Roman Catholic Social Teaching as an Appropriate Response to Corruption in Cameroon

Saturnin, Tsayem Dongmo (2010) Roman Catholic Social Teaching as an Appropriate Response to Corruption in Cameroon. Licentiate thesis, Santa Clara University Berkeley, California.

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Abstract

One of the greatest moral dangers that I have been tackling in my ministry in Cameroon as an educator is corruption, which has flooded almost all spheres of Cameroonian life and is anchored in the mentality of Cameroonians. The corrupt behavior observed in interpersonal relations has become an obligatory rite, so that those who refuse to engage in this despicable transaction, for one reason or another, are perceived as dangerous or deviant: corruption in Cameroon is a living thing. But culturally and contextually, that moral decay, which seems to be ubiquitous, is killing Cameroon. International, regional, and national legal instruments have been set up to reduce the systemic corruption in Cameroon, but it is still a very corrupt country. Cameroonians seem not to be enthusiastic about committing themselves to the fight against corruption. The laws are not respected. Therefore, laws by themselves appear to be insufficient to fight against systemic corruption in Cameroon. Consequently, following the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, what should be considered in the fight against the systemic corruption in Cameroon? What should the Christian response be in the search for good/uncorrupt behavior? With the above concerns and questions in mind, I will explore the wisdom of Catholic Social Teaching with regard to systemic corruption in Cameroon. Since the Catholic Church has been among the most important structures involved in helping to reduce corrupt practices in Cameroon, I will show that its modern social teaching provides a critical resource. My method will be descriptive and evaluative. In the descriptive part, in Chapter One, after giving a definition of corruption, I will draw upon data collected from social, political, and economic research to show the various facets of corruption in Cameroon. In Chapter Two, I will investigate the causes of such systemic corruption through the country‟s pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history. In Chapter Three, I will describe the impact and implication of corruption on poverty among its people. In the evaluative part, in Chapter Four, I will first offer various responses to corruption in Cameroon from the international and regional community, from the Cameroon government, and from the ethical perspective of Roman Catholic Social Teaching. I will emphasize the insufficiency of the legal responses. I will then argue that the underlying rationale of legal practices against corruption is the conception of human rights, which come into play as part of legal provisions. In Chapter Five, I will explore some core principles of the Church‟s social teaching with regard to corruption, by showing that its emphasis upon human dignity, its use of the modern language of rights and correlative duties, its idea of the common good, and the preferential option for the poor, provide an integral and comprehensive response to the reality of systemic corruption in Cameroon. I will argue that the core social principles offer the ethical framework for interpreting the Church‟s threefold teaching on justice. That teaching calls not only for a change of structures, but primarily a change of the human person. In the last chapter, Chapter Six, by proposing a concrete response to systemic corruption in Cameroon, I will show how justice, elaborated objectively in Chapter Five, is subjectively a fundamental virtue of persons and social structures. Doing so, I will demonstrate how the wisdom gleaned from modern Catholic Social Teaching may be applied locally, as a basis for later national or regionally action in redressing the crisis of corruption. Following the idea of the primacy of persons over structures, I will argue for the necessity of formation of citizens, both intellectual and spiritual, as a task for the Church in Cameroon: formation to human dignity, human rights, the common good, and preferential option for the poor. I will take a stance for the importance of the acquisition of values, by making a case for virtue ethics and character formation as critical to our truly grasping and confronting the systemic corruption in Cameroon. Taking the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon as an institution, and indicating its tools that can be used to transmit core principles of the Church against corruption, I will use the Jesuit School, Collège Libermann, as an example, to show how the application of virtue ethics and character education can help to improve the corrupt behavior of the educational community.

Item Type: Thesis (Licentiate)
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BT Doctrinal Theology
B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BX Christian Denominations
H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Divisions: Africana
Afro-Christiana
Jesuitica
Depositing User: Tim Khabala
Date Deposited: 13 Sep 2017 09:07
Last Modified: 13 Sep 2017 09:07
URI: http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/2152

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