If you think your priests and bishops are not saints, then be one for them. Do penance [and] fast to make reparation for their defects and their cowardice.” Accusations against particular individuals are not part of the Cardinal’s vocabulary, as they might in other hands have been; he writes as a saint would write, asking his readers to become saints themselves, for the sake of the Church. “How much God loves us!” he points out, qnd marvels that “he consents to handing over his Eucharistic Body into the sacrilegious hands of miserable priests.” This is plain speaking indeed.
Addressing in particular the “spiritual and religious collapse” in the priesthood, Sarah makes it clear that priestly celibacy should never be regarded as a discipline that can be changed but “the seal of the Cross on our lives as priests.” He goes on to say that “Anyone who would dare to break and ruin this ancient treasure…by seeking to separate the priesthood from celibacy would hurt the Church and the priesthood of the poor, chaste and obedient Christ.”
On the kind of false ecumenism that appears to romanticise paganism the Cardinal, who was born and who grew up in Guinea, gives a note of warning: “You have to be an African to dare to say…that these pagan “traditional religions” are zones of fear and lack of freedom”. He is also critical of the phrase, “anonymous Christians”, coined by Karl Rahner, stating that it “runs the risk of extinguishing our sense of the urgency of mission. Do we still have the anguish about salvation that gripped St Dominic?” Reminding the lay faithful of how we should participate at Mass, Sarah draws attention to the Our Lady and St John at Golgotha: “They were there, silently allowing themselves to be penetrated, imbued and shaped by the mystery of the Cross.” Such quotations provide a brief taste of the tenor of this profound book.
Cardinal Sarah’s triptych should be on the shelves of every Catholic, to remind us that the Christian faith, unlike politics – of which we have had our fill these last few days – is not about focus groups, Twitter trends and catchy slogans; it is about self-transformation, self-sacrifice and the pursuit of holiness. In a fanciful way, I ask myself: what if Clive James had happened to interview this holy cardinal for his TV series rather than the Catholic novelist Piers Paul Read. As it was, these two clever, bookish men chatted in a cordial and civilised way, comfortable in each other’s company, neither of them seriously challenging the other, though Read did say at one point that he was “very conscious of the grace of God and my need of God.” One had the impression that as a well-brought up Englishman he felt it would not be proper to go into more detail on so personal a subject; and as a maverick Australian polymath, more comfortable in the world of books and authors than any spiritual preoccupations James did not pursue the question further.
Cardinal Sarah, an African who was converted from pagan animism as a child, alongside his parents, would not have played by the implicit rules of the interview format: he would gently but insistently have forced James out from his comfort zone, into the real world of good and evil that Dostoyevsky understood so insightfully. Perhaps even a talker as brilliant as James might have paused to contemplate the meaning of life and mortality; what might lie beyond the blandishments of fame and his millions of fans.
Source: Catholic Herald
18, December 2019
Ambazonia: The lies the 11 Grand Masters of Maryland tell themselves about the Swiss Peace Initiative 0
Ever since the so-called Swiss Peace Initiative was made public to the international community, several Southern Cameroons civilians have been killed by the French Cameroun army deployed to Ambazonia. Recently, three French Cameroun soldiers were killed in the Northern zone of Ambazonia. The three were reportedly killed in a firefight with the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces. The three represented the 23rd and 24th French Cameroun deaths in Southern Cameroons since the attack on the late Retired General Tataw James convoy en route to Mamfe.
Correspondingly, that’s a modest count compared to the old days when the Manyu Odeshi Warriors and the Red Dragons of Lebialem were actively around in the towns of Mamfe and Fontem and the Great Nso Warriors ran the resistance in Jakiri and French Cameroun army deaths were three times higher. Nonetheless, French Cameroun military deployments have been limited to the urban towns with very little or no involvement in fighting in rural areas. Still, there’s reason for concern. Through just some few months into the Swiss Peace Initiative, more Southern Cameroonian civilians have been killed than in any year since the revolution started— a peace initiative which was supposed to mark the end of the French Cameroun combat mission in Southern Cameroons.
