The World Cup obviously is a money-spinning event. Its owners, the world football association FIFA, is milking the tournament relentlessly, especially in the strict enforcement of sponsorship prerogatives — which means that paying spectators may be ejected even from publicly-owned property for drinking the wrong brand of cola or, indeed, a locally produced beer. This is the mercenary world of sporting competitions — and local entrepreneurs will also want a piece of the action.

However, local business must be guarded: many, perhaps most, visiting international fans will be experienced travellers who can readily spot a rip-off (that is, charges above adjusted high-season rates). Should the exploitation of football fans take on endemic proportions, then this will reflect very poorly on South Africans at a time when the country is hoping to present its best side to the world.

So it would be inappropriate for airlines to hike their prices unreasonably, even if demand should be high. The economics of supply and demand neither dictate nor force a seller or service provider to pump up tariffs. And in cases where such a service provider is a parastatal that always has an eye on the taxpayer for bailouts, extortionist strategies of raising profits would be particularly shameful. Moreover, it is not desirable that local business unrelated to the World Cup should be impaired by inflated prices.

Visitors to South Africa may well swallow the bitter pill of higher prices, even if they may grumble about it as they return home. But for the entrepreneur, the short-term profits on offer for a month will not compensate for the fury their regular local patrons will rightly feel at greatly increased prices.

Indeed, South African consumers must sound a warning now that they will not tolerate being overcharged by those service providers and retailers whom they ordinarily patronise. Consumers must make it clear that establishments which hike their prices unreasonably during the four weeks of the World Cup should no longer expect their loyalty when the visitors to South Africa have left.

Defenders of sharp price increases will glibly refer to the unconstrained nature of the market economy. Others might call the random inflation of prices greed. In Christian tradition, avarice (one of the seven deadly sins) is repeatedly condemned. St Paul went as far as classifying the greedy in the same category as idol-worshippers, the sexually immoral and robbers (1Cor 5:9-11).

As Christians, we must beware the uncompromising greed produced by events such as the World Cup. Meanwhile, informal traders and small businesses operating in zones allocated to World Cup events fear that they will be prevented from exercising their daily trade in June and July.

Where such fears threaten to be realised, it is our Christian obligation to stand in solidarity with those whose livelihood is relegated to the dictate of World Cup greed.

Proposition 40 of the African Synod on the candidates for priesthood calls for a solid intellectual formation, for moral, spiritual and pastoral, human growth of the candidates. It thus calls on formators to help candidates attain a spiritual renewal that enables them to conform their lives in Christ and beyond the their tribal affiliation in order to be effective ministers of reconciliation, justice and peace.

This inspired me and triggered another thought. In the wake of the sexual abuse scandal, the Church, especially in the West, has acted quickly to re-examine the question of formation to try and prevent similar cases. Here we have what I want to call an inculturated formation that takes the form and the content sensitive to the issues in the area where those  preparing for the ministry will serve.

My concern, and indeed my question, is this: has the African Church not encountered issues surrounding the formation of priests pressing and critical enough to send our hierarchy to the drawing board so as to come up with a programme to propose (to the relevant Vatican dicastery) for the formation of the priests working in Africa? Or are we waiting to see how the seminaries in the West are going so that we can borrow what they are doing?

The Kenyan theologian Fr Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator SJ has observed in reference to the 2009 Synod for Africa: “Wherever we look, Africa yearns for reconciliation, justice, and peace,” seen in the multitudes victims of injustice and people end up being refugees. He added: “Examples abound of how Africa has been torn asunder by tribalism and ethnicity.”

How much has the African Church responded to these aspects in training priests whose ministry is coloured by issues of reconciliation, justice and peace? Has it been enough to organise seminars for one or two weeks during eight years of formation?

The first African Synod was in April 1994, around the same time as the genocide in Rwanda. How much, did that awake the African Church to see how tribalism can be an important aspect in formation of priests who often are to minster among tribes that suspect one another and are ever in conflict?

If that is not serious enough, are there not cases where both religious and priests in Africa are implicated in fanning tribalism and conflict? At the 2009 synod, Cardinal Polycarp Pengo of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, was quoted saying: “It is sad to have to state that there are allegations against some of us pastors being involved either through our omissions or even by direct commissions in these conflicts.”

Fr Agbonkhianmeghe refers the violence in Kenya of 2008 following the election: “The veil of tranquillity covering religious life was torn to shreds by tribal and ethnic sentiments as sisters turned against sisters and brothers against brothers. Professing the same vows and promoting the same charism did not shield some religious communities from the atrocious strife and divisive sentiments that assailed the rest of the Kenyan society.” And I fully agree with him when he says: “What happened in Kenya gives an indication of the larger continental profile.” Here we come face to face with one of the many problems of Africa.

