Religion, bigotry and atrocity

While reading up on the Rwanda massacres of 1994, I came across some recent stories concerning a priest named Emmanuel Uwayezu, who stands accused of participating in the atrocities. Uwayezu escaped to Italy. Under a slightly disguised name, he functioned as a priest in a small town near Florence. Last year, Human Rights Watch put together a report presenting evidence against Uwayezu, and that report led to his arrest by Interpol in October. He insists that he will prove his innocence at trial. We shall see.

Is he guilty? Maybe; I wouldn't be surprised. But his case is not the issue here.

What bothers me is the treatment this matter has received in the British press. From the Times of last May: "Discovery of ‘genocide’ priest taints Vatican."

This account gives the impression that the entire Rwanda genocide was just another one of those ghastly Popish plots: "In Rwanda in 1994, the Catholic church was the most powerful institution after the government..."

By comparison, here is a headline from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Priest suspected of genocide 'in Italy." That's a good, neutral headline. Granted, the syntax may be a little confusing, but at least there's no bias. If the Australians can write such a thing, why can't the British?

Time to be blunt: I am getting sick and tired of British anti-Catholic bigotry and paranoia. Whenever the Vatican is mentioned, the English turn into absolute raving fruit loops. Brits are just as wacky about the RCs as the LaRouchies are about the Brits.

Let's return to the Rwandan genocide. Let's look at some facts that British journalists do not like to discuss:

An Anglican bishop has been arrested by the United Nations over his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. At the same time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has been accused of failing to hold a church inquiry into the bishop’s continued ministry within the Anglican church despite allegations of serious crimes.

While in exile in Kenya, Bishop Samuel Musabyimana continued his ministry for seven years until charged at the end of April by the UN war crimes tribunal with four counts of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Wearing episcopal robes before the tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, the bishop pleaded ‘not guilty’ to allegations that he participated in the 1994 campaign to exterminate Tutsi civilians by instructing subordinates and militias to murder them.

Musabyimana sometimes celebrated holy communion at Nairobi’s Anglican cathedral. According to Lambeth Palace, David Gitari, the Archbishop of Kenya, gave him ‘cautious pastoral support’ after he fled there in 1994.

Yet from the moment Musabyimana arrived in Nairobi from his Rwandan diocese of Shyogwe, he was denounced as a genocide suspect. But Anglican leaders failed to act.

What made the pain of Rwanda even more unbearable was that clergy, including Anglican bishops, were implicated in planning and carrying out the slaughter.

Many suspect that the truth is even more devastating than that, that church leaders helped plan and took part in the murders of thousands of Rwandans. Four Anglican bishops, including former Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and Bishop Jonathan Ruhumuliza of Kigali, have been implicated, but it's unclear if the U.N. War Crimes Commission, now meeting in Tanzania, will seek to put them on trial, Birney said. One has been allowed back into Rwanda because of his age with no apparent retribution. "I think it's very telling," Birney said.

There was blame a-plenty in all of the Christian communities in Rwanda. At least the Catholics have gone on trial. The Anglicans, it seems, have had an easier time escaping justice.

Only one religion came out of that charnelhouse looking good: Islam.

Islam found new adherents because the imams refused to draw a distinction between Hutu and Tutsi, and called on Muslims to oppose the killing. It was the only practising religion in Rwanda uncompromised by the genocide.

The next time some right-wing "Christian" ninny starts caterwauling about the alleged Islamic threat, mention Rwanda.

Anyone in the western world who wonders how the entire Hutu population of Rwanda could have fallen into a fever of homicidal mania should take a look at our own history books. Rwanda is the mirror held up to our own natures. The vituperation between Hutu and Tutsi can be regarded as a variant of the antipathy that has historically existed between Protestant and Catholic. The Rwandans had a 100 day killing spree instead of a 30 years' war; other than that, the dynamics aren't so very different.

I just don't get British anti-Catholicism. These days, most people in the U.K. are not very religious. Why, then, do they express a particular hatred toward one denomination? If the average Briton had a derisive stance toward all of Christianity -- or all of religion -- I'd find the attitude much more understandable and defensible. Yet they persist in an attitude of Us-versus-Them and Root For the Home Team, as they continually bash a sect regarded as foreign and alien and swarthy and un-English and capital-O Other.

For example, British television often broadcasts Biblical documentaries featuring one Robert Beckford. He is an alleged theologian. He is also an idiot. His documentaries are exercises in anti-Catholic propaganda which sink to sub-Dan-Brownian depths in their inane attempts to portray the Vatican as a conspiratorial powerhouse.

We have an increasing amount of evidence indicating that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who had to hide his faith because he lived at a time when his co-religionists were executed in public in front of cheering spectators. Are modern Britons proud of that history?

Do any of the rebellious kids wearing Guy Fawkes masks have any idea who Fawkes was and what motivated him?