Are Christians Responsible For Poverty In Haiti?
Arguably, yes.
In fairness, there are many contributing factors to Haiti having become a failed state prior to the earthquake last month—with its massive unemployment, little industrial or commercial activity, widespread poverty and illiteracy, high birthrate, corrupt politicians and police, and a government that has demonstrated remarkable resilience to any attempt to reform it and help it to become less corrupt.
Haiti has had a terrible history—a colony much fought over by various colonial powers, a population largely descended from slaves and revolutionaries, a country ravaged first by external powers and then by its own corrupt leaders, an island stripped of its resources and unable even to grow its own food, a nation invaded and occupied from time to time by the United States. It is the poorest nation in our hemisphere and has been so for years.
However, regardless of the many other factors that have crippled Haiti and made a mess of its economy, the Roman Catholic Church has been the most significant contributor to Haiti’s crushing poverty and widespread illiteracy, oddly enough but most ably and unknowingly assisted in that endeavor by the most unlikely of partners—a large number of fundamentalist protestant missionaries.
The responsibility of the Catholic Church for the pre-earthquake disaster that is Haiti is two-fold, its policies and practices toward and in Haiti, and its support of the status quo in Haitian politics. The “mess” in Haiti that we refer to is political ineptness, overpopulation, illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and unemployment.
The conclusion that Christian ineptitude and ill-conceived policies were largely responsible for the grinding poverty in Haiti had not occurred to me until I became interested in why Haiti was so poor and began to read a bit of its history in the wake of a barrage of criticism of Haiti from the usual whiners loudly complaining about wasted foreign aid and concluding that Haiti had brought its troubles (including the earthquake!) on itself as a punishment for its moral corruptness and national laziness, and its willingness to be a net receiver of public charity from other nations.
Haiti has been Catholic since its early days as a French colony. As far back as 1860 the educational system in Haiti was turned over to the Roman Catholic Church to operate with French priests. In the early days the priests educated only the ruling elite of Haitian society, who were mulattos descended from original French settlers who had children by their slaves, and ignored the masses of peasants and working class poor, who received almost no education except for catechism.
In effect, the Catholic Church became allied with the ruling elite in Haiti and taught the Haitians to respect authority, to accept life as it came to them as god’s will, and therefore to be content with their place in life. Although charged with education of the people, the church did very little and even in more modern times very few children got more than a few years of education. The Church did not serve as an advocate for education but was content to ignore illiteracy and failed to acknowledge that illiteracy was a significant factor in poverty. The Church did not educate Haitians in technological or practical skills, did not train them to be farmers on their own land, did not encourage the skilled trades, did not agitate for literacy.
The Church failed to recognize or acknowledge that its attitude and policy toward birth control and contraception were also significant factors in crushing poverty. The Church helped maintain the status quo. It was not an advocate for change. It opposed any attempts in Haiti to institute family planning and birth control education, and it fought against all international aid programs to promote contraceptive use not only for birth control but also to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Typical is Pope John Paul’s 1983 statement that “Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as to be never, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.” The result: population is out of control, creating ever more mouths to feed with fewer resources, increasing poverty and creating more competition for fewer jobs, and straining Haiti’s already over-stretched ability to house, feed and clothe its people.
The protestant fundamentalist missionaries that wanted to combat the superstition of voodoo, which had become interwoven with Catholicism in Haiti, were equally guilty of negligence and irresponsibility toward poverty and overpopulation. They were more interested in saving souls than in sex education, family planning, self-reliance, and literacy. They too did not advocate for change, and they had the same policies against birth control and contraception as the Catholics.
The Haitian people do not need another hundred years on their knees, with outstretched arms, palms up, looking for miracles and accepting conditions as they are. It is too bad that well-intentioned people (and we do not imply that either the Catholics or the protestants in Haiti are evil people) do not seem to understand the damage they have done to Haiti by keeping the people poor and pregnant, confusing education with indoctrination, giving them fish rather than teaching them how to fish, and operating with a medieval world view that teaches acceptance rather than foments radical change, which is the only way that Haiti will move forward.
It's about time the various religious organizations wake up to the problems they cause by opposing the sorts of programs that will actually make life better and help economies grow. You can't do that by maintaining the status quo. The Haitian government, with the support of Christians of both the Catholic and protestant variety, need to encourage and support international efforts to promote birth control, safe sex, condom use, family planning and sex education. The schools must change their curriculum to teach needed vocational skills rather than doctrine, reading and writing rather than histories of the saints, focus on science rather than catechisms, promote reform rather than acceptance, encourage action rather than prayer, teach critical thinking rather than obedience to authority, advocate self-reliance rather than dependence on charity.
But will they?