"When Catholicism first arrived there, northwest Europe was as barbaric as sub-Saharan Africa was, much later. What we call “European” today is the result of centuries of civilizing action, by a Church that exalted reason as well as faith, and which instituted and enforced rules to prevent its own clergy from “going bush”. African Catholics today -- I know several -- are among the least likely to suggest concessions to African tribal customs. The continent itself is slowly rising above the murky relativism of its past, just as we in Europe and America are sinking back into the relativist welter. Some day Africans may have to re-civilize us, by faith and reason.

In the meantime, we of the West have another opportunity to recall that we are not “Western” by some accident of geography, but by the authority and responsibility, the laws and rules, that supply the very conditions of our freedom."