If you’re wondering why I’m posting this old news, it ties in with the previous two blurbs from 12/1/2005 & 11/26/2005. (These blurbs are so long, that you might rather click on the “Printer-friendly version”, just to have an easier time seeing it on your screen.) But basically, I’m posting this admission of ancestor worship, because Anglican Archbishop Ngundane said animal sacrifice is not ancestor worship.

Is it, or isn’t it?

I guess that depends on if you’re a Roman Catholic or an Anglican, which Archbishop you want to believe, or who one’s audience is, and how one would want to promote it with the least amount of politically-incorrect outrage.

“African pope ‘not likely’”,

by Duncan Guy, News24.com, 5/4/2005

Excerpts:

“In Rome the cardinals enjoy a huge number of Africans becoming Christians but they don’t think we are ready [for high positions] … they fear paganism might come through the back door,” said SACBC spokesperson Archbishop Buti Tlhagale.

Speaking to reporters in Johannesburg, Tlhagale expressed little hope of Pope John Paul II’s successor coming from Africa, because the church in Europe looked on its African congregation as living half in a pagan world.

[snip]

“Africans fight for what they want but I don’t think we have a strong lobby to elect an African as a pope,” he said.

He added that the Catholic Church was “like a train that will not take a sharp turn”.

[snip]

Tlhagale credited the late pontiff for his efforts towards enculturation.

“The pope in a unique manner stressed that each culture can be used to understand the gospel methods.”

This, he stressed, addressed reality as nearly all African Catholics - and Christians - also practised ancestor worship, both on the continent and in the diaspora.

[snip]

He doesn’t need to accuse the church in Europe of their alleged perception, when he admits it himself in the very same article. But it is interesting that there is no emphasis on ritual animal sacrifice in the articles I find on inculturation. I wonder why that is kept off the radar screen….