("Rwanda Today: The International Criminal Tribunal and the Prospects for Peace and Reconciliation; Interview with Helen Cobban," 2004 at (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/today/)
The works that foster such shows of faith must continue and accelerate to meet the needs of the wandering souls who still carry the burden as ghosts of the Rwandan spirit. The Catholic church is also noted by Cobban as a very active member in this process and this is reflected in the words of Pope John Paul II in his Dives in misericordia, where he intones that the faithful take an anthropocentric view upon the state of humanity and step away from worldly designations of chauvinism of race, gender, and creed as a delimiting designation allowing humanity to shirk acknowledgement of its connectedness as one.
The more the Church's mission is centered upon man -- the more it is, so to speak, anthropocentric -- the more it must be confirmed and actualized theocentrically, that is to say, be directed in Jesus Christ to the Father. While the various currents of human thought both in the past and at the present have tended and still tend to separate theocentrism and anthropocentrism, and even to set them in opposition to each other, the Church, following Christ, seeks to link them up in human history, in a deep and organic way. (2)
Religion as it is today must reconcile through the acknowledgement of one humanity a marriage between theocentrism and anthropocentrism as the world today requires that there is concordance between faith and humanity, to guide modern concerns and needs in uncertain times.
According to St. Augustine, as he speaks on the Grace of Christ "...it is thus that God teaches those who have been called according to His purpose, giving them simultaneously...
Augustine, on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin (Book I) 7) it is those who are given this gift that must stand tall in the face of the degradation that has taken place in Rwanda, they must know by the grace of God that they are called to help these two former enemies of the political and the chauvinistic ideologies of division to reconcile and find lasting peace.
Tertullian speaking of repentance qualifies the validity of allowing the sinner full coarse to repent his or her sins and hopefully, and eventually shake the hands of those who he has sinned against.
To all sins, then, committed whether by flesh or spirit, whether by deed or will, the same God who has destined penalty by means of judgment, has withal engaged to grant pardon by means of repentance, saying to the people, "Repent you, and I will save you;" and again, "I live, says the Lord, and I will (have) repentance rather than death." Repentance, then, is "life," since it is preferred to "death." (Tertullian on Repentance 4)
There will be real repentance, from the lord for those who sinned against their neighbor and fellow man. There must therefore be systems and processes open to create such possibilities. As the international community clearly sinned against the whole of Rwanda, humanity and God as creator in their worldly refusal to answer calls for help the international community of the faithful must then intervene to clear the way for good works that will appropriately focus resources on rebuilding a broken nation. As this has already begun in many ways it must be fostered and supported eternally, until all wounds are healed and especially the wounds of those who were both victim survivors and perpetrators of victimization.
