THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY: MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF THE NEW WORLD

By Rev. Fr. George Ehusani

Introduction.

A few years ago, there was an advert on the ABC Network programme in America for Buick Century car and it goes like this: “How will you live the next century? Surely, life will be more comfortable, smoother and quicker…” I want to begin this reflection on the challenges of the new world for the Catholic Church by asking: How will the Church live the 21st century? Will life be more comfortable, smoother and quicker for her? Since ours is not a commercial venture, I wish to address this question with greater realism than the Buick Century advertisement. Thus, basing my reflection on historical precedents and current sociological and ecclesiological trends, and  believing firmly in the power of God to make all things new, I would ask: What opportunities await the Church in the 21st century? What problems, threats and challenges will the Church have to respond to in the 21st century?

Let me begin with a note of optimism: While identifying himself closely with the Church and its plight through all generations, Jesus Christ did say in Matthew 16:18 “the gates of the underworld shall never overpower it.” And after giving his disciples the missionary mandate and the authority to teach and to baptise, Jesus assured them of his abiding presence “till the end of time” (Matthew 28:20). Now if the continued existence of the Church has been so guaranteed by the Lord, perhaps the next question should be: In what form will the Church survive the 21st century? Will this form be shaped from without through a king Cyrus, or will it be shaped from within through her sons and daughters?

The 20th century has been described as the fastest century there has ever been in the history of humanity and in the history of Christianity. In this century humanity has witnessed such scientific and technological development as was never before dreamt of. Sophisticated health care facilities, space travel, satellite communication, the computer and the Internet, are some of the indexes of the technological breakthrough of the dying century. On the other hand, the late 19th and early 20th century European expansionism aided Christian missionary activity in foreign lands, such that by the end of the second millennium, the gospel of Christ could be said to have reached “the ends of the earth.” With the modern communications media, the Pope could be preaching in Rome and be heard in several languages simultaneously across the world. This is reminiscent of the first Pentecost at Jerusalem, when visitors from Cappadocia, Mesopotamia, Pamphilia and Rome could hear the gospel preached in their own language. This is the wonder of the 20th century. Yet, the 20th century witnessed two of the most gruesome wars of human history – the first and the second world wars. It witnessed genocide of unprecedented dimension in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Liberia, in Sierra-Leone, and in the former territory of Yugoslavia. Our own country recorded in the 20th century a bitter civil war in which over one million lives were lost. And even as we live through what we consider to be peace times in Nigeria, thousands of lives are lost in violent ethnic skirmishes, and through banditry, robbery and hired assassinations. Thus, as the 20th century ends, there is tension and strife in many lands and widespread fear and anxiety in the hearts of men and women.

As we end the 20th century, the Church appears to many to be less and less of a force to reckon with in politics, in education, and in the determination of values that propel the contemporary society and the lives of individuals and corporate entities. The voice of the Church appears to be more and more inconsequential, not only for public policy formulation, but also for many individuals who are registered as Church members. Within the Church itself, there is quite some tension over issues of moral teaching, over ministry and over discipline and over authority. There is an attack on what are variously described as the Church’s excessive “ritualism,” “clericalism,” and “sexism.” As we conclude the 20th century, the Church is faced with the great challenge of a world that remains largely in darkness and sin. So two thousand years after the coming of Jesus Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life, many human beings still do not know Him, and therefore they live lives that are doomed for destruction. Two thousand years after the supreme sacrifice of  Christ on the cross, many of our country men and women, and many human beings in other parts of the world continue to pursue a life of hatred, wickedness, idolatry, violence, corruption, oppression, falsehood and injustice.

It is a great challenge to the Church that at the twilight of the Great Jubilee 2000, millions of people are still under the stranglehold of Satan who continues to steal, to cheat and to destroy. While millions of people across the world and in our own country remain largely ignorant of the gospel, there are millions of others who have heard the gospel, but who have responded only half-heartedly. There are indeed many who today bear Christian names, but whose lives are a far cry from the Christian ideal or who pay lip-service to Christ’s message of love and truth. It is true that our Churches and Cathedrals are filled to capacity every Sunday, and thousands are said to be converted daily, yet it is also true that a good number of these so-called converts to Christianity live ambivalent spiritual lives, with an exterior allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ, but with an interior and perhaps a more profound allegiance to the God of their forefathers who has refused to give way to the new God. As we end the 20th century, we observe that some of  those converted in the mission schools and who should now constitute the Christian elite, have not only abandoned the faith, but have become the fiercest critics of the Church.

