Being Church in Asia: New Evangelization and Challenges
Being
Church in Asia: New
Evangelization
and Challenges
Joseph
Mattam, SJ.
(Asian
Conference on New Evangelization, 4-6/9/2012, Ishvani Kendra, Pune).
Introduction
Since
some time, the expression “New Evangelization” has come into our theological
and ecclesial vocabulary and the Pope has called for a Synod to articulate a vision and strategy for
such an endeavor. This is addressed primarily to those who were once believers
and are now no more interested in the Christian faith; millions in Europe and
America show no more interest in the ‘faith’ that once governed their life.
Proclaiming the gospel to such persons is not going to be an easy task.
However, this invitation to New
Evangelisation (NE) is a grace filled moment for the Church to return to Jesus
and rediscover itself in the way Jesus had envisaged his Body to be in the
world, as the salt, leaven and light. If
the Church responds to this invitation and becomes the kind of Church that
Jesus wanted, then this NE will be a great blessing for the world. This calls for a lot of honesty; we need to
look at the past and see where we have gone wrong which has led so many to
leave the church. It seems to me that the only way we can do this NE is by
going back to the very old pattern of the early church of the first century,
when there was a lot of enthusiasm, zeal and commitment to Jesus. Obviously, we
cannot turn back the calendar and the clock, but we can look back to our roots