“Membership, Places and Means In the Transmission of the Christian
Faith,” Intervention at the Synod of Bishops on The New Evangelization
for the Transmission of the Christian Faith by Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo Bishop of Oyo, Nigeria.
3 of the Instrumentum Laboris on Transmission of the Faith reflects on
the Membership, Places and Means of transmission in the New
Evangelization. I address mainly nos 92-95. I have three points:
1.The
Church in Nigeria like other countries in the last decades has lost
members, to the new age and so-called pentecostal churches, although
she continues to win others. Catholics have the powerful, efficacious
sacraments but we struggle with the fact that their celebration mostly
touch and attract those who already have some mature faith. We need to
explore the possibility of turning the celebration of the sacraments
themselves into efficacious moments of faith impact which can attract
non-christians to catechesis and commitment. This can be done if we
continually update homiletics and sacramental procedure with engaging
art, language, idioms and imagery which can better communicate their
power and meaning.
This is a challenge generally for liturgy
which is, divine worship and love in action (I.L.98) and is the place of
encounter between the human person, unsophisticated and weary as he may
be, and the refreshing immensity of divine Providence. Even modern man,
invaded by modern communications and technology has a rather short
attention span for spiritual things. The engaging power of solemn but
exuberant, multimedia liturgy can focus his restive faculties on the
work of the Holy Spirit to stabilize him against consumerism,
corruption, materialism and relativism to become a witness to the Gospel
(I.L 119, 123). New evangelization could exploit this model which
Africa counts on so much in its liturgy.
2. For comprehensive
transmission of the faith we need to return to the original arena of
evangelization which Jesus left us. For so long we have called on the
world to come to Church. The world of today calls the Church to come to
it, right there where people are found, especially in those places where
churches are emptying. Or is it the Holy Spirit calling us out of the
“catacombs of fear and self-consciousness” to share Jesus more with
others? The “original spaces of social media” namely the playgrounds,
the streets, town squares, market places, nightclubs, shopping malls,
even pubs and the slums, thirst to be “Church” in some form. If we do
not go there as Bishops. we obviously need to train and motivate
individuals and group evangelizers who will go according to the
characteristics of these arenas. If we do, we may not get the high table
treatment but just a word or gesture from us could unveil the face of
Jesus as a first encounter for someone. Here is where the call for a new
evangelization with new zeal, means and methods can be really
meaningful in my view.
3.The world of Media have great power in
mobilizing and committing people to ideas and creeds all over the world.
In the hands of Christian experts they can help the Church
tremendously. I would like this Synod to strongly reaffirm the role and
responsibility of Catholic Media professionals and practitioners in the
New Evangelization and the need to pay particular attention to their
spiritual development. Millions of youth all over the world are sharing
the same stories, experiences and challenges, irrespective of their
location, thanks to the new social, personal and digital media. The
Church must humbly seek their confidence and trust knowing that youth
prefer a co-communicator relationship to the old teacher̩̩-learner,
speaker̩̩̩̩̩̩̩̩̩̩̩-listener model. When they feel like allies with the
Church they can with the right format and language bring their Christian
faith and values to the new social forums. With other “natives” of the
new social media they face little or no resistance. The gathering of
Bishops Chairmen of Social Communications organized by the Pontifical
Council for Social Communications in 2009 came to a similar conclusion.
This strategy agrees with the status recently granted by the Holy Father
to lay people as “co-responsible” stakeholders in the work and mission
of the Church.
4.All agents of the good news must be equipped
with adequate content, from Scripture, the Catechism and the Church’s
teaching on Social Issues. It is near impossible to conceive a New
Evangelization today without forming the agents in Ecumenical relations
and dialogue with Islam especially in Africa where Bishops, Priests,
Religious and Catholics come from Muslim families. The truth is that our
lay people are daily involved in verbal and non-verbal dialogue at
various levels with other religions with commendable success and we can
learn from them. This might remind us of the opinion that it is indeed
easier to dialogue with Muslims than with Islam.
”The truth might be hard to say, painful to bear or even drastic for the truth sayer but still needed to be said”. ALISON.