Many of those who today profess the Christian faith in Nigeria, are corrupt politicians, fraudulent government officials, or dubious businessmen and women. The private moral lives of many of our members are tainted by the materialistic, hedonistic and violent culture of the day. It should be a matter of great embarrassment to the Christian Church and it should constitute one of the greatest challenges for the Church as we enter the 21st century, that baptised people partake in practically all the crimes and atrocities that go on in this country. From secret cults involving bizarre or barbaric ritual activities to fornication and abortion, and from bribery and corruption to political manipulation and ethnic bigotry or hatred, many baptised people in our society and in other parts of the world have pursued a life-style of shame, just like those who have never heard of Jesus Christ.

New Challenges for the Church

I believe that the crisis of faith, the crisis of commitment and the crisis of authority and even the crisis of relevance that face the Church at the close of the 20th century are bound to intensify as we enter the 21st century. Yet  I also believe that these multiple crises will force the leadership of the Catholic Church to jettison its hitherto presumptuous and triumphalist disposition, and do the much needed re-evaluation and re-structuring along the following lines if it is to respond adequately to the spiritual needs of twenty-first century humanity.

a). The leadership of the Catholic Church shall be forced to recognise that the it cannot hold on to the promise of Jesus Christ regarding the gates of hell not prevailing against his Church, if it refuses to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches at any moment. The Lord Jesus did say that the Spirit is like the wind. It blows where it wills. The Spirit cannot be domesticated. It is dynamic. Whereas the substance of the Christian face shall remain as an eternal truth, the form of expression of the Christian religion, its juridical, administrative and ministerial structures must respond to the dynamics of change or it will be relegated to the margins of society. A Church that cannot respond adequately to the dynamics of change will surely be left behind by a fast-changing world. Thus Church leaders in Nigeria and elsewhere will have to wake up to the reality of the inevitability of change. We shall soon be forced to recognise that if we do not allow ourselves to be active agents in the process of change, change shall occur nevertheless, and we shall soon become passive victims of the change.

b). Justice, love and compassion are the major planks of the Christian Religion. In fact no religion is worth the name if it does not passionately pursue justice, love and compassion.

c). While structures are needed to propagate the message of Christ, the maintenance of ecclesiastical structures (physical, juridical, hierarchical or even doctrinal), should never be allowed to take the priority attention of the Church. In other words, there should be a limit to our devotion to structures in the Church. The civilisation of love which Christ inaugurated with his life, death and resurrection, should be pursued above all else. And whenever there is a conflict between fidelity to structures and the demands of charity, there should be no question as to which should give way. For the Lord says "the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”

Thus the enormous challenges that shall confront the Church in the 21st century call for a major review of our method of evangelisation and pastoral care, and a whole-sale evaluation of our formation programmes and church structures.

i). Methodology:

The present method of formation at all levels (from the catechumenate to the priesthood or Religious Life, and from childhood to adulthood) appears to place too much emphasis on the cognitive, and too little accent on the affective and intuitive dimensions of human development in general and the Christian enterprise in particular. Training in love, mercy and compassion, which are a function of the affective faculty of the human personality, have often been neglected in favour of an all too intellectual approach to catechises and theology. The result is that we often have men and women who are highly knowledgeable about the Catholic faith, and who are very scrupulous and meticulous in their ritual observances, but whose hearts have not been won over by the love of God in Christ.

ii). Inculturation/Contextualization:

Inculturation and contextualization are a necessary corollary of evangelisation. When adequate efforts at inculturation and contextualization are not made in the process of evangelisation, in catechises, in pastoral practice, and in the administrative and juridical structures of the Church, the Christian faith of the people remains only superficial, as we can see in the ambivalence displayed in the lives of the majority of our people. In the face of crisis such as acute illness, abject poverty or childlessness, or confronted with the strong wind of materialism and secularism now blowing through the entire world, the faith often collapses. The fate of the early North African Church offers us ample lessons in this respect. The inculturation we call for here must go beyond the superficial level of language translation or the adaptation of liturgical signs and symbols, to include the incarnation of the gospel message on the level of theological reflection, and the Church's juridical and administrative structures.