A  participant spoke of the recurring remark in the Synod Hall that went like this: “Tribal or ethnic blood was still much thicker than the blood of Christ.” Tribalism is a serious issue not only for civil society but also very much present in and suffered by the Church—so much so that, in some cases, the nominations of bishops, parish priests or other important diocesan offices have not escaped this mess.

What are we waiting for? Don’t these cases deserve urgent and practical action to influence the structure and the content of the ministry? The synod’s Proposition 32 called for a manner of evangelisation well adapted to the pressing needs of local churches. But how is that possible if a minister’s training is so lightly connected with the real needs on the ground?

I think here is just one area where the African Church needs to rise and take up her mat and walk. She needs to be creatively and responsibly bold to propose a formation programme of her priests that surely takes care of a priest formed for the universal Church, but at the same taking seriously his role as pastor of a specific flock.

This would require not so much specialised formation but simply the type that accommodates fields pertinent and relevant to the local Church.

In his apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus of November 2009, Pope Benedict wrote: “In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately.” He did not name them.

It is known that the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is among the keenest to want reunification with the Church of Rome. This group was founded in 1991 as a reaction against the Anglican Communion’s tolerance of the ordination of women and the acceptance of homosexuality among the clergy. It describes itself as an international commmunion of churches in the continuing Anglican movement independent of the Anglican Communion and the archbishop of Canterbury. It is represented in all English-speaking countries, including South Africa.

In October 2007 the TAC met in Portsmouth, England, and agreed to write to the pope asking him to allow it full, corporate and sacramental union with the Catholic Church. The Vatican responded favourably, particularly as expressed in Anglicanorum coetibus. The TAC regards this as a generous invitation to full union because it allows the convert group to use their old prayer books and liturgy, in effect maintaining the established culture of Anglicanism while simultaneously being subject to the bishop of Rome and the norms of the Catholic faith as set out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The pope has proposed that the newly embraced convert group will be unified with the Catholic Church by means of “personal ordinariates”, that is, specified networks of widespread adherents who are not limited to a territory such as a diocese. Each ordinariate will be entrusted to an ordinary (a celibate bishop) appointed by the pope, who will exercise his authority jointly with the local diocesan bishop. Each ordinariate will have to be self-financing.

The archbishop of Canterbury and the Vatican have been in close contact, and this suggests that interest in communion with Rome is not limited to the TAC. Right now it is not clear how things will develop because there has to be much more discussion to clarify issues. Meanwhile, individual Anglican groups or dioceses may approach Rome without waiting for a collective movement.

I came to the immediate conclusion that our bishops could probably have taught Tiger Woods a lot about credible communication.

In their message, titled “Seeds of Hope”, the bishops talked about the crosses we all have to bear. What impressed me was that the bishops did not write their letter in “bishop-speak” which usually includes a lot of Latin words that no one understands and also a lot of complicated English words that sound like Latin words that nobody understands.

Rather, our bishops spoke in the simple language of the people. They spoke about the crosses they had to bear and the crosses we ordinary people have to bear in these modern times. They spoke as fellow Catholics and not from a position of being a cut above the rest of us. It was wonderful, warm, credible and encouraging.

They spoke of St Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ and suggested that Lent is indeed a good time for us all to look around for those who have mighty crosses to bear and see if we can perhaps take a little weight off their shoulders.

My goodness, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the bishops’ suggestion could extend beyond Lent and beyond religion!

It’s a wonderful ethos by which the world could live. It would bring an end to wars, divorces, slavery, human trafficking, crime, one-upmanship in politics and a host of other examples of man’s inhumanity to man which, when you think about it, all stems from people wanting to add crosses to others rather than to take some away.

It was indeed a wonderful communication from our bishops—which was something that was missing from the Tiger Woods litany of apology.

Tiger could learn how to communicate from Southern Africa's bishops. (CNS photo from Reuters)

Don’t get me wrong. I think it was extremely courageous of Mr Woods to get up in front of a TV audience of billions and beat himself up with a string of mea culpas so long that even some of our most penitent saints would have considered it somewhat over the top.

In spite of his determination to concentrate his efforts on turning a new leaf, particularly with regard to healing the rift between himself and his wife, and putting every effort into protecting his family unit, the way he did it was naïve.

First of all, while he kept talking about what a bad person he was, at no stage did he suggest that he had an illness. Secondly, if he were also intent on saving his marriage, should he not have waited until his wife agreed to at least be present?

And the very fact that he held a press conference but excluded all but a few pool reporters and one pool TV camera, and then refused to take any questions, suggests that Mr Woods has little understanding of the media world whatsoever.

What he seems not to understand is that in his position it is impossible to separate your public and private lives.

He has been paid millions of dollars by sponsors to persuade the public to buy a whole string of products. His television commercials invade the private lives and living-rooms of viewers the world over. He cannot in return expect the public not to want to have some quid pro quo.

