Synod: Africa speaks of hunger for faith formation

(Vatican Radio) On Monday, Synod participants heard from Church leaders in Africa, from Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Ethiopia. Below we publish the transcripts of their interventions:

Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, C.M., Archbishop of Addis Abeba, President of the Ethiopia and Eritrean Bishops’ Conference.

Small Christian Communities, established as the most local presence of the Catholic and Universal Church, share this same mission. Small Christian Communities provide an ideal pastoral context to establish and develop lay ministries. One of the most significant differences between traditional Catholic Associations and Small Christian Communities resides in the apostolic orientation of the latter.
Small Christian Communities are not built on the personal holiness of their members but in their humble availability for and faithfulness to their apostolic mission; personal holiness is a requirement and a consequence of the mission, not its final purpose. Small Christian Communities have an essential apostolic spirituality oriented to mission. Without mission, the Small Christian Community, as well as the universal Church, would be unfaithful to its very fundamental vocation of being a witness to the Gospel. This mission becomes a concrete reality with the establishment of lay ministries to be exercised in the restricted area of the community.
Lay Ministries, therefore, are not to be conceived as accessory or optional activities of the Small Christian Community in order to relieve the work of the priest. They are part and parcel of its life and growth and when ministries decline it is the whole life of the community that declines. Experience has shown enough what religious associations who are centered only in prayer and devotion can become: a sort of exclusive spiritual club for holy members only, more faithful to the minutiae prescribed by the handbook written by their founder than to the demands of Jesus in the Gospel.
The field is vast and open to pastoral creativity. However, in establishing new lay ministries, care must be taken that the dialogue, consultation and communion with the local Bishop is observed and that a periodical evaluation is performed lest a disparate variety of lay ministries conducted without a common vision and pastoral guidelines may result in creating disconcert and confusion among the people of God.
Such is the main challenge of the new evangelization. Though a relevant re-education of our Christian people is necessary in the field of lay ministries, it is not certainly from the side of our Christians that objections and resistance to them will come. Christians are eager to participate in a more active way in the life and growth of the Church.

Card. John Njue, Archbishop of Nairobi, President of the Bishops Conference of Kenya.

There is little interest in religion and much less for the theme of the "true religion"; what seems to count are, rather, religious experiences. People are looking for different modalities of religion, selected by everyone taking up that which they find pleasing in the sense of ensuring for them that religious experience which they find more satisfying on the basis of their interests or needs at the moment.
Today, for a good number of people, God is not denied, but is unknown. Is it not necessary to examine, from this unique perspective, the present crisis in which society finds itself? It is time to throw open wide the doors of our Churches and to return to announcing the resurrection of Christ, whose witnesses we are. As the holy bishop Ignatius wrote, “It is not enough to be called Christians; we must be Christians by our witness.” If someone today wants to recognize Christians, he must be able to do so not on the basis of their intentions, but on the basis of their commitment in the faith. We have the duty to shape the whole of society with Christ's teachings and spirit.
The theology we teach and live today has to be a science of faith that tries to help human reason to grasp better the truth that is sustained by faith.
Faith and reason have to collaborate to make them more intelligible to the believer.
The theologians of our time have no choice but to be saints not just instructors of truth.
We need an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world.
We need a Faith working through love (Gal 5:6).
The Creed must be that daily prayer offering a synthesis of faith known and lived.
Today we need to face honestly and courageously faith challenges which confront us.
We need to become aware of the great commitment which faith demands.
Hence, giving account of faith starts from the credibility of our living as believers and from the conviction that grace acts and transforms to the point of converting the heart. It is a journey which has to still find Christians committed to it after two thousand years of history. What I wish for and what I would like to hear from us today is a response to the question: “What are you doing, my friend?” each one of us would be able to reply: “I am visibly growing in faith”.


Bishop Beatus Kinyaiya, O.F.M. Cap., bishop of Mbulu (TANZANIA)

The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith Intervention on “the laity and their duty to evangelize” based on Instrumentum Laboris No.33-34, 82
Instrumentum Laboris No. 82 states that “the Church has many resources at her service, the first of which is the great number of baptized lay people.” Through their energy and faith, therefore, they should provide renewal in ecclesial settings.
In Africa, we have noticed growing hidden agenda to systematically remove the influence of the Church and her leadership from issues of public concern. Some of the new government legislations aimes at removing the Church’s role in education, health care, social services to the communities and a moral voice that defends fundamental values of the Gospel.
Give the situation, the lay people, whose particular vocation places them in the midst of the world and in charge of the most varied temporal tasks, must exercise their baptismal call to evangelize the vast and complicated world of politics, economics, culture, sciences and the arts, without forgetting the mass media. They have to evangelize:- the human love, the family, the education of children and adolescents, professionals and the suffering. The more Gospel-inspired lay people are engaged in these realities, the more these realities will be at the service of the Kingdom of God.
We the leaders have the duty to train them properly by having more pastoral centres and High Institutions of Learning, by having more local synods that will involve them in all stages, and by designing more programs of spiritual formation for them such as retreats and seminars. Also we have to encourage missionary spirit among them.
The world is a vast vineyard. The owner of the vineyard is the Lord and He invites every man, woman, and child to come into the vineyard and work it so as to make it produce the fruits of many good works. In the work of evangelization, it is upon the lay faithful to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws and structure of the society in which they live. It is the laity who will “permeate and perfect the temporal order of things with the spirit of the Gospel”.

Archbishop William Slattery, O.F.M., Archbishop of Pretoria, (SOUTH AFRICA)

Given the present structures of the church and the importance of liturgy and the parish community much depends on priests (81-89 in the Instrumentum Laboris).
With few trained formators in many seminaries do seminarians personally encounter the Lord? Who discerns?
If young priests come out with poor human formation they will be unsympathetic and unable to make people belong. Belonging is as the heart of community, belonging is an image of the Holy Spirit. The real signs meaningful to young people in this subjective age are recognized by them in the area of belonging and interpersonal relationships.
If the young priest has poor spiritual formation, if he has not contemplated the absolute beauty of God personally he will lack in zeal for prayer and be blind to discernment. He will be unable to train others in holiness.
With unsupervised pastoral formation the priest will be unlikely to experience the gifts of the laity and so dominate rather than collaborate as desired in No 106 of the Instrumentum Laboris.
If the priest has poor theology it will be the blind leading the visibly impaired.
To deal with the modern media (131 I.L) I like the policy of the English Church prior to the papal visit when they carefully selected and trained bright young people to defend and explain their faith. An attractive young lady doctor is much more effective in media propounding on medical issues than an elderly unmarried bishop.
The evangelizing of youth must involve a) exposure to the world of the poor and b) involve doing something for Christ-even as simple as pilgrimage and c) reflection together on such experiences. I would like some formal recognition of the pastoral services such as Catechists, Chaplains and Spiritual Directors both men and women in the life of the Church.
For bishops ourselves Bishops' Conferences must create space for us to discern evangelization in our spiritual and pastoral lives. As father and brother we bishops must travel closely with our priests evaluating their parish apostolates and keeping before them the light of Evangelization. We must welcome the new movement but continue with them to keep the vision of the diocese within the contours of their charisms.