iii). Review of Structures:

We shall need to revisit the entire structures we inherited from the Western European Church, for whereas the deposit of faith may be seen as a matter of divine revelation, the organisational, administrative, legal and formation structures we have today are human inputs that were in large measure influenced by the cultural patterns, particular worldviews, historical experiences and (traditional) religious heritage of Western Europe. No matter how long these structures, methods and models we inherited from the EuropeanChurch have been in place, they cannot be taken as "given." They must now be subjected to critical evaluation to determine whether they are what we require for the Christian missionary enterprise in this age, and for our own part of the world, otherwise operators of those structures will be acting like the fanatic who redoubles his efforts and forgets his aim. In undertaking this evaluation, we must take into full cognisance our traditional religious genius, our unique historical experience, our peculiar cultural patterns, and our contemporary socio-economic and political exigencies, for as they say, "God meets people where they are at." In other words, the structures of the Church must be constantly re-invented for every age and for every group of people, if they are meant to serve a truly "catholic" church, and if they are to remain relevant for a church whose missionary mandate is "until the end of the world."

iv). Paradigm shift

To meet the challenges that face the Church in the new millennium, we call for a major paradigm shift that will affect the Church's self-understanding and the understanding of its mission in the modern world. The Second Vatican Council, the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Pope John Paul II's declaration of a new era of evangelisation, the African Synod, and the proposed National Congress of the NigerianChurch, are all attempts at reaching this self-understanding on the part of the Church and undertaking a review of its mission to the world. Many Church leaders in our country however have not even begun to appreciate some of the most basic teachings of Vatican II, thirty-five years after the Council. Many have not bothered to read the post-synodal document, "Ecclesia in Africa," let alone implementing its provisions. Yet the challenges that face the universal and the local Churches in the new millennium call for such radical review that go far beyond the limits of the provisions of the 1994 Synod. We call for a major shift in the Church's self-understanding, from a church of dogma, structure and power to one of community, charism and service. We call for a radical shift in emphasis from a church of authority, control and ritual to one of love, mercy and compassion.

v). Change of orientation on the part of the leadership:

The NigerianChurch today does not lack personnel for ministry and for evangelisation. The human resources are available. What we lack appears to me to be a rational plan for effective utilisation of available personnel for effective ministry and a change of orientation on the part of the minister. There is too much clericalism in the NigerianChurch. This singular factor will work against the Church and its mission in the new millennium. Ours is an age of ecclesiastical deregulation, an age of widespread Pentecostalism, an age when just anybody who feels called can open a church and be sure to get worshippers. In such an age, a church that monopolises ministry will soon find its buildings deserted by enthusiastic Christians who want to take active part in worship, in evangelisation and in church governance. It is time for the clergy and the Religious to recognise the rights of “the people of God” as enunciated by the Second Vatican Council, and the rights of the laity as spelt out in the new code of Canon Law.

Leaders of the Church have to cultivate the virtue of humility. We must recognise that though the Church is a holy entity by virtue of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit of God, it nevertheless remains a Church of sinners by virtue of the sinfulness of its members. Therefore as we enter the 21st century, an all too rigid and dogmatic posture on the part of the leadership in pastoral practice and in matters of discipline, must be abandoned in favour of an attitude by which the leaders acknowledge that they are wounded healers. Also, the challenges of the new millennium will demand greater professionalism from the Catholic minister. Much more will be required of him than knowing how to say mass, if he is going to stay in business. There will be need for greater initiative, creativity and ingenuity in the pastoral care of the faithful. The Catholic minister shall need to demonstrate greater commitment to the spreading of the Word with all the modern techniques of mass communication. As we end the 20th century, Information Technology has taken the centre stage and is proving to be the most potent force in the world.

