Yes Baas: Grand Renaissance Prelates and their Africans

Here is an old blog post, slightly corrected:
I have before referred to that interview in which His Eminence Walter Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae presbyter Cardinalis Kasper spoke sneeringly about African Christians ... and then denied his words ... until the journalists provided a tape recording ...

This incident reminded me powerfully of an incident at the last Lambeth Conference at which similar sexual questions were being discussed, and where the African Bishops were resisting pressure from wealthy ultra-liberal Americans.

One American woman-bishop was heard to say "Some of these Africans would do anything for a chicken dinner". (Sadly, nobody was taping her; things are so much better organised in the Vatican.) The notorious Bishop Spong, according to reports, opined that Africans were superstious, ill-educated, and unsophisticated

Original date of the above, 06/01/2015. UPDATE follows: Who said this:

***"Of course the Church is growing [in Africa]. It grows because the people are socially dependent and often have nothing else but their faith. It grows because the educational situation there is on average at a rather low level and people accept simple answers to difficult questions (of faith). Answers like those that Cardinal Sarah of Guinea provides. And even the growing number of priests is a result not only of missionary power but also a result of the fact that the priesthood is one of the few possibilities for social security on the dark continent".

["Uneducated" ... "simple answers" ... "socially dependent" ... We have here the condescending superiority of a cultural elite who despise common people and regard sexual incontinence as being the natural privilege of their own class. Edward Stourton, an English journalist from an old Recusant family (possessed of a real barony), now a 'remarried' divorcee, is recorded as having observed, with regard to Catholic sexual morality, that his own views had become "nuanced". Adultery and sodomy are now nuanced, sophisticated, all that. Gotta get beyond primitive negro taboos, yeah? Life isn't as simple as these blacks think, OK?]

The *** passage above is said by its Internet reporters to be found on the German Bishops' website, and to come from the pen of its editor one Bjorn Odendahl. I am not a Germanist: I would be interested if somebody who is one could enlighten us as to what is the original phrase for "the dark continent" [UPDATE: it is " ... auf dem schwarzen Kontinent"]; how common a phrase that is in modern German; and what the implications and resonances of it are in modern usage; particularly in view of the adjective "dark".

                                   NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

Whenever a believing and practising Catholic is being interviewed by the media, it is made clear where he is coming from, with the media implication "His views are the less cogent because he is only a Catholic ... he's just a predictable robot ... a credulous and bigoted fool ... trying to onload his bigotries on you ... be warned ... you may very naturally wish to ignore whatever he says". 

I think the same sort of Health Warnings ought to be stuck on the packaging of the Nuanced and the Sophisticated when they are being interviewed. Just so that we all know where they are coming from.

Like this: "Mr X is a practising and highly Nuanced homosexualist. Now, Mr X, what are your views about Divorce Equality for the Gay Community, especially at the most Nuanced end of its spectrum  ...". 
Or this: "Mr Y married his present wife after divorcing his wife of an 11 year marriage which had resulted in five children. That marriage broke up after he discovered Sophistication with his present partner after work one Thursday evening. The ensuing divorce caused the nervous breakdown of his teenage daughter. Now, Mr Y, you have written this most interesting book, newly on sale in all good bookshops priced at a mere £59.99, about how important it is for the Catholic Church to move into the twenty-first century ...".

See what I mean? It's only fair.