35 years – looking backward, looking forward

Msgr Martin Sirju reflects on his 35 years of priestly ministry.

Thirty-five years! Yes, some hard bumps along the way but I enjoyed the ride. Above all, happy years! As I look back I think of the giants who formed me: Fr Henry Charles who taught me to think critically, to see all sides of the matter at hand; Fr Michel de Verteuil CSSp who taught me to wield lectio divina as an all-encompassing meditative tool and a subversive one at times; Dr Everard Johnston who always drew our attention to the biblical text—how can you study a text you have not read? … more than once; Sr Dr Diane Jagdeo OP who revealed our ingrained patriarchy in systematics.

I wasn’t formed in the heyday of the 1970s but I inherited those minds, including one of the finest, Fr Clyde Harvey.

The local Church is deeply ingrained in me. Missionaries are a great blessing, and many Africans are now studying in our Archdiocese. That, however, must not diminish the necessity of adequate local clergy. I was looking at a documentary on Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). He was regarded as a great pastor who spent many years in Dakar and Gabon. He agreed wholeheartedly with Francis Libermann who believed the African Church could never become a truly local Church without African clergy, even while he (Lefebvre) was busy bringing in many Religious orders to his diocese.

Therefore, I have always tried in my pastoral practice to safeguard the integrity of the local Church. We must bow to Rome who has kept the deep, rich Roman Catholic tradition alive for centuries. One cannot fight with a trove of wisdom, martyrdom and liturgical creativity.

But Rome must bow to us at  times—to learn, to understand, to enrich its understanding of evangelisation and inculturation. No recent Pope has exemplified this as much and as insistently and defiantly as Francis.

The people. The Body of Christ. The Faithful. How you have taught me, guided me, challenged me, corrected me, encouraged me along the path of holiness and service.

Especially at this moment, your skills and charisms are needed more than ever, and your wisdom and learning are essential in helping priests to be better leaders. In this regard, I thank Archbishop Jason who was prophetic in seeing the need for better leadership and to prepare us to engage the digital age.

I think today as we move forward, a healthy sense of wokeism is necessary. Since it has been said by our scholars that we continue to work with an English grammar school type of education and a certain kind of plantation system is still with us, we need a healthy wokeism to critique these inherited structures.

This wokeism also helps us to unmask crime as a young black boys’ phenomenon without looking at systemic exclusion; examining things like enabling educational opportunities as opposed to providing educational opportunities.

It also keeps us awake to entranced patriarchal biases that still mark the theological enterprise and helps us to keep listening to women’s experience and scholarship as they enlighten every aspect of theology today.

Today’s era is one that demands a “hermeneutic of suspicion” vis a vis a temptation for clarity. As Pope Francis reminded us—we are living in a “change of era” not an era of change.

No scientific technological development signifies this so much as Artificial Intelligence and which Pope Leo has rightly discerned to be the major topic of his first encyclical.

What Pope Paul VI said in Octogesima Adveniens (1971) should confound us even more now: “In the face of such widely varying situations it is difficult for us to utter a unified message and to put forward a solution which has universal validity. Such is not our ambition, nor is it our mission”.

Now is not a time to rush but to wait; to be provisional; to recognise we can go wrong in our discernment; to correct ourselves, listen better, speak more clearly and with greater credibility. As the old saying goes: “The Church thinks in terms of centuries and plans for eternity.”

This clarity about where we are to go is indeed a work of the Holy Spirit and is revealed in interfaith accompaniment also. As John Paul II rightly saw in Redemptoris Missio (1990): The Holy Spirit’s presence and activity are universal, limited neither by time nor space. The Spirit affects “not only individual human hearts but also entire societies, histories, peoples, and cultures.”

This interfaith ingathering of the Spirit, discerned by the College of Bishops, is a challenging task and appears to me the only way forward.

Finally, Gen Z. Our crowds who dominate C3 and Southpark as well as the entertainment centres of the northwestern peninsula.

Many of them will become future leaders in the Church. They must be engaged, as Pope Frances wisely observed, causing quite some consternation and discomfort as he opened World Youth Day not only to Catholics but to any interested youth.

We need them. We have to listen to them. See through their provocations and “bohemian rhapsody”. They must listen to us, too. They will bring synodality to a new level, one I am not sure I will be ready to deal with.

Nonetheless, I look forward to these exciting and surprising years ahead. May God give me the childlike spirit to welcome them.