The leaders of our church shall have to familiarise themselves with the use of the various elements of the Information Technology, including the Radio, the TV and the Computer and the Internet. In the new century, the Radio, TV and the Internet may prove to be a more veritable medium of evangelisation than the school or even the church pulpit. Thus far, the NigerianChurch has paid only lip-service to these media of communication, yet we know many of our young people spend more hours before the television than they spend in school, and we know for sure that they cannot sit in church for half as much time as they sit before the television. Also the print media should be taken seriously. And here, since our people are not into heavy reading, we should make more use of tracts and leaflets than lengthy books. Those who will use this medium should be schooled in the basic techniques of journalism, in such a way that they can share their faith to a wider audience of young people in simple language. This whole area of mass communication calls for a lion share of our parish, diocesan, provincial and national budgets annually. Finally, those who minister in our churches shall need to be equipped with the necessary tools to read the signs of the times, to do adequate social analysis and to take prophetic stance and make enlightened pronouncements on the socio-economic and political direction of the country. On the whole, a major review is called for in the formation programmes for our clergy and Religious if we must fulfil the missionary mandate and remain relevant for the men and women of the 21st century.

vi) Responsibility of the lay faithful:

Our lay people need to wake up from their sleep and occupy their rightful place in the Church. Vatican II and the new code of Canon Law provide for their adequate involvement in the work of evangelisation and in church governance, through participation in the Church Council, the Parish Pastoral Council, the Diocesan Pastoral Council and the Diocesan Synod, and also through their involvement in the work of the Justice and Peace Commission, the Catechetical Commission and the St. Vincent de Paul society. In the new century, ministry in the Catholic Church should be structured in such a way as to leave enough room for the adequate and fruitful involvement of such Lay Apostolate Organisations as the Papal Knights, the Knights of St. Murumba, the Knights of St. John, the Catholic Women Organisation, the Catholic Men Organisation, the Catholic Youth Organisation, the Young Christian Students, the Legion of Mary and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, in the very vast areas of evangelisation and pastoral care. Perhaps it is time to consider the establishment of more ministries in the NigerianChurch.

vii). Emergence of new lay ministries:

There is no reason why we cannot have Teachers and Preachers, Evangelisers, Healers, and Visitation Ministers in addition to Eucharistic Ministers and Lectors functioning as distinct lay ministers in the NigerianChurch. The African Synod  and the Post-Synodal document of Pope John Paul II encourage the AfricanChurch to evolve its own local ministries, but to this day we have done precious little in this regard. A lot of our lay people have the required charisms to undertake these various ministries. For example the Catechist has always been the grassroots minister of the Catholic Church in this part of the world. The role of the Catechist needs to be better recognised and appreciated. I suggest that the best way to recognise the Catechist in Nigeria is to elevate his or her function within the Church to the status of a ministry, and to provide for adequate training and remuneration of those who go into such a ministry. And to enhance the training of our lay people, we need to have more Schools of Evangelisation. They do not all have to be structured like the “Emmaus House” in Issele-Uku. They could be based in parishes, and organised on weekend basis, or as evening classes. I believe that we have enough financial and human resources in each diocese to run a number of such Schools of Evangelisation. Enlightened lay people must educate themselves not only on the doctrines and ritual practices of the Church, but also on the laws of the Church and be abreast with the theological currents in the Church at any particular time. This is absolutely necessary, as St. Peter says, so that they may be able to defend the hope that is in them. The time when the Reverend Father knew it all and when the lay faithful were only passive consumers of the spiritual goods dispensed by the priest has gone. In the 21st century, the educated lay faithful shall have to take his or her rightful place in the company of the children of God, where priest and people shall pray together and nourish each other along the pilgrim way.

I consider it a matter of great concern that many of those who should be considered among the Catholic elite in our country are scandalously ignorant of the Scriptures and of the teachings of the Church. Many are totally oblivious of the developments that have taken place in the Church since the Second Vatican Council and the African Synod on the level of Theology, Canon Law, Liturgy, and Pastoral practice. The knowledge of the faith which many lay faithful possess remains the elementary catechism knowledge with which they were prepared for First Holy Communion or for Confirmation at the age of twelve, when they were in primary six or form one. Some of these people have progressed intellectually to become Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants, Professors, Architects and Business Tycoons. Yet they are infants in matters of the faith, because they have not devoted time to study matters of their faith, the way we see Pentecostals in our society do. How do such lay people hope to cope in the 21st century? How do they imagine that they would be able to pass on their faith to their children in an increasingly materialistic, securalistic and pluralistic society? They may know how to answer the questions: “Who made you? Why did God make you? What are the seven commandments of the Church? What are the four last things?” But that level of understanding is going to prove highly inadequate in the new millennium for any adult Catholic.

