Pope tells african bishops to battle witchcraft

[Leçi]

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Fight-witchcraft-Pope-urges-bishops-20111029

seriously...what? I know there are rituals done there that involve bodyparts of animals and humans (sometimes who are still alive) but there are also witches burned to death. Women and children are killed or tortured for it, It seems the pope is stuck in the middle ages.

 

[Prolescum]

Eh, one religion trying to usurp another.

Reminds me of a great novel called The Poisonwood Bible about a Christian missionary and his family moving to the (Belgian at the time) Congo in the fifties to convert the locals (who frustrate the pastor by including "tata Jesus" into their pantheon).

 

[Lame Name Dame]

Actually for once I approve of Benedict's action.
(hi there, just came out of lurking)
The juice of the message, if I read the article right, is not to fight witches but the belief in witchcraft - which is killing people in Africa. Some examples from news articles:

In June, Simon Manuel Gomes's hut was burned down by his son, who was drunk. All of Mr Gomes's possessions and food were destroyed.
This happened after his son had visited a curandeiro. The healer had told him that his impotence was a result of him having been bewitched by his own father.

children accused of witchcraft are beaten, cut, burned, and sometimes killed. Many are chased from their communities. Stigmatized and unable to return to their families, they end up abandoned, on the streets of big cities. Kinshasa (capital of the DR Congo) alone harbours more than 20,000 street children who have been accused of witchcraft. In the Central African Republic it is an offence to be a "witch" and prisons are full of children and adults accused of sorcery.

A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother's face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.

Ignorance and superstition mingle with cynicism - unwanted, troublesome children are more likely to be declared witches and parents can wash their hands of them among the applause of the local community. Just imagine what can happen when controversies about heirlooms or property are involved.
Appallingly, Western missionaries seem to have a part in the practice:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver

Incidentally, Sarah Palin took flak for associating with these people:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-witch-hunter-anoints_b_128805.html

You'll never count me among Ratzinger's supporters, but I wish success on this particular initiative. Of course it's harder to do, when your own textbook has stuff like "thou shalt not let a witch live", and prejudice is harder to kill when it is a convenient facade for personal interests.

 

[Leçi]

Yea allright, it seems that he wants to fight the customs that causes people to shun and kill people because they were accused of witchcraft. Then again it seems sex before marriage is also one of the customs he would like to see dissapear. He wants Angolans to resist everything that contradicts the gospel.
I guess it has good points but also alot of bad points. What about homosexuality? It could just take the place of witchcraft.

 

[CommonEnlightenment]

The juice of the message, if I read the article right, is not to fight witches but the belief in witchcraft - which is killing people in Africa.

Yep, when people realize this simple but profound 'truth', I predict that human to human conflict would significantly decrease.

Very Good........ Carry on.

 

[DepricatedZero]

What about homosexuality? It could just take the place of witchcraft.

At least it's real? There won't be 20,000 homeless, abandoned, maimed and beaten homosexual 6 year olds.

I don't think homosexuality is likely to breed the same frantic and widespread panic as something as nebulous as witchcraft. Compare to the Inquisition or the Salem Trials. I want to clarify before this next part that I'm as gay friendly as you get(or as one friend described it "straight but not narrow") and don't believe in any fashion that oppressing homosexuality is good, or that it should be hidden, etc. However, at least it can be. Accusations can be denied, spouses of the opposite sex taken to 'prove' orientation. That happens in the US still, and I suspect it's with a depressing frequency. Fighting for equality there is a vastly different animal than fighting for equality between muggles and witches.

Right now, all it takes is a rumor of witchcraft, and daddy's coming home to drive nails into your head.

So for once I agree with the Pope Rat, if he means to stop the belief in witchcraft. However, if he means to simply spur on the witch hunters he can die in a fire.

 

[Lame Name Dame]

if he means to simply spur on the witch hunters he can die in a fire.

It doesn't seem like that's what he had in mind:

"The abominable effects are the marginalisation and even the murder of children and the elderly [who are] condemned by the false precepts of witchcraft," he said.

The Catholic Church in recent years has warned against card- and palm-readers, self-appointed seers or mages and unsubstantiated miracles such as weeping statues - not ascribing them to deals with demons or witchcraft, just saying they're scams. Of course, for them it's sound business practice, getting read of competition. :twisted: It could also explain why more and more people turn to other denominations of Christianism, ie the ones who guarantee that if you just really believe, money, health and good-looking women will just fall from the sky and land onto your lap. :roll:

I'd take the missionary who tries to convince people that Grandma did not cause locusts to devour your crop, over the missionary concedes that she did, but she was under Satan's influence, and "exorcises" her. The lesser of two evil, and all that. Unfortunately, people still wrapped in animistic beliefs will run in flocks to the one who "chases demons".

Of course this will still not affect other sources of strife in the continent, such as neocolonialism, piracy, AIDS, civil wars, drought and famine. It's just a tiny step in the right direction over this one limited issue. And Ratzinger still sucks at everything else. Okay?

As per sex outside of wedlock in Africa, that's a can of python-sized worms that would need a thread in itself.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Anything to distract them from child rape?

 

[nmm123]

Well it's one religion against another yet another chapter in the catholic church

 

[nasher168]

Well it's one religion against another yet another chapter in the catholic church

Yes, although witch doctors do sometimes indulge in things like muti killings of young children, which (strange though it seems) rather gives the Catholic Church the moral high ground. So the various witchcraft-based cults are certainly something worth combating in the area, but problems arise when the Bishops start to accuse children of witchcraft, and perform exorcisms on them which can sometimes turn very nasty or even deadly.

 

[Gramarye]

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[Vanlavak]

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

The African continent is cmpletly fucked up, the only quick solution would be to erradicate it from the map and start a new. It is not that bad of a deal to try and erradicate witchcraft from those countries, however lets no forget that there are already anti-witchcraft movements that are acusing peple of being witches and burning them to death. It is either kill a bunch of inocent people or kill a bunch of inocent people, it is still a fucked up way to live. Africans are just way to unedcuated to think for themselves, they try to look up to the modern world while having a tribesman mentality and that could never work, education above all should be the way to go.

 

[Nemesiah]

I believe that the church is only looking at it's bottom line; which in my mind is:

More believers = more political power and more money.

Yes belief in witchcraft should disapear BUT I higly doubt that the pope has the best interest of africans in his heart rather than the politicall influence of his church in the continent.