Franciscan institutional constraints made open criticism of missionary methods impossible

Evidence

As a missionary, there was very little that Tempels could do in the circumstances. Those who understand how the Catholic church functions in general and how missionary congregations, like the Franciscan Order, function in particular, would be more nuanced in their judgement of the contradictions that Tempels displays. Given the Franciscan discipline, the vows of obedience and poverty that members take, and the kind of life they dedicate themselves to, it would have been impossible for Tempels to single-handedly take on the congregation, the diocesan authority, and ultimately the Catholic church regarding the question of the approach to the evangelization of Africa. If he had tried to act in opposition to the evangelization norms, he would have been considered a traitor, a betrayer of the cause, a rebel and a hypocrite. Colleagues in the ministry would have kept their distance from him and his ideas. In the final analysis, he would have been excommunicated, if not laicized, and would have lost all the state benefits accruing to him as a missionary in Africa. And that would have been the end of his missionary vocation and dreams. In the same situation, many, including the fiercest of Tempels’s critics, would consider the option Tempels took, namely, challenging the establishment and their ideas from within. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why missionary ‘contradictions’ must be judged structurally rather than as personal hypocrisy — central to assessing Tempels’s position.