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Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai (AMDG)
A central leitmotif of the October 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family, following the presentation by Cardinal Kasper in the Consistory of February 2014, almost narrowed down to the question of the reception of Holy Communion by the divorce and civilly remarried. Kasper had advocated, based on a reading of Basil and the Fathers; the exceptive clause of Mathew’s gospel; and the economy practice of Eastern orthodoxy, that under certain particular cases, Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried should be allowed access to Holy Communion. Kasper and his allies saw this as a reconciliation of law and mercy, as a new interpretation of worthiness. The question of the state of worthiness for the reception of Holy Communion dates back to the apostolic times, as evident in the St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examined himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:27-30). Evidently, the early Christians realized that a higher standard was called for on the part of the one who goes forth to receive the Eucharist. One could not be receiving the Eucharist and then living a life that was contrary to the new life in Christ Jesus.
In the Church Fathers, we find recurrent, the teaching of the reception of the Eucharist as conterminous with a particular style of life. We read in Justin the Martyr: “We call this food Eucharist; and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration, and is thereby living as Christ has enjoined” (Apology, 128). In Irenaeus, the reception of Communion is linked to eschatology, to the definitive new life in the new heavens and the new earth: “For as the bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, consisting of two elements, earthly and heavenly, so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible but have the hope of resurrection into eternity” (Adversus Haereses, 234). Clearly, the settled conviction in the Fathers is that the Eucharist calls for a new kind of life, a new way of living that prepares the Christian to live with God forever in heaven, in the presence of God. It takes a certain mode of living here on earth to be able to live with God forever in heaven, and the reception of the Eucharist is an essential experience of the beginning of that new, definitive, eschatological life of bliss and joy.
Does this imply that the Fathers understood the Eucharist as a prize for the perfect? Certainly not! The very invitation to a self-examination before reception, and the ongoing practice of sacramental confession points to the realization by the early Church of the possibility of missing the mark, which is what sin is. The early Christians knew, that being humans, the possibility of turning away from the Creator to serving the creature was a realistic temptation, as Thomas Aquinas would later on define sin. Thus, in the experience of the Church, the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance developed a bond that was realistic and life giving. In order to approach the All-Holy Son of God, the Christian realizes in the timeless words of the Centurion, Lord, I am not worthy – Domine, Non Sum Dignus.
The challenge today is: how do we understand this unworthiness that humanity finds itself before Christ, and how should that be acted out in the reception of the Eucharist? To say that because all are unworthy, therefore all should present themselves indiscriminately for the Eucharist, could only amount to the cheap grace that theologians like Karl Barth and the Lutheran Dietrich Bonheoffer decried in Protestantism. To say that I am not worthy means that at some point, I should be able to recognize that I have gone too far afield, and need to return home in sacramental penance, before receiving the body and blood, otherwise, the risk of drinking judgment and condemnation unto myself, pointed out by Paul to the Church at Corinth, presents a real dangerous possibility.
Consequently, for someone who is cohabiting with a man or woman who is not his or her legal spouse in the Lord, (1 Cor. 7:39), this spiritual experience of Domine, Non Sum Dignus, will be an invitation to live in a hopeful penitential spirit, offered up for the spiritual good of the Church and the world. It will not be merciful for the Church to change her long-standing tradition, based on the explicit prohibition of divorce by Our Lord, in the name of mercy, to allow one living in active adultery (which is what a second marriage without an annulment is), access to the Eucharist.
On the part of the Church, this will imply two things: either adultery is no longer a mortal sin, which, in the Church’s tradition, should exclude one, prior to sacramental confession, from the Eucharistic table; or, the Church, in this new Kasperite mercy, sanctions and approves sexual activity outside the marriage covenant. Either way, it is not possible to change church practice without a change in Church teaching. The wedge between doctrine and practice, now advocated, is at best a Christological heresy, as Cardinal Muller rightly pointed out to the members of the International Theological Commission. It is the same Jesus who says I am the way, the truth and the life (Jn. 14:6).
