effectively to a disaster on the scale of the earthquake. Catholicism came to Haiti with the French, and survived their expulsion in the revolution at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Catholic arch- bishop at the time of the earthquake, Joseph Miot, was widely respected, certainly more so than most politicians. Haitian Catholicism has managed to make an accommodation with voodoo, the system of animist beliefs which slaves brought to Haiti when the French first established their colony there. Minor voodoo gods fulfil a func- tion similar to that of saints in the Catholic tradition, and Fr Wismith Lazard, a Jesuit involved in the Church’s reconstruction efforts, gave me an impressive list of reasons why the Church should respect voodoo. He explained that it is intimately bound up with the struggle against slavery and outside oppression in Haitian history, and is part of the Haitian sense of identity. It is sometimes said that Haiti is 80 per cent Catholic and 100 per cent voodoo. But Archbishop Miot died when his cathe-


dral was destroyed, and so were dozens of priests and Religious. Fr Wismith told me the earthquake had left the Church in Haiti in a state of shock, and that many regarded it as divine punishment because the Church had lost its way. None of the priests I spoke to claimed that the Church had risen to the chal- lenge of the earthquake. According to Fr Francois Kawas, the senior Jesuit in Haiti, “the official Church was not very present” in the aftermath.


tre run by the Samaritan’s Purse charity; the volunteer doctors and nurses were saving dozens of lives every day, but there seemed to be almost as many pastors moving among the patients as there were medical staff. I spoke to one from Alabama who could scarcely contain his delight at the number who were “converting to Christianity”. When I asked the public affairs officer about the importance of the Christian dimension to their work, she told me they had a significantly lower mortality rate than other cholera treatment centres, as if cure and conversion went naturally together. Leslie Griffiths, the prominent Methodist minister, spent many years living in Haiti. Lord Griffiths, as he is today, has a sobering message for those who practise what he calls “rice Christianity”. The Haitians, he says, have become very “savvy” about dealing with out- siders, and are quite capable of saying different things to different people to secure the help they want. The year since the earthquake has been a lesson in humility to NGOs, to the UN and to the Churches. It has done little to restore Haiti as a functioning society.


H


■Edward Stourton is a writer and BBC broadcaster. His two-part series, Haiti, One Year On, starts on the BBC World Service at 12.30 p.m. on 5 January.Haiti and the Truth about NGOs will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 9 a.m.on 11 January.


aitian Catholicism and voodoo- ism now have a common rival: American evangelical Christianity. I visited a cholera treatment cen-


CHRISTOPHER JAMISON


‘Vital changes can be framed by silence as well as by fanfares’


Last year was a good year for silence. Preceding the usual Christmas reminder about silence (“silent night, holy night…”) there was a crescendo of silences as the year drew to a close. In November, BBC Radio 4’s PM programme broadcast 30 seconds of silence and asked for listeners’ reactions. Some loved it, some hated it, others laughed: “I drove through a tunnel,” wrote one emailer, “so I missed it.” But silence is serious stuff and PM’s mere 30 seconds was preceded in October by The Big Silence, an entire series on BBC2. The BBC had invited me to lead five people on a journey into silence, and in three one-hour programmes the series recounted the story of that journey. The three women and two men included one active but unbaptised churchgoer and the rest were of no fixed religion. This lack of religious engagement was a requirement put forward by me as the programme was designed to be an experiment in tracking the effects of silence on those who, like most British people today, had no religious dimension to their lives. In general, the participants were “spiritual but not religious”, which is, I suspect, Britain’s most popular religious self-designation. The journey began with a weekend in a monastery to introduce them to the practice not only of silence but also of meditation. They then went home for a week to see if they could replicate this there, and all bar one failed completely. The heart of the journey into silence was the next stage: an eight-day silent retreat at St Beuno’s, a Jesuit retreat centre in North Wales, where they could only talk to their spiritual director and to their video diary. Here is where the experience began to bite into the heart of their lives. After 48 hours, they all started to show strong emotions such as anger and frustration, boredom and loneliness, leading in turn to some of them facing unresolved grief, past violence and family rejection. They were all starting to see silence as a path to hidden dimensions of life. As Jon, a businessman, said so lucidly: “There’s no need to fear the silence any more – the silence is like a friend. The fear


is inside me.” And then the next stage emerged, the beginnings of religious experience. David went into the countryside to reflect on the story of the shepherds in the Nativity story: “I could hear the voice saying, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ I felt something growing inside me; standing there watching the sun slowly trickling away behind the mountains.” Helen had a similar experience: “I was hit with such a profound sense of wonder, awe, well-being, I’m lost for words to describe it but everything was so clear … It took my breath away … clarity like I’ve never experienced.” As with scientific experiments, so with this one: a theory was being tested to see if it were true. The theory was simple: silence is the gateway to the soul and the soul is the gateway to God. To tell the truth, I expected an inconclusive outcome because a religious theory is, of course, a piece of theology and I was probably prey to the modern attitude that sees theology as shorthand for an obscure and inconclusive argument that leads nowhere. How wrong can you be? All five people admitted on camera that this had been a decisive and life-changing experience. The unbaptised churchgoer got baptised; the lapsed Catholic went back to Mass; the young manager with a partner and child gave in his notice; the middle-aged woman who expected relaxation exercises took to attending a local church. Finally, the anti-religious businessman wept as he read the psalm, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God above” and he continued in tears as he said aloud, “My sacrifice a contrite spirit; a humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.” The book of Revelation recounts that at the opening of the seventh seal, before the angelic fanfare is let loose, “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour”. The last judgement evokes both deep silence and a flourish of trumpets, reminding us that vital changes can be framed by silence as well as by fanfares. So if you are looking for a new year’s resolution, try building the daily practice of silence into your life; or if your silence is enforced by circumstances, try embracing it for part of each day. This practice carries a health warning: silence can seriously change your life. Happy New Year.


■Fr Christopher Jamison OSB is director of the National Office for Vocation of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. He will be writing a regular monthly column in The Tablet.


1 January 2011 | THE TABLET | 5


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