I believe that by accepting money from the public, which is effectively what sponsorship is all about, you have to accept that part of you is owned by that same public. In the same way that politicians are responsible to the voting public and not the other way round.

I sincerely hope that Mr Woods will get back to the golfing form that made him one of the best the game has ever seen. He is a golfer whom I have admired not only because of his determination and positive, attacking attitude on the course, but also because of what I perceived as his humility. He was, I thought, a wonderful role model to our children. Now he is not a role-model even to the public relations community.

I believe that right from the start, Mr Woods has been ill-advised in terms of what he should say and when. He should have called this press conference within a few days of this saga erupting. One cannot blame the media for being suspicious of his motives regarding the timing of this press conference and the fact that he allowed no questions. All that he did was to suggest that he still has something big to hide.

Frankly, I think that whoever is doing his PR strategy and speech-writing is doing a singularly bad job. Tiger Woods’ people would do well to have a chat with our bishops.

Most of the performances are funky, fresh with intense creative exertion. This is why it surprised me to hear some Christian groups had raised objections to one of the performances, the Black Tapping Jesus.

After watching the supposedly controversial Black Tapping Jesus, I felt the Christian groups were being a little finicky. The show does suggest casually flippant familiarity with the story of Jesus. This may look and feel uncomfortable to conservative Christians. But to say the dancer’s dress code suggested that Jesus was a cross-dresser is pushing it a little.

Also using arguments of whether the same portrayal of Mohammed or Buddha would have been tolerated or not is a little disingenuous. For one, Christianity, throughout its history, has showed a lively interpretation of its story. It has shown more tolerance by introducing a spirit of comedy where it needed to evangelise and entertain.

More still is the fact that we live in a free and democratic country where people’s right of free expression and dissent is guaranteed, as long as it does not offend or infringe on the rights of others. The big question, I guess, is by whose standards do we interpret whether something is offensive or not to others’ beliefs. What is reasonable when it comes to the spirit of free expression? I would not like to enter into the technical details about all of this, but I do sometimes feel we, as the faithful, need to understand that having a sense of humour does not mean we lack deep convictions.

Perhaps, with my stoic amor fati to religious absolutism, I am not really the best person to make this argument. To me, to quote Montaigne, “it is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account”. Such cruelty never starts as such, but as something minor—even something apparently dutiful, such as defending one’s faith.

Yes, our faith is under attack from the spirit of secularism, relativity, atheism and so forth. But if we allow this to make us dour, to make us lose our sense of humour, or—God forbid—act cruelly, then we are playing into the hands of the enemy. We’d not only betray our lack of humour, but also our shaky convictions.

If we’re serious about our freedoms—all of our freedoms—then we must promote a society that invokes variable truths about who we are; of course as Catholics we have to make sure that this also does not violate the Truth as brought to us by Jesus, the Christ. We must be unflinching about our convictions, but honest also about allowing other people to be who they want to be.

Throughout history the greatness of religion has been how it can persuade and transform normative cultures and traditions, and not how it prohibited them. Religious greatness, in other words, is measured in the level of its engagement with society; otherwise we would not have seminal books such as St Augustine’s City of God, which has stood the test of time in these things.

Personally, at the tapping Jesus show, I decided to follow my daughter’s lead. She simply joined the dance, humming her own song: Lord of the dance, you’re the dancing Lord! Children are our teachers in intuitive things—because their guarding angels stand before the face of God.

As the psalmist saw it long ago: we live our lives as if in a (narrated) story, which is why I’m almost certain it is permissible to dance along now and then. The pain and chaos of life is painful enough. Where we have the galvanising potential to insert some joy, let us not resist the triumphal (or despondent) storytelling by flattening out the narrative even where it is not necessary.

Let’s kick off our shoes (or put on our dancing shoes, if we prefer) and join the dance. Lord of the dance, you are a dancing Lord!

The funeral was celebrated on Saturday, the 27th,  at the Anglican Cathedral in Pietermaritzburg. The church was overflowing with family, friends, and colleagues from all over South Africa and overseas. The tributes to Steve from the University, the church and friends were very heartfelt and moving. Steve’s academic and professional contributions had influenced people all over the world.  His wife Marian spoke and their children Thea, David and Kate all remembered their father in different ways.

Steve was the head of the School of Religion and Theology at UKZN and for me was a trusted friend and colleague. He brought life to any gathering and meeting and now I pray that he knows the fullness of Life.

Polygamy is currently dominating media reports and discussions. The form of polygamy most common in South Africa is polygyny (one man and multiple wives).

A panellist interviewed on SAfm on January 29, 2010, argued that polygyny is an ancient, regulated African practice. Responsible men offer marriage proposals to single women. The husband or the first wife initiates it for teamwork and progress of family life. The first wife plans the husband’s visiting schedule to other wives. All this, the panellist stated, creates a family and decreases the number of illegitimate children. A male listener quoted Isaiah 4:1 and argued that prominent South African men are merely fulfilling prophesy.

Some people may differ with their perspective. Polygyny is used to increase population. It includes risky behaviour. There are medical and psychological implications for participants and their children.

Polygyny became a trend in the biblical era. Genesis 6:1-3 states that the “sons of heaven” also embarked on this exercise. The first indication of a human who took two wives was Lamech, a descendant of Adam, born to Methusael (Gen 4:18-19.) In Gen 16:1-4 it was a woman, Sarah, who influenced her husband to take on a mistress and decided who it should be, while her husband preferred a monogamous marriage.

Today polygamy is accepted within the context of civil law in 48 countries and as customary law in 13 countries including South Africa.

In democratic South Africa some single women freely choose polygamous unions. Educated women have joined the multiple wife system. Even Christian women have opted for polygamous unions. They reject the Christian concept of monogamy: marriage as a sacrament and sacred union between one man and one woman, with Jesus Christ as the third party. Family is based on that union.

First, why do women support monogyny? Why would a first wife agree to a polygamous union, starting a process of multiple wives, a multiple family managed as a single unit? Could it be her insecurity towards a monogamous relationship? Fear that her husband has a mistress and illegitimate children from an adulterous affair? This is a reality of the South African marital life. Scripture teaches us: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love,” (1 Jn 4:18).

Second, to avoid humiliation and public embarrassment, first wives may choose to protect themselves by supporting a polygamous union as a form of security against infidelity. A polygamous union is viewed as an opportunity to obtain peace of mind and reassurance that the marriage is safe. Such women accepted their husband’s extra-marital affairs as part of the marriage package and opt to regulate the unbecoming behaviour through a system of polygyny. That may feel as if she has control over the situation in a society where marriage has almost lost value.

Scripture teaches us: “Do not be afraid, just have faith,” (Mk 5:36). Sometimes women’s attitudes are based on a spirit of fear and indicate a lack of trust, horizontal and vertical. Their response is not based on the consequences of polygamous unions or the societal implications it holds for future generations. Neither is it based on adherence to the teachings of Christian spirituality. It is a game of survival.

Third, why would single women become a willing participants in polygamous unions? Why would women want to share a husband? Economic security cannot be viewed as the only driver to become a polygamous wife. Love clearly plays a role. It implies that single women (including some Christian women) wilfully engage in relationships with married men. It indicates a diversion of values between the practising of Christian spirituality and single women’s lifestyles.

Fourth, who really holds the power? It is a matter of decision-making. Whatever a woman’s status, she has free will. The decision is influenced by her moral values and principles, her role in society and the spirituality she embraces. Another factor is the extent to which women are able to overcome societal and cultural pressures, a common factor many single women are confronted with. To break an ancient concept such as polygamy requires exercising leadership. Women will have to think and act differently.

To integrate the teachings of Christ into daily lives of single women requires strength of character and wisdom. To walk away from temptation requires you to constantly dwell under the Blood of Merciful Jesus. Scripture teaches us: “…be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I (am) holy’.” (1 Peter1:15-16)

Some married men believe that they are capable of loving multiple women. This makes a joke of the concept of love as defined in Ephesians 5: 31: “For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” The spirit of love is captured in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. It is a simple, yet powerful guideline towards understanding a complex emotion: Christian love, the gift of the Holy Spirit. It implies that love “… does not seek its own interest.”

Polygyny is an unethical practice: it eliminates the sanctity of marriage, decreases respect, humility and equality between men and women, and rejects the integrity and human dignity of women. This behaviour of men encompasses selfishness, pride, lack of self-control and promotes lustful desires and exploitation of women. It is similar to prostitution: married men having access to women according to their preferences and time.

To understand women’s role requires an in-depth study to determine why Christian women participate in polygamous unions; why women sustain a harmful patriarchal process; and why women allow an ancient practice of polygamy to flourish in the contemporary world.

Single women hold the supply market and can break the polygamous cycle. Men do not hold women’s decision-making powers, only the demand for extra-marital affairs. Women can end the polygamy game through faith, dedication, perseverance and commitment. Such followers of Christ are found in Proverbs 31:26, 29-30: “She opens her mouth in wisdom…Many are the women of proven worth, but you have excelled them all…the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit, sharpens our understanding of difficult situations and the consequences of decisions taken. Women and men’s commitment to follow the Commandments of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ are tested. 2 Tim 1:7 states: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”

Let us offer intercessory prayers: for the sanctity of marriage; for the gift of family as God originally intended it to be; for single and married women the gift of wisdom; for married men a prayerful relationship with the Holy Spirit, to overcome selfish and lustful desires.