It is important to quickly point out that no one has a human right to the reception of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a gift. It is therefore not a discrimination to say that certain choices in life stand profoundly at odds with the reception of the Eucharist. If anything, the reception of the Eucharist should challenge the Christian to abandon the old ways of sin. It has often struck me as profound that in the eschatological parable of Mathew 22, the King, after inquiring about why the particular individual was not putting on the wedding garment, asked him to be thrown out! All are called into the Church. But all need the wedding garment of repentance to stay in the banquet hall of Christ, who came, to take away the sins of the world, and continuously invites us to go and sin no more. If God did not take sin seriously, why did Christ come? In the final analysis, the choice is ours: to follow the Jesus of the Gospels, or the Jesus of Boston Globe and the New York Times. Either our instructors are Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, or they editors of the social media. The former promises heaven, the latter, favorable Gallup polls and approval ratings. The stakes are obvious, and as Pascal once said, quite high!
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By George Weigel
So it took considerable courage for African bishops at Synod 2014 to challenge the Germans and their allies.
According to an old Vatican aphorism, "We think in centuries here." Viewed through that long-distance lens, the most important Catholic event of 2014 was the dramatic moment when Africa's bishops emerged as effective, powerful proponents of dynamic orthodoxy in the world Church. The scene was the Extraordinary Synod of 2014, called by Pope Francis to prepare the Synod of 2015 on the theme, "Pastoral Challenges to the Family in the Context of Evangelization." The dramatic tension was provided by northern European bishops (principally German) and the Synod secretariat, who worked hard to reframe Synod 2014 as an inquest on a question long thought settled by the rest of the Church: the question of admitting the divorced and civilly remarried to holy Communion. The subplot in the drama came from the fact that the Church in Africa--rich in evangelical energy, firmly committed to orthodoxy, but very poor--is funded in large part by German Catholic development agencies (themselves the beneficiaries of the "Church tax" collected by the German federal government).
So it took considerable courage for African bishops at Synod 2014 to challenge the Germans and their allies. It's not a big secret that there's a lot of racism left in Europe, where the best and the brightest often imagine themselves beyond the "taboos" that beset Africans (as one German cardinal inelegantly put it). Nor is it a secret that African prelates are too often regarded by some first world Catholics as second-class citizens: charming, you know, but not-quite the A-team. Thus it doubtless came as a surprise to those pressing to change-what-cannot-be-changed in the Church's ancient sacramental discipline when the African bishops declined to defer to their former European masters and determinedly made two points. The first was that the Catholic understanding of marriage as the permanent union of a man and a woman--which Catholicism takes from both revelation and reason--had come to certain traditional African cultures as a great liberator.
Here, the African bishops insisted, was a powerful demonstration of the Gospel's power to free men and women from their attachment to culturally entrenched but dehumanizing ways of life. Here was real "liberation theology:" the liberation of men and women for the solidarity, joy, and fruitfulness in marriage that God had intended from the beginning, and that the grace of God now makes possible through the saving power of Christ, his cross and his resurrection. Or, more simply (and I paraphrase): You Europeans, whose faith has grown anemic, may experience the Catholic idea of marriage as a burden; we Africans have lived it, in our ecclesial experience, as a great liberation. European Catholics might consider that, as you ponder Pope Francis's summons to learn from the Church of the poor.
The second point the African bishops made was more subtle but no less unmistakable: Don't impose Euro-decadence on us, in terms of marriage or in the pastoral care of those experiencing same-sex attraction. When African bishops today look at Europe through the prism of a Gospel-centered, almost pentecostal experience that has seen African Catholicism grow exponentially in recent decades, they don't see the center of world civilizational initiative, as their grandparents might have done in colonial days. Rather, they see a continent dying from the first self-induced population collapse in human history. And they ask some obvious, if challenging, questions: Does this willful infertility have something to do with selfishness? With spiritual boredom? With a loss of soul? With a loss of faith in the Lord Jesus and his life-transforming, culture-forming, power?
How could the African bishops summon up the courage to make this challenge? Because they trusted their own ecclesial experience: the New Testament-like experience of the power of evangelical Catholicism. Because they trusted what they had "seen and heard" (1 John 1:3), they could challenge those who thought of them as the untutored kids on the block (at best), or as culturally backward welfare clients who ought to defer to their betters (at worst). U.S. Catholics who have embraced evangelical Catholicism and find themselves shaken these days might take a lesson from this.
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
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The Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ngaoundere in Cameroon is no more!! His Lordship Bishop Joseph Djida came to the end of his earth mission today. Born on the 8th of April 1945 in Mayo-Darle, Bishop Joseph Djida was ordained priest on the 5th of December 1976. He was subsequently appointed Bishop of Ngaoundere on the 23rd of October 2000. His ordination as Bishop followed a year later. He will be remembered for his great contribution in spreading the gospel to the people of the Diocese of Ngaoundere and by extrapolation, the people of Cameroon. Rest in peace Monsig.
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(Final Part)
Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai (AMDG)
In the Joy of the Gospel, Francis makes this bold comment: “Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say, “Thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion” (EG, 53). This shows a clear sense of the principle of pastorality, which is the landmark of the entire document. Francis says elsewhere: “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures” (EG, 49). Pastorality demands certain theological warrants that will make religious education in the secular culture possible, in terms of motivational principles, such as paying attention to the lived experiences of people; the social, economic and political challenges that people face in living out the faith. In this light, pastorality is a hermeneutical principle that pays attention to the experiences of the people of the Church in dehumanizing economic conditions, of many parts of Latin America and the developing world, and in the suburbs and ghettos of the developed world. In addition, pastorality implies that Francis does not talk about the economy as a CEO from Wall Street. He is interested in the economy because he is interested in he people of God. The goal is to allow the Gospel to enter the economic sphere in its entirety.
In contra distinction to a person-centered economic theory for Africa is one that Francis describes as a throw away economic culture, an economy of exclusion. Those excluded, Francis maintains, “(…) are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the ‘exploited’ but the outcast, the leftovers” (EG, 53). Africans might very well pay attention to the images Francis employs to drive home the destructive power of an economy of exclusion: Firstly, the economy of exclusion is enhanced by trickle-down economic theories, “(…) which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting” (EG, 54). Francis has come under attack for criticising trickle-down theories, with some labelling him a Marxist. The Pope defended himself by saying that the difficulty has been that while the excluded were waiting for the spill over, the glass magically gets bigger once the water was approaching the brim!
Secondly, the economy of exclusion is bolstered by a globalization of indifference, in which, “almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own” (EG, 54). Little effort is needed to see the effect of this globalization of indifference across many places in Africa, Latin America and Asia. A third feature of the economy of exclusion is the absolute autonomy of the markets: “While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and finance speculation” (EG, 56). No doubt, free markets offer the best possibility to emerge from material poverty. It creates space for creativity, freedom and hard work. Notwithstanding the merits of the free market, one cannot be indifferent in the face of the many who are excluded and dehumanized. Free markets ought to be tied to the objective good of the dignity of the human person; a freedom indifferent to the objective good of the person is actually an unfreedom that leads to a coercive social order. At the centre of the freedom of the markets must be the dignity of the human person and the common good, not just profit making. The fourth defining quality of the economy of exclusion is the idolatry of money. Francis remarks: “We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf (Cf. Ex. 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose (…). Man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption” (EG, 55). The idolatry of money is about the moral limits of money. It tells us that there are certain things that money cannot and should not buy. Francis says elsewhere: “Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity and a return of economics and finance to an ethical approach that favour human beings” (EG, 58). It becomes clear that the human person, his dignity and enhancement, forms the fulcrum of any genuine economic theory for Africa.
