What was said at the meeting “The self, faith and the challenge of cultures” which saw protagonists, at the Rimini Meeting, Adrien Candiard, the Dominican who lives and studies in Islamic Cairo, and Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, president of conference of the Jesuits of Africa and Madagascar
Eyes on Adrien Candiard, the Dominican who lives and studies in Islamic Cairo. He seems to be the main witness of the debate on “The self, faith and the challenge of cultures”. The theme seems to be made on purpose to understand how to live, and coexist, with Islam, the great question of our time. He certainly does not regret those who bet on his testimony, since he explains this great question very well with the term and the perception of the “threat”.
We feel threatened, says Candiard! But who is threatened? “Are you threatened, or are we not, who have at home, in our Arab world, your clothes, your films, your words and also, for years, your armies, your aircraft carriers?”. Father Candiard explains that the problem is not the threat, real for everyone, but the perception of the threat, which everyone perceives only on the experience of their own reality, chasing a citadel, or a fortress, which protects them from the threat.
But if the importance of the weight of the threat and the reality of the threat in everyday lives and in the interpretation of reality has been expressed in an accurate and important way, it was the other guest who presented the perhaps least anticipated but essential theme. . The dialogue within us, which those who live in complex worlds come from culturally complex worlds, can present as an expression of their self. It was the case with Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar. His mother was a devotee of the goddess of the sea, mother of fertility, her father of the most important god.
Coming from a family of ancestral religion and culture, he has always known that we are born when we are given a name. It is in that moment that we become men. The name is not a barrier, he explained, but a door, or a bridge, which allows us to be reached and to reach others. This is why it makes us human beings, it makes us men. When he converted to Christianity, Father Orobator heard his parents propose a new name, Emanuel. The catechist considered his pagan name inadequate, or impossible, for a Christian. But he refused to call himself Emanuel, because he was born with his name Agbonkhianmeghe, and he had nothing to reject from his culture. Christianity expanded it, did not supplant it.
This became even clearer to him when the encyclical “Brothers all” came out. The brotherhood of which Francis speaks has found it fully and more widely in his language, in his culture, in Ubuntu, the cosmological friendship of his culture of origin. The cosmological friendship insists on the concept of Ubuntu puts the emphasis on relationships and mutual coexistence. The humanity of each individual is realized through the relationship with other human beings with whom one is in close relationship, but also with those with whom relationships are only remote. This friendship becomes cosmological Ubuntu, because one cannot be happy alone.
Ubuntu, Father Orobator explained, recognizes the original nature of the humanity of the other, which defines human dignity. When I had read about it La Civiltà Cattolica, in a beautiful essay this spring, I had the feeling that only the Jesuits knew how to link so clearly and profoundly so many cultures that find their expression and confirmation in human dignity. The same goes for Islam, which a Jesuit himself pointed out some time ago that he believes that God has conferred on every human being his inalienable rights by nature. It did not surprise me that Father Orobator is also a Jesuit, but it interested me that he also connected Ubuntu to that feeling of friendship for the earth, creation, which leads in his culture of origin to believe that every action done to defend the earth is an action to defend ourselves and all others, who live in and with this earth.
Dominationism seemed to me far from the cosmic gaze of brotherhood, and Father Obrador explained very well how this cosmic gaze is also African.