The educated lay faithful who cannot participate confidently in discussions and debates or defend his or her faith in matters concerning the Church’s teaching on Purgatory, on Infallibility and Apostolic succession, or the Church’s teaching concerning Nuclear War, Capital Punishment, Human Dignity, Freedom of Conscience, Private Property, Globalisation and the International imperialism of money, In-vitro fertilisation, Sterilisation, Abortion, Euthanasia, Artificial Contraception, Cloning and Fetal Experimentation, shall find it difficult to live his or her faith through the 21st century. The educated lay faithful who does not make time to study the rational for the Church’s efforts at Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue, shall find it difficult to live his or her faith through the 21st century. Our enlightened lay faithful shall find it difficult to survive in the new century if they are not familiar with the Code of Canon Law, the Encyclicals of the Pope, the various Post-Synodal documents issued by the Vatican, and the Pastoral Statements regularly issues by their bishops.

viii) Dealing with ethnicism

Ethnicism, understood as unexamined loyalty to one’s ethnic group, and the application of learned prejudices against other groups in our multi-ethnic society, is an evil that has plagued the Nigerian nation and has remained a cog in the wheel of our national progress. The reality of ethnicism as an instrument of violence and an agent of retrogression in the secular Nigerian society is bad and needs to be evangelised by the gospel of Christ. It goes without saying therefore that the presence in the Church of such tribal sentiments and unexamined loyalty to one’s ethnic group, is a scandal of great  proportion that should be a matter of great embarrassment and concern for all who claim to belong to Christ’s kingdom of love and brotherhood. It was Archbishop Obiefuna, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, who, at the African Synod, made the historical contribution on the Church as Family. He wondered whether the African Christian considers baptismal water as thicker than blood. It was his submission that the waters of baptism which made us children of God in Christ, should be considered thicker than the blood that united or bonded together so powerfully, members of the same family or ethnic group in Africa. Thus, ethnicism in the Nigerian society, and in the Church is a reality that must be honestly addressed by all of us as a matter of priority in the new century, as individuals and groups in the Church, if we must be faithful to our mission of evangelising the Nigerian nation and people. The recent experience of Rwanda and Burundi, where Catholics who for decades shared the Eucharist daily and said the Divine Office together, all of a sudden turned against each other and hacked each other to death in the most brutal manner, is very instructive. Now what lessons can we learn from this Rwandan experience in ethnic bigotry? What practical measures are we ready to take towards the attainment of the much needed reconciliation, unity, love and solidarity among the various groups in Nigeria?

ix) Being authentic witnesses of the Gospel:

Many young people have today rejected the creed, code and cult of the institutional church, with the accusation that such structures are empty, hypocritical, and self-serving. Many of them are justifiably angry about the pride of place given to the accidentals of our religion. Our young people seem to have discovered that the essence of religion is not to be found in the exteriors of religious traditions. They seem to recognise that no matter how profound the theological formulation may be, no matter how solemn the ritual act may be, no matter how lofty the traditional practice may be, no matter how scrupulous the canonical prescription may be, these in themselves do not constitute the essential core of the Christian faith. They seem to understand that the essential core of our religion is the fire of love (the Spirit) offered to each man and woman by a loving Father. It is this fire of love which constitutes the axis from which all religious acts flow. It is this fire of love which enables one to love God in the privacy of his or her heart, and to accept the gift of his or her neighbour in love. But when the exterior forms and acts of religion become more important than the love and compassion which they are meant to celebrate, religion loses its meaning, and becomes an empty autocracy.

x) Basic Christian Communities:

The NigerianChurch must immediately embrace the idea of Small Christian Communities or Basic Christian Communities, for the purpose of effective ministration and pastoral care. The experiment in Basic Christian Communities has proved very successful in Latin America since the mid 1960s, and in recent years, these communities have thrived in many local churches in Africa. There are few examples emerging here and there in Nigeria, but on the whole the idea is still very new to Nigerians. It should be clear to all that our present parish structures, and the available ministers cannot adequately cater for the ever growing population of Catholics. There is the urgent need to break up the parish set-up into small manageable units or cells, consisting of Christians who are able to know themselves properly, visit one another, share in one another’s joys and sorrows, anxieties and worries. We need to have in place of our large parishes today, small cells of faithful people who gather more regularly than once a week to pray together, to study the scriptures together, and to share the Eucharist as a true family. Against the background of a mass society, where the individual is often lost in the anonymity of the large urban group, perhaps we need to reconsider our taste for huge, monumental structures as churches, and instead go for small buildings, where the spirit of family can be promoted. Perhaps the time has come for us to begin to see huge structures such as the Assumpta Cathedral in Owerri or the St. Leo’s Church in Ikeja, as places for occasional celebrations, and not the regular worship place for a Christian community, where true fellowship can thrive. I must add here that we do not need ordained ministers to head the Basic Christian Communities. Many of our Catholic lay people are more qualified than the pastors of the numerous evangelical churches that are thriving all over the place today, and they are taking many young people from the Catholic Church.

xi) Feeding the hungry, visiting the sick:

Young people are looking for authentic witnesses of the gospel of love, mercy, forgiveness and compassion, not dogmatists and ritualists. The young people will reject the Knights of the Church and their pious posturing if they do not see in them faithful husbands, exemplary parents, honest contractors, diligent public servants and selfless politicians. They will reject the catechist and his doctrines if they do not see in him the father of the Prodigal Son who opened his arms to welcome the boy who came back after squandering his estate in a life of debauchery. They will reject the priest and his ritual if they do not see in him the Good Samaritan who can abandon his programme to help the man beaten and left half dead on the side of the road. They will reject the Consecrated Religious in spite of his or her commitment to poverty, celibacy and obedience, if they perceive that when they were hungry they were not fed, and when they were sick, they were not visited. We may see this reaction as characteristic of the idealism of youth. Yet is the kingdom of heaven not for those who view the world with the eyes of a child? Pope John Paul II himself testifies to the fact that today's world is not in need of more teachers. Rather, what the modern man or woman needs, he says, are authentic witnesses to the love of God in Christ. As St. John of the Cross, the greatest of all Christian mystics says, "In the last, in the final moment, we shall be judged on love."

Conclusion

I shall conclude this reflection on the challenges before the Church in the 21st century by raising the following questions for your consideration:

1. In what ways can the threats that face the Church today, some of which are highlighted above, be transformed into creative opportunities for the Church’s mission in the 21st century?
2. In what ways can the Church utilise today’s global crisis in politics, economics, morality and family relations (as a catharsis) towards the building of a new world order or the establishment of what Pope John Paul II would call the civilisation of love?
3. In what ways can the current tensions and controversies over church discipline, over ministry and over authority, aid the Church in becoming a “parable of the Kingdom?”
4. In what ways can the militancy of secular humanists in the struggle for justice and human rights aid the Church in her task of being the champion of human solidarity on the global level?
5. In what ways can the modern advancement in education, science and technology aid the Church’s overall mission of evangelisation and social transformation?

I believe that the Church must consciously discern the “signs of the times” if she is to become the sacrament of God’s salvation in history. She must listen to “what the Spirit is saying to the Churches” if she is truly to lead the way towards the Kingdom of God. The face of the 21st century church will be determined to a reasonable extent by the way the leaders respond to the above challenges. The leaders of the Church can decide to respond with passive resignation, and continue to look back with nostalgia to the “good old days” of glory. But we shall do that only to our own peril. A Church that resigns herself to fate in such a defeatist way will no longer be the instrument of God’s salvation. The Spirit is likely to bypass such a church and raise up some king Cyrus to bring about God’s design. For indeed a church that lacks the courage to tread the path cut by history, one that fails to engage in periodic evaluation and adapt her structures and methods of evangelisation to new realities, will suddenly find other forces rising up and doing what needs to be done. Thus the 21st century Church will have to live up to the challenges of the day, and by the power of the Lord who assured her that he has conquered the world (John 16:33), she shall surely triumph.

August 1999