The latest Southern Cameroons deaths occurred in the midst of ongoing and reportedly intensive and productive discussions between the Swiss government, a Southern Cameroons group known as Sako’s IG, and, to a lesser extent, the Ambazonia Interim Government. To his credit, and based especially on his public statements, the Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima appears serious in his desire to end the more than three year old indecisive French Cameroun war in Southern Cameroons. The complete absence of any French Cameroun delegation appointed by President Biya, the early withdrawal from the talks by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the continues attacks on Southern Cameroons civilians, demonstrate that while Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government are working from a position of strength as they pursue a “talk-and-resistance” strategy eerily reminiscent of that of the ANC in South Africa, the 11 Grand Masters of the so-called Sako IG are simply seeking for relevance and cheap Ambazonia money.
It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, for Southern Cameroons to win in any meaningful sense this war of liberation if something is not done and done in a hurry to put an end to this international childishness being demonstrated by the disgraced Samuel Ikome Sako and his gang using a group of half-baked Southern Cameroons intellectuals in the USA. This is obvious as all the empirical evidence, from statements from US lawmakers, members of the UK House of Commons, the African Union, and deliberate neglect by major Southern Cameroons donors’ points to impending Yaoundé victory or perpetual stalemate.
Two recurring problems best explain the poor international image of the Southern Cameroons war of liberation: Sako, Chris Anu and their acolytes serving as anti-anything-President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Vice President Yerima and the fear that Southern Cameroons may just be another South Sudan. This is why the 11 Grand Masters in Maryland are still trading the Swiss Peace Initiative to many ill-informed Southern Cameroonians while the Ambazonia Interim Government including Vice President Dabney Yerima long found the Swiss peace talks both insulting and intellectually bereft.
Leaving aside all the high-level, macro analysis and wealth of available information being put out there by the renowned Boh Herbert, the one million dollar question is: Southern Cameroonians and the Swiss are talking in Geneva, but is anyone in Yaoundé listening?
Day-by-day, the French Cameroun army is flooding in more troops and stationing them in key Southern Cameroons locations and the Ambazonia Restoration Forces are essentially under siege and facing daily attacks often within sight of their camps. It is shameful that young Southern Cameroons boys and girls are in Ground Zero desperate to break the French Cameroun army siege, protect women and children including the old and the sick, and resist just a bit more for help to come from the Amba Bonds Project and others in the diaspora passing for front line leaders are instead playing dangerous political games with some like Cho Ayaba creating local militia, arming and paying them, and positioning them (with Francophone advisers) in Southern Cameroons villages.
Like Dr Cho Ayaba of the ADF, Minister Paul Atanga Nji of French Cameroun is also empowering local warlords, favoring some Southern Cameroons tribal fighters over others and Southern Cameroonians who are putting themselves first before the resistance are indirectly helping the French Cameroun surrogate.
Most of the Ambazonia semi illiterates that were incorporated into the defunct Restoration Council headed by Mr. Kometa have transformed into warlord-led militias in Europe and the US and are using social media to send out wrong signals about the Ambazonia Vice President and the Interim Government in Ground Zero now littered with locally controlled armed bands. And slowly but surely, Ground Zero is beginning to view as illegitimate anything coming from the diaspora with whom they had far more in common under President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe.
The whole charade of people seeking attention and staging swearing-in ceremonies and issuing medals of honour to cronies and publicizing them on social media has left many both in Ground Zero and in the diaspora frustrated, angry, and, finally, deeply disoriented which is why we of the Cameroon Concord News Group find the whole conversation over the Swiss peace talks a little ridiculous, and very absurd. To be accurate, shameful, disgusting and disgraceful!
The only reason why the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is still in this war since the arrest of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Nigeria is the character and determination of this new generation of Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero who understand that the French Cameroun military cannot win, cannot even marginally alter the outcome in troubled Southern Cameroons and to a greater extend the poor handling of the crisis by French Cameroun’s 86 year old President Biya and his Beti Ewondo kinsmen.
Maybe President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe will actually be the one to end Southern Cameroons’s longest war; maybe he won’t. But what is actually passing for a Swiss Peace Initiative in Geneva will not change anything in Southern Cameroons. The civil war will wage on, the Ambazonia Interim Government under Comrade Dabney Yerima’s stewardship will generally emerge triumphant. Thus, when Southern Cameroonians finally get to Buea, whether soon or years from now, expect most Ambazonians to target men and women like Sako Ikome, Chris Anu, Elvis Kometa and Irene Ngwa.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai