The Gospel amid uncertainty
01.01.1970
Despite the uncertainties, missionaries in Pakistan walk with faith trusting their service to God.
Missionary work in Pakistan means serving the love of God in a climate of violence, poverty and injustice.
I would not have been able to sustain myself in my work as a Columban missionary priest if I looked for immediate results during my 28 years in Pakistan. Year by year, I have come to understand that the real issue is to serve the love of God, not to look at what I have in my hand or what I can count.
We face tough questions here: How do we continue with the ongoing formation and preparation of liturgical leaders while there is a famine affecting a third of the diocese? How do we plan when there is news of a church being burned down or a convent being attacked by a wild but well-organized mob with the connivance of police and approval of town authorities?
The real questions
But here are the real questions about the reality of Pakistani Christians and my presence as a missionary: Is the Gospel lived? Is the Gospel seen to be lived? Is the Gospel shared? Is the Gospel accepted? What are the results from living the Gospel?
On the occasion of Pakistan's independence on August 14, 1947, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the nation's founder and first governor-general, called on all Pakistanis to continue attending their mosques, churches and temples inviting them to unite in building their new nation.
Sixty years later, Pakistani Christians live in an atmosphere of spoken and unspoken threat, marginalised by 30 years of unjust political and legal process. So the questions I have posed about living and accepting the Gospel have to be asked within the social, economic and political reality of their lives. Being a Catholic in Pakistan means I am part of the 8% of people - Hindus, Christians and Sikhs - who are not Muslim.
Pakistani Muslims must decide for themselves whether Islam can be lived in the reality of 21st-century Pakistan or only according to the standards of 7th-century Arabia. Pakistani Muslims must decide for themselves whether the fundamentalist call to 'jihad' (religious war against people who are not Muslims) has any basis in their religion.
Pakistani Muslims must decide
Pakistani Muslims must decide if the teaching of the Qur'an (Islam's holy book) permits them to enter into religious dialogue with believers of other faiths.
If and how they consider and resolve these issues will influence the way they interact with Christians and how Christians will interact with them.
If we cast one's bread upon the water, cast out the nets onto the other side of the boat, what will be the outcome?
This "uncertain certainty" is how I describe my life and work in Pakistan. I have lived in the Thar Desert and in small villages within the city of Karachi.
Worthwhile projects
With the encouragement and help of friends and Columban supporters, I have been involved in a variety of projects: a primary and secondary school network in the Thar Desert in the interior of the Sindh Province; a management centre for hepatitis B and C prevention; the major renovation of St Elizabeth's Hospital in Hyderabad and developing its School of Midwifery; and mobile vaccination programmes for tribal women and their children.
Fr McCulloch has been in Pakistan since 1978.
