Adding Real Blood To The Mass

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from Ecumenical News International.  A South African archbishop has suggested that a Libation of Blood, a ritual pouring as a symbolic sacrifice honoring the ancestors of black Africans should be incorporated into local Catholic liturgies such as the mass.  Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Bloemfontein said recently, sacrifice to the ancestors continues to be a very common practice among Africans.  The slaughtering of an animal, a cow or sheep takes place wherever there is a funeral or marriage feast, or in times of illness, unemployment, family feuds or the birth of a child.

Tom:

Dave, as a former Catholic, I think this is pushing it a little bit.  I’m sure there are, particularly traditional Catholics out there who would just go crazy over something like that.  But the Archbishop, he makes a point in the article, I’ll pick up on that.  He said the practice should be considered in the context of enculturation according to which local indigenous culture and values are a means of presenting, reformulating and living the Christian faith, he suggested.  Now Catholic, or otherwise this is not the Christian faith.

Dave:

Well, of course black Africans are making sacrifices to their ancestors.  Of course they are still involved in ancestral worship, does that make it right?  We’re supposed to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.  We are supposed to deliver people from ancestral worship, from the false ideas.  I mean, by this idea then, enculturation, you would accept anything that anybody does.  Any witchdoctor, whether it’s in Africa, the South Pacific or in Scandinavia, people have had all kinds of pagan practices down through history, today in North America, North American witchcraft, Indian witchcraft, the medicine men and so forth.  This is so much a part of their culture; you cannot separate it from their culture.  Therefore, because it’s part of the culture, does that mean then we must incorporate it into Christianity?  It doesn’t mean that Christianity is going to destroy culture, meaning some of the purely cultural customs, how you live you know, the houses you live in, the kind of clothes you wear, the tools you have, the way you do your farming.  This is culture, but you can’t say because their religion is part of their culture, therefore we must not interfere with their religion.  That doesn’t make sense at all because religion will take people to hell.  Now, what we’re doing then, according to this Archbishop we are going to compromise Christianity. We’re going to confuse it. We’re going to mix the pagan practices in with Christianity.  So, then what are we honoring here at the Mass?  I’ve got a lot of problems with the Mass, first of all because it denies the sufficiency and the once for all sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.  But it is being made even worse now because we are mixing pagan practices in with this.  Tom, we were in Africa recently and this is a major problem there that evangelicals recognize.  You’ve got people who come from America, maybe a Benny Hinn or someone else, well meaning and they have these huge crusades and people, supposedly, believe in Jesus, and you give the reports of the thousands or hundreds of thousands who got saved, and the next thing you know these people are back to their ancestor worship. They are back to the belief in the pagan deities that they had before.  Have they become Christians?  I don’t think that you can be a Christian and also a pagan at the same time.I don’t think you can believe in the true God and in false gods. And in fact, God says that in the very first commandment that He gives to the people of Israel.You shall have no other gods before me, I am God, and there is none else.  And now we’re going to say well, but because they had these beliefs, it was part of their culture then we’re going to incorporate it with Christianity.  That won’t go!  It certainly doesn’t agree with “earnestly contending for THE faith once for all delivered.”

Tom:

Dave, there’s another point here.  This bishop is black, he’s African, he grew up in this culture obviously, but now he has a Catholic world view, there are many things within Catholic ritual and liturgy that are consistent with pagan worship.

Dave:

They incorporate it wherever they go.

Tom:

Well, for example, ancestor worship, praying to the saints, praying to the dead, this is what ancestor worship for the Africans is.  So I could see how this bishop would say, “Look, we can enculturate here, because we do have some common ideas.  But these are not Biblical ideas, the Bible condemns as necromancy, communicating with the dead completely.

Dave:

Tom, it’s not just the bishop, the Pope when he visited West Africa he said to the voodoo priest, “You don’t have to give up anything to become Christians, and you worship ancestors, so do we.

Tom:

Well, they would say, venerate.What’s the fine line between those? 

Dave:

You go to Haiti, they say Haiti is 85% Catholic, 110% voodoo, and every voodoo ceremony begins with prayers to the Catholic saints.  You go to Rio de Janeiro on a holiday, and you will see the Catholics on their knees on the ground by the graves praying, not only to their dead ancestors, but to the saints as well.  So, Catholicism has in fact incorporated, this is nothing new, it  has incorporated the culture, the religion wherever it has gone, and that is not Biblical and it is destructive of the true faith.