All these insights from Francis offer Africa a challenging economic model of communion that eschews the liberal market ethos that is the dominant capitalist model. Catholic Social Teaching and the Joy of Gospel places human freedom, creativity and hard work at the service of an economic rationality that rejects the worship of money and refutes an economic framework in which money rules, instead of serving the common good. The standard of evaluating the success of the markets ceases to be exclusively profit-driven. It offers Africa an economic model whose successes are based on transformative and improved living conditions for all. Catholic Social Teaching and the Joy of the Gospel reaffirm the free market as a vehicle to address poverty, while at the same time arguing for certain moral limits of the markets. The principles of solidarity, subsidiarity, the common good, the care for the creation, respect for human life, et cetera, challenge Africa to realize that the market need not, indeed cannot be the exclusive domain of the homo economicus, but the place for the human being, made in God’s own image and likeness. What hopes and new horizons can this liberating understanding of person-centered markets and money have for Africa? How can such a person-centered vision of the markets influence systemic change in Africa? In order to achieve a modicum of economic growth that will meet the aspirations of Africa, a Marshall-type program for Europe, and, preferably a Franklin Delano Roosevelt type of economic recovery program for the U.S.A., must be formulated, adopted and executed for Africa. From the Marshal Plan, Africa could draw inspiration that looks to the future, without focusing, as George Marshal challenged Europe not to, on the destruction caused by World War II on Europe. Similar to post-war Europe, Africa could see in the Marshal Plan the positive effects of modernizing industrial and business practices, borrowing a leaf from the generally efficient American free market that seeks to reduce artificial trade barriers, while instilling a sense of hope and self-reliance. Africa could also see in the Delano Plan, a model for fighting poverty and pessimism, trusting that Africa has nothing to fear but fear itself. Delano’s Emergency Banking Act could offer Africa’s banks a more positive role in the free market that Africa seeks to construct in combatting poverty and establishing a more assertive and engaged middle class in Africa, which is largely missing in many African countries. Without such plans and actions, the dichotomy between the rich and the poor in Africa will intensify and will increase the simmering and growing tensions, crises, and wars in Africa. Such a situation will increase the conflict between Africa and the West. Just as a country cannot remain at peace, half-slave and half-free, so the world cannot remain over-developed and under-developed, and hope to have and sustain peace.
In the post-synodal exhortation Ecclesia in Africa, Pope John Paul II declared that for many Synod Fathers contemporary Africa can be compared to the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; he fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him and departed, leaving him half dead (cf. Lk 10:30-37). Africa is a continent where countless human beings — men and women, children and young people — are lying, as it were, on the edge of the road, sick, injured, disabled, marginalized and abandoned. They are in dire need of Good Samaritans who will come to their aid (EA, 41). In sum, each one is a vehicle of ideas. Ideas are the most powerful thing in history. They are history. The great discoverer dies. His or her house disappears. All the physical objects associated with him or disappear. His or her grave becomes unknown; and yet, his or her ideas live on in others. Ideas are the most powerful force, in the long run, in history. In my view, therefore, the idea of what the world must be, the idea of what must be done for Africa, are the principal forces by which this issue can be fought. With the dignity of the human being at the center, with the common good as the focus of the markets, with an economy that includes instead of excludes, with a vision of money that serves instead of rules, together with focus on basic necessities that serve the common good and reflect the dignity of Africans, such as power, water management, transportation, sanitation, food preservation, we can begin to build a new Africa where development, peace and justice shall for all shall be the economic vision.
As Africa struggles to find a place in the economic world of the 21st century, the vision of Catholic Social Teaching and the hermeneutic of liberation theology that marks the Joy of the Gospel offer a much more compelling and humane narrative in reconstructing the economic life of Africa. This vision takes the best of both worlds: the creativity, mobility of goods and services, hard work, generation of profit, production, et cetera, from the world of the markets, inspired and driven by the social doctrine of the Church, at the heart of which is the human person made in the image and likeness of God, called to live in family and community, for the individual’s enhancement and the social good of society.
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With his picks for new cardinals announced on Sunday, Pope Francis continued his campaign to reach out to the peripheries. The pontiff bypassed traditional centers of power and awarded red hats to such typically overlooked locales as Panama, Thailand, Cape Verde, New Zealand, and the Pacific island of Tonga. For the second time, there were no new cardinals from the United States on the list announced by Francis. There were also no Americans in the first crop of cardinals named by Francis in February 2014.
While geography seemed the determining factor in these picks for Pope Francis, who at times struggled even pronouncing the names of his new cardinals, it’s noteworthy that the list includes a couple of high-profile moderates but no one with a clear reputation as a doctrinal or political conservative. Archbishop John Atcherley Dew from New Zealand, for instance, argued for allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion at a 2005 Vatican synod of bishops. Archbishop Ricardo Blázquez Pérez is president of the Spanish bishops’ conference and generally seen as a moderate opposed to the harder line of former Madrid Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela.
In all, Francis announced that he will induct the 15 new members into the College of Cardinals during a consistory ceremony to be held in Rome Feb. 14-15, pushing the total number of cardinal electors slightly past the limit of 120 established by Pope Paul VI. At the moment, there are 110 cardinals under the age of 80 and thus eligible to vote for the next pope. After the February consistory, that number will rise to 125, with 31 of them having been named by Pope Francis. The pope also named five “honorary” cardinals, meaning those already over 80 and therefore unable to vote in a papal election. Those nominations are generally made as a recognition of service to the Church.
In his first consistory last year, Francis demonstrated a preference for naming cardinals in countries that haven’t typically had them. In countries accustomed to having princes of the Church, Francis tended to skip the usual major archdioceses and name cardinals from smaller settings. That pattern was clearly evident again in the nominations announced Sunday. There was only one Vatican official in the mix, French Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, who formerly served as the Vatican’s foreign minister and now holds the top position at the Vatican’s Supreme Court vacated by American Cardinal Raymond Burke.
The other appointments are:
- Patriarch Manuel José Macário do Nascimento Clemente of Lisbon, Portugal
- Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
- Archbishop John Atcherley Dew of Wellington, New Zealand
- Archbishop Edoardo Menichelli of Ancona-Osimo, Italy
- Archbishop Pierre Nguyên Văn Nhon of Hà Nôi, Vietnam
- Archbishop Alberto Suárez Inda of Morelia, Mexico
- Archbishop Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, Myanmar
- Archbishop Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovithavanij of Bangkok, Thailand
- Archbishop Francesco Montenegro of Agrigento, Italy
- Archbishop Daniel Fernando Sturla Berhouet of Montevideo, Uruguay
- Archbishop Ricardo Blázquez Pérez of Valladolid, Spain
- Archbishop José Luis Lacunza Maestrojuán of David, Panama
- Bishop Arlindo Gomes Furtado of Santiago de Cabo Verde, Cape Verde
- Bishop Soane Patita Paini Mafi of the Island of Tonga
The five honorary appointments announced by Francis were:
- Archbishop José de Jesús Pimiento Rodríguez, retired from Manizales, Colombia
- Archbishop Luigi De Magistris, former head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary
- Archbishop Karl-Joseph Rauber, a retired papal ambassador
- Archbishop Luis Héctor Villalba, retired from Tucumán, Argentina
- Bishop Júlio Duarte Langa, retired from Xai-Xai, Mozambique
- The omission of any picks from the United States was not terribly surprising, given Francis’ preferences and the fact that the US, with 18 cardinals, still remains the second largest national bloc in the College of Cardinals after the Italians. There were, however, three American prelates seen as possible picks this time. They are Archbishop Jose Gomez from Los Angeles, who would have become America’s first Hispanic cardinal; Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who will host Pope Francis in September for a Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families, and Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, Francis’ pick to succeed the influential Cardinal Francis George, who retired and is battling cancer.
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From the Triumph of Orthodoxy to the 2014 Synod of Bishops, Cameroon Concord's Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai also did examine Africa and the Economy of Exclusion-Perspectives and New Horizons from The Joy of the Gospel of Pope Francis. He says the world is saved by the patience of God and destroyed by the impatience of men and women.Read and Succeed with Cameroon Concord this 2015!! Continue to be a part of the writings and teachings of Reverend Father Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai!!! Cameroon Concord----Changing the way you look at religious issues!!!
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