The panic over a potential Cardinal Robert Sarah papacy has led many liberal Catholics to turn to crass and crude remarks.
In a tweet this week, one of his opponents referred to Sarah as ‘Black Wojtyla’, insinuating that he was similar to Robert Mugabe and ‘other African dictators’ as well as stating that he was a ‘liar’.
The escalation comes as other critics of Sarah, many of them American, have used his African background as a stick to beat him with. One prominent commentator, in a now deleted tweet, even insinuated that the cardinal was part of a network of African sleeper cells planted by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre during the Twentieth Century when he was responsible for the missionary work of the Holy Ghost Fathers.
The individual who compared Sarah to Mugabe was met with disgust online, with one person telling him ‘this is racist my man, check it’. His reply was, ‘yes, well…be it…’.
Despite often claiming to be more inclusive and tolerant of the church’s non European aspects, Modernists have long held suspicions towards the African church, since they see it as a bastion of orthodoxy and traditional Catholic thought.
This came to the fore in 2014, when Cardinal Walter Kasper called for a silencing of the fruitful African church, in order to listen instead to the rapidly collapsing German one. In an interview at the time that went around the world, he said:
But are African participants listened to in this regard?
No, the majority of them [who hold these views won’t speak about them].
They’re not listened to?
In Africa of course [their views are listened to], where it’s a taboo.
What has changed for you, regarding the methodology of this synod?
I think in the end there must be a general line in the Church, general criteria, but then the questions of Africa we cannot solve. There must be space also for the local bishops’ conferences to solve their problems but I’d say with Africa it’s impossible [for us to solve]. But they should not tell us too much what we have to do.
With a Universal Synod coming up in the next few years, these kinds of slurs do the church no favours.
