Bp Sylvester David OMI, Cape Town

Please tell me little bit about yourself?
My name is Sylvester David. I’m an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, born and raised in Durban, South Africa. I am a fourth generation South African of Indian parentage. Our forefathers came to South Africa in 1860. My maternal ancestry is from this part of the world – Kerala – Cochin to be precise.

What have you specialized in, in terms of studies?
My doctorate was on the prologue of the Gospel of John, using a method that acknowledges the principles that governed the composition of biblical text. There was a particular mind-set and a particular way of communicating the message, and modern literary theory has made that accessible to us. I found it very exciting.

You mean to say that scripture is studied more as literature, as a kind of artistic form of speech?
Literature is one form of art. There are many other forms of art, there are performing arts and arts such as painting and poetry. But sometimes, art can make a commentary on scripture in a way that words cannot – you cannot paint with words what an artist can do with his brush. For example if you look at the works of Fr Sieger Köder, a German contemporary artist and priest, you can see Jesus reflected only in the basin of water as He washes Peter’s feet. Again, when He depicts the Last Supper, you Jesus’ face being reflected only in the chalice. The message that these provide is that we can encounter Christ anywhere. We needn’t look at the sky, because where we live and work and minister, we encounter Christ.

Literature as they say, is presencing something absent. In this sense, it is the divine and the holy that is basically absent. Therefore, perhaps literature and even a priest, his homily and rituals are trying to feel the presence of what is absent?
I cannot agree with the fact that the holy is absent. I think we carry the holy wherever we go. We are meant to do that. In fact, even the greeting that we have (which we also use in South Africa) means that I acknowledge the presence of the divine which you bring. It is both a greeting and challenge, because I am to bring the presence of the divine to you. We have an incarnational theology, and it’s been mentioned many times in scripture when God is present to us. We look for antiseptic places for God and we keep Him there. But look at the parable of the Last Judgment – “in so far as you did this to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” Also, in the words of St Paul – “When I suffer in the body, I am joined to the cross of Christ.” That is why when anointing somebody, we literally touch the cross. There have been times in my life when I was left speechless because of the experience I had of anointing somebody. They would thank me for the blessing, but I would keep feeling that I should be the one thanking them, because it is through their condition that I had the privilege of touching the cross. So, the divine is indeed present to us. I think De Mello is right, we need an awakening.

The famous philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, describes the face of the other as being an epiphany. What is your take on this statement?
It’s a statement which I believed for many years, that Jesus looked more like you and me than we’ll ever realise. But then again, we have decorated even the cross beyond recognition – the evidence being the gilt edged a kind you buy in the jewellery shop. The real cross, on the other hand, is what you touch in the suffering of humanity. The divine is present to us in so many ways, and it’s a disappointment when we tend to close our eyes to that.

In that respect, how does the passion narrative in all three of the gospels bring forth and help, sense the presence of the divine?
Well, what really happened at the crucifixion? Who put Him on the cross? It was religion, badly practiced religion that put the Son of God on the cross. In the third chapter of Mark, pretty early in the gospel, the Pharisees got together with the Herodians, who were traditional enemies, now that they’d found a common enemy, and planned how to destroy Him. They kept shouting “Crucify Him!” and asked Herod to do the same – these were people that knew the catechism, but didn’t know God. Badly practised religion, rather than serving people, exerts power over them. He contradicted their power and was dangerous to their ideology. And in the end, He, an innocent person, was sacrificed upon the cross.

We find that wherever power is worshipped, the innocents still suffer, be it in the case of political parties, multinational corporations or even an ordinary family. Suppose the man of the house is given to alcohol and drugs. Here, alcohol becomes the object of his worship and all his attention. Who suffers? The innocent – the children, the wife and the others at home. This goes back to the Old Testament. The traditional idol in the Old Testament is Ba’al, who also demanded temple sacrifice of the new life born out of temple prostitution.

Religion itself has become deified, and people forget about the God that religion is supposed to take them to. The Dalai Lama recently said that there is no such thing as Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or Hindu violence, and I firmly agree. Once we consider the option of violence, we are operating outside the sphere of religion; we become irreligious people. This is indeed right. No self-respecting religion wants to kill anybody.

