A small-note address to the Communication Directors – Diocesan and Congregational – at the Assumpta Pastoral Centre, Owerri Tuesday 1st April 2014

 

Multi-Level Encounters

The concept of encounter in your meeting as Communication Directors in the Catholic Church is a very rich, dynamic and challenging one. Your meeting is indeed an encounter of believers in Christ and experts in Communications who seek to use your Catholic Faith and specialized knowledge in Communications science and technology to evangelize and humanize the many levels of human encounter in our daily lives, church life, social life, public life and global life, unto more peaceful and enriching stances.

 

1.    The Africa-Europe-America Encounter

I mention this encounter first because for over five hundred years now negative and positive influences from Europe and America continue to shape the present and future of us Africans. The latest much publicized encounter has been the tyrannical attempt to foist same-sex unions upon Africans as a right  to be constitutionally legalized. Happily Africans at large and Nigerians in particular have reasoned and risen together to denounce and reject this tyranny that reminds us in many ways of previous acts of tyranny and slavery in our history.

 

There is  in fact a whole package of anti-life and anti-God measures associated with this same-sex union – promiscuity, contraceptives, abortion  and the harvest of stem-cell tissues – which are being aggressively pushed into Africa .

Since Africa and Africans continue to cherish God and Life as foundational and essential to existence the promotion of the cult of God, the gospel and culture of Life must be priorities in our communication service.

 

2.     The Africa-Africa Encounter

The opening-up and breaking down of territorial boundaries  within the continent  of Africa has increased the rate  of movement  and encounters between and among Africans. While such opening up has led and could lead to the broadening  of human  fellowship  and  mutual understanding it has led to horrifying violence and brutal slaughter of fellow Africans due to leadership failures. This is a very serious challenge to us Africans especially the governments and Churches to find ways of safeguarding African lives, eliminating and preventing conflicts, war and bloodshed.

Africans must learn and be taught to equi-value every human life; to equally cherish one another. African life is as sacred as any other human life across the globe.

 

3.  The Nigeria-Nigeria Encounter

Nigeria’s National Conference begun on the 17th March 2014 provides Nigerians from almost every locality and walk of life a rare opportunity to come face to face with their loves and hates, with their strengths and biases, with their mutual expectations and grievances, with their hopes and dreams, with their constraints and pain, a lot of which have been inherited, nurtured and transmitted over the years.

 

Given that our Communicators share Africa’s pro-life stance and given your special mission to heal divides and build bridges of love and friendship, I believe that your concerted service across Nigeria will help nudge Nigerians towards respecting and caring for one another as mutually appreciative humans and citizens.

 

4.     The Christian – Muslim Encounter

The Christian – Muslim Encounter is apparently the most touchy and delicate in Nigeria. With the continuous killing of Christians in the North by the Boko haram Islamic sect, a tense dialogue goes on in the hearts of otherwise peaceful Christians and Muslims. At the National Conference an incipient confrontation over prayers between Muslims and Christians was averted by the adoption of the second stanza of Nigeria’s national anthem as the official prayer. Rather than a dialogical encounter unto peace, Nigerian Muslims and Christians may only achieve a semblance of peace by avoiding a confrontation. This may have the indirect but welcome consequence of promoting more tolerance among Christians and Muslims.

If Nigerian Muslims and Nigerian Christians were to work concertedly  on common good issues to the benefit of all Nigerians without forcing Islam or Christianity into the dynamics, we might end up with a humanizing Islam  and a humanizing Christianity without thereby evacuating their more spiritual – doctrinal aspects.

 

5.   The Intra-Church Encounter

Ecumenism, the effort to forge unity among Christians, is going through tough times in Nigeria. Without an appreciation of certain doctrinal, moral and canonical givens in the One Church of Christ parallel authorities, organizations and structures among Christians are developing which relativize the Christian identity and  mission. Lead-members of such Church-bodies see and hold themselves as quasi-autonomous Churches.

Healthy Ecumenism will always demand a unifying focus and thrust for all Christians in order to render Christians’ witness to Christ in the nation and world  more credible. Communication as an evangelizing agent must become ecumenical – geared towards unifying believers and non-believers as one family of God.

 

6.   The Intra-Catholic Church Encounter

As the Church directly founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ the Catholic Church is continually challenged to nourish and critique the vertical and horizontal encounters within its communion unto pastoral effectiveness.

The hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church tends to structure its encounters obedientially, while its charismatic thrust leaves room for freedom and choice. In Nigeria and elsewhere instances of disobedience and confrontation have come up creating unusual tensions. Catholic Communicators are challenged to share the self-sacrificing thrust of Christ’s priesthood – the seal of hierarchy – and expand their charismatic generosity in order to help the Catholic Church be the prime witness of God’s Life, Truth and Love in our common world for which she already exists.

 

7.   God-Humanity Encounter

While we pray for you and challenge you to succeed in your efforts at promoting life-enhancing encounters in  various settings it is gratifying to know and confess that the God-Humanity Encounter in Christ is the regenerative source and energy for sharing real life, firm truth and genuine love in our multi-faceted encounters.

With the fall of man into sin and evil and with the spread thereof man’s encounter with fellow-man took on a violent thrust that continued to expand as humanity’s greed and lust expanded. Even in the more noble figures of history like Moses, David and Peter we find flaws that reinforced humanity’s violent streak.

But with God’s assumption of our human nature in the person of Jesus Christ and particularly in his acceptance of death from humans without  hatred, bitterness or vengeance, Jesus inaugurated a new humanity, a new family, enlivened with God’s own life, enlightened by God’s own truth, embedded in God’s own love.

The more we share in God’s life in Christ the more we believe God’s truth in Christ and the more we embrace God’s love in Christ the more effective we will be in communicating them to others in our every encounter.

 

Most Rev. Anthony J. V. Obinna

Archbishop of Owerri

 

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