When Cardinal Malula Denounced the Crisis of Role Models

An intrepid Congolese figure

During the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his episcopate—which that year coincided with International Youth Day—Cardinal Malula offered the Congolese some of the principles that had made him a great man of culture, a visionary, a mystic and an architect who remains a source of pride not only for the African Catholic Church but for Black Africa.

We still remember the intrepid man who never feared defending his positions before the Pope himself or before the ruthless Marshal Mobutu.

Listen to conscience at all times

Conscience, he said, is the inner voice that reminds a person of the truth about themselves. It identifies good and evil and tells us what we should and should not do. A well-formed conscience gives a person a sense of duty and responsibility. It is like the voice of God speaking to us and enlightening us about what pleases him and what we must accomplish.

Cardinal Malula advised young people in particular: ‘Strive to join conscience to knowledge and competence. Above all, strive to form a lofty idea of your duty. (…) Always holding a lofty idea of one’s task and responsibility in society makes a person conscientious and stimulates them constantly to rise to the level of their duties.’

Master the passions

No one can govern themselves, their family or any group if they cannot master their passions. ‘Apply yourselves, therefore, to mastering your passions,’ he advised. ‘For mastery of the passions releases human intellectual energies and spiritual faculties.’

Purity, love of truth and awareness of duty elevate and ennoble a person. Freed from the tensions and servitude of the passions, a person acquires a keen sense of duty and responsibility.

Follow a model, then become one

A people without role models, he finally said, is a people without history. Exemplary men and women are like incandescent discs marking a people’s history. They are luminous points of reference for present and future generations.

He protested against treating ‘the economic crisis’ as an absolute cause whenever the distress of peoples had to be explained. For this relative cause he substituted a more real one rooted in the depth of our social and human experience: ‘the crisis of role models’.

The Congo as a crucible of genius

The Congo gave birth to Cardinal Malula. He proves that the country is neither the land of mediocrity nor of a curse, as some would have us believe, but a crucible where genius works amid adversity, systemic illiteracy, the breakdown of social bonds through wars and mass displacement, uncontrolled urbanisation, the weakening of moral constraints through the purchase of consciences and political commerce, and the doubt and discouragement these produce among deprived and disoriented people.

The crisis also lies within us

If there is a genuine crisis of role models in our countries, Malula stressed, there are fortunately still models to follow. No country starts from nothing. Models always pave the collective path, sometimes showing it silently and sometimes crying out like John the Baptist. We are asked only to open our eyes and ears as wide as the village, the city and the world.

We must perceive both the massive foolishness of the majority and the almost invisible heroism of the small minority striving for excellence in everyday things. We will then see another aspect of the crisis: our neutral, flat and indecisive position, waiting for others to act before we do—which means never. If there is a crisis, it begins within us. That is the crisis we must resolve first.