Recently, the Oblate Provincial was asked at the airport if he was converting (people), and he replied saying, “Yes, I am converting! I am helping the Hindu be a better Hindu and the Muslim a better Muslim, and I hope they’ll help me be a better Christian.” Now, isn’t that a wonderful thing? Sometimes people use religion to divide people, saying you are this and I am that, and yet, in the end, there is only one God the Father. The episcopal motto I have chosen is from Ephesians 4:6, “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” The Latin word for ‘all’ is omnium, and it includes even the ecology, which we often neglect. We have to realise that if we are on the side of God, we have to take care of and nurture the ecology and our neighbours. We must stop turning our neighbours into hostile competitors.

Are you afraid that present culture is being dominated by market oriented consumerism?
Our consumerism is something that is causing the destruction of people. In one country, there are 385 million tons of food being wasted. So just to put it in a nut shell, in some places in the world the rich die of overeating and the poor die of malnutrition. How can we explain that? How can we account to the creator of all life?

What do you think about René Girard and his theory of mimetic rivalry, that consumerism breeds rivalry, hatred and even scarifies?
What drives economies today? It is not what they have, but rather the myth of scarcity, that there isn’t enough to go around, that encourages them to hoard. The prime hoarder in our Judeo-Christian tradition is the Pharoah. He had bread and he used that bread to manipulate people, as seen in the book of Genesis. The people, being hungry, paid money for the bread. The next year, not having sufficient money, they paid with their livestock. The third year, still being hungry, but having neither livestock nor money, they paid with their selves – they became the very slaves of the Pharaoh. Only one type of people were spared the ordeal of slavery – the priests, and that is still the case today. Whenever we, who are spokespersons for God, fail to find our voice, we get a pat on the back and we are recognised. But as soon as you open your mouth, it becomes a problem. Where I come from, there is a saying in the Zulu language that roughly translates to “dogs will bark at a moving car.” We know how dogs bless a car that is standing still, with their legs picked up against a wheel… Well, the prophetic voice of the Church does not stand still long enough to be peed on by the dogs. That’s the way I see it.

Is that not a challenge, and even a danger within the Church?
It’s a danger to everybody. We are not exempted from the challenges of the world as if we were some sort of foreign species. We are in the world, not of it; we aren’t evangelised by the soap opera and the consumerism of the world, we are evangelised by the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s how we make the difference.

Assault and degradation of humanity, and even killings in the names of inquisition and witch hunts have taken place in the Church. Are you apprehensive regarding this? Could history repeat itself?
Once again, it doesn’t matter if it takes place within the Church or not, or whether it is historical or happening today. In the name of everything that is holy, these practices have to be condemned because it is an abuse of other people. It is scapegoating.

Do you think consumerism is breeding a sort of fundamentalism in politics as well as the entire global scenario?
It’s quite possible. I haven’t studied the issue properly yet.

Over the past few years, we have witnessed the rise of divisive politics, fundamentalism and treating minorities as ‘other’ in India. How do you view this situation?
I firmly believe that if I cannot respect the next person as my brother or sister, I am refusing to acknowledge God as my Father, and I am placing myself outside of the family of God. Wherever we are, we must be aware of our relationship with the Father. In the parable of the prodigal son, one son was lost far from the house while the other was lost inside. The sad thing about the one lost inside was that he couldn’t recognise his brother as brother, for he referred to him as ‘the son of yours’ when speaking to his father. He made himself an outsider to his father’s love, and this is what happens when we separate people. Jesus smashed down all kinds of barriers, be it of the gender, caste, apartheid or political variety, and we too must learn to embrace otherness as He did. To build walls rather than bridges does not make sense in the world of today.

Nowadays, democracy is acclaimed to be the only political system that is operative. But in the midst of the prevalent capitalistic, consumer oriented life, do you think the liberties afforded by democracy are in danger? Is democracy slowly turning into majoritarian rule?
I cannot see a majoritarian rule, simply because I can only speak about what I have been exposed to. In South Africa, we still have a very big gap between the rich and the poor. We thought things would start getting better in 1992 when Nelson Mandela was elected, but at the moment they seem to be worse.

The powerful and the rich manipulate democracy, sometimes to the extent where there is no more democracy in sight.
In South Africa, there have been accusations of wholesale looting against high-level politicians and a very rich family from this country (India) that’s settled there. You’ll get a better picture if you read the State Capture Report.

Are you apprehensive that democracy is in danger?
On one hand, yes. But on the other hand, if practised in a truthful way, democracy is in no immediate danger. If a little light of truth (as your publication is also named) is shed on these things, hopefully, it can help to heal.

What are your opinions on responsible democracy?
Responsible democracy is a kind of stewardship, I believe. The first question to fly in the face of the Creator was “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Throughout the Bible, the answer is YES. Yes, you are your brother’s keeper; you are your sisters’ keeper. We are meant to show co-responsibility to each other.

For generations, South Africans have suffered colour prejudices. Being a South African yourself, what can you tell us about the struggles people have faced to overcome this?
The Apartheid struggle scarred the minds of people, many of whom still see themselves as being second class. There were those who were socialised to think that they were in charge, and that they knew things while the rest of us didn’t, and that’s very sad. We need a few generations to grow out of this mindset. We are, in fact, slowly growing out of it, with the newer generations going to school together and seeing that they’re all the same.

There were some very positive stories during the Apartheid that were not told. Admittedly, they were only a few, but they are stories of religion triumphing. I remember being part of a mission in KwaZula Natal. I happened to go to one of the outstations, where I saw a few women from a local Hindu organisation. On a certain day of every week, they cook and serve food to the local residents, also sitting down to eat with them. Was there any publicity about this? No. They seemed to have understood The Sermon on the Mount, “When you give, do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing”, and I feel that we have a lot to learn from this instance. There is an organisation in South Africa called The Gift of the Givers Foundation, run by a Sufi Muslim called Imtiaz Sooliman, which works all around the world and goes beyond taking food to the hungry. Quite recently, they negotiated the release of political prisoners. To cite another incident, there was an Afrikaans farmer who, even before the changeover, gave a huge portion of his farm to those who had worked on it for many generations, and kept a smaller portion for himself.

Unfortunately, these are all stories that are not being told or reported.

George Steiner once said that three Jews defined humanity – Jesus, Moses and Marx. Steiner is an American literary critic and a Jew himself. What is your reaction to his statement?
Well, that’s his idea. Several people have done wonderful things in Judaism. Maimonides, and more recently, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Ellie Wiesel are a few that come to mind. Ellie Wiesel, in his book ‘Night,’ spoke of the Jews at a critical time. I do not know much about Steiner, but I believe that there are many Jews who have defined humanity. It depends on one’s perspective.

Do you consider Christianity to be a humanism of winged nature? One which aspires to reach the heights of the heavens?
Sometimes we can tie ourselves up in philosophical jargon and miss the point. Religion, in general, is humanity searching for God. Christianity in particular, is God coming to meet humanity (in the incarnation). For me, I need no further explanation. I celebrate the presence of that divinity in our midst, and I think Christian rituals celebrate that – it helps us to appreciate being human. I am not in any way pulling down the divine, rather I believe I adhere to what I think the liturgy does – raising humanity. What can take away the holiness of God? Nobody. As is said in the Latin Rite, “…may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” Our starting point is God’s love, and it is from there that we must move forward.

Being a priest and a bishop, what does prayer mean to you?
Prayer to me is being present to the Presence. We often go into prayer with a shopping list of things to be done and sometimes forget the more fundamental aspect – Union with God. I went to mass in the Syro-Malabar rite, one which I am not used to. The only two words I recognised were ‘Amen’ and ‘Alleluia.’ Union with God is something beyond language and mass was a humbling experience, because it challenged me to believe the faith of the Church – that in the liturgy, we make present what we are celebrating. The Liturgy actualises the presence of Christ for us, and that was, all that was necessary for me. Sure, we need our sacred symbols to remind us of who we are and whose we are, but there have been times when I couldn’t sleep, when I’ve sat outside my room, and before I knew it, an hour had passed. That was a time of resting in the presence of the Father. That’s prayer for me.