Comments for Archbishop's homily given on 23rd Sept.2018.

Ceylon Today-30-09-2018. By Theresa D’Silva. In a homily given at St. Matthew’s Church in Ekala on 23 September, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo and head of the Roman Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, decided to take a political stance. For a religious leader to use his or her pulpit to pronounce on politics is not unusual, and, indeed, the faithful often look to their clergy for advice on how to understand and interpret the public sphere. The challenging note of this homily, however, was its content. Cardinal Ranjith argued that the “field” of human rights has become the latest Western religion to be imposed on the non-Western world, urging Sri Lankans to not be “deceived” by such tricks, but to follow the religious inclinations that the country has followed for centuries. A modified quote of this homily runs as follows: “The latest religion in the West is the religion called human rights. Human rights were discovered only recently. It is being regarded as a wonderful new discovery which is being held aloft and we are being relentlessly lectured about it. If we adhere to a religion we don’t need human rights. Those who are dependent on human rights are those who have no religion. We must not be misled by these chimeras. We must look at this intelligently.” Outraged reaction These comments sparked bewildered and outraged reactions from civil society and political commentators. Saliya Peiris, head of the Office of Missing Persons stated that the Cardinal seemed “absolutely ignorant of the concept of human rights” and compared the Cardinal negatively against the progressive Pope Francis. Most high profile was the reaction of Minister Mangala Samaraweera who stated that the Cardinal was simply trying to be a “populist”, in clear reference to the fact that Cardinal Ranjith seemed to be aping the popular anti-Western discourse being encouraged and buttressed by the Rajapaksa camp. Indeed, Cardinal Ranjith received immediate and enmasse support for his words from former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Catholic MPs in the Joint Opposition, as well as different Joint Opposition related groups. These last were quick to make their support public via social media. It should also be added that although more social justice oriented Catholic clergy and lay associations were outraged by the Cardinal’s comments, a cursory examination of Facebook feeds and Roman Catholic groups on social media show that the Cardinal’s anti-Western commentary has strong and wide-ranging support. Shortly after the remarks from Minister Samaraweera, the Cardinal issued a clarification of his remarks via the Daily Newspaper, insisting that his intent was to preach to his particular flock and to remind them that “If religion is truly practiced it could take us to achieve levels of justice, going even beyond the expectations of human rights and thus need not be such an issue for our Catholic community. But I do accept that with regard to the essentially non-religious nature of the State, human rights as a common platform has its own role to play. Replacing religion with human rights is not what is to be done but human rights should be further strengthened through the good practice of faith.” Far removed The clarifying statement stands, in many ways, at quite a remove from the remarks made in the September 23rd homily, where his intent seemed to underscore human rights as a ‘Western’ discourse and also to praise the religion that has been “guiding Sri Lanka for centuries”. If you were to guess that he meant Catholicism, you would be incorrect, as, a statement the Cardinal made on 27 September at a prize-giving when he noted that those who had been shaped by Buddhist civilization do not violate human rights and that human rights can effectively be preserved through adherence to Buddhist teaching. He went on to say that the “rights of all people in this country are safeguarded when Buddhist culture is safeguarded. Human rights are safeguarded in our country much more than what is prescribed (sic) by the UN in Sri Lanka because of the Buddhist environment.” The statement led some on the social media site Twitter to wonder if the Cardinal wished to switch his red hat for the robes of an Anunayaka. The Cardinal’s statements are emblematic of his long-term and very explicit political position; he has for long been seen as an ardent supporter of the Rajapaksas’ and the ‘anti-Western’ messaging of the Joint Opposition. What is troubling with his commentary is his appropriation- a tactic often deployed by right wing populists the world over of critical, left wing thinking on universalizing discourses such as human rights. There is robust and very valid concern, for example, within postcolonial and decolonial studies that highlight the civilizing mission embedded in human rights discourse. Postcolonial critics argue that universal human rights are expressive of Western cultural particularity and contest the idea of rights as universally applicable. The debate often turns on the idea that, though rights are said to have universal validity, they originate in the West and in some sense express Western interests. From this, however, such scholarship opens up debate to ask for more fuller histories of how rights and freedoms have been understood globally, and, also to highlight the nuances of a focus on individual rights (seen as more a European discourse) over collective or community based rights ( seen as a more globally rooted understanding). There is little space in this article to break down the different and complex arguments associated to this discussion but the reader is encouraged to look up the work of Gurminder Bhambra, Judith Butler, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Stuart Hall, A. Sivanandan and Edward Said and many others, who have exhaustively examined this topic. Profound impact Another challenge arises also, when a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church highlights the ‘Western-ness’ of human rights discourse. Much academic and theological commentary that analyzes human rights thinking is quick to note the profound impact that Christian morality and ethical thinking on freedom and responsibility that percolate throughout human rights discourse, and the history of different attempts at drafting and maintain a ‘code’ of human conduct, connected implicitly to the Christian idea that freedom and free will comes from the Divine. Additionally, Catholic Social Thought has, for decades, enjoyed a close and reciprocal relationship with human rights discourse. As academics such as Mary Glendon and Meghan Clark often note, Catholic social doctrine has appropriated, and even championed, human rights ideas. At the same time their historical study of the development of human rights also highlights instances such as how ideas from Catholic social thought were brought into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by Latin American delegates to the early UN, and Pope Benedict’s 2008 UN speech that provided future directives for the human rights movement. Christianity is deeply imbricated in human rights thinking and discourse, and, perhaps the ‘religiosity’ that the Cardinal sees is because of this symbiosis. So let us look at this intelligently, as the Cardinal asks us to. Is he seriously asking for Sri Lanka to work on a ‘home grown’ set of human rights, and for there to be intelligent and robust apolitical debate in the country with regards to how we move forward in this political moment? Are we witnessing a conversion moment where he is deeply troubled by the universalization of Christian morality and seeks a more ‘grass rooted’ theology, or indeed his own changing of scarlet robes to saffron ones? Or, is he simply being a political shill for those who spout anti-Western hysteria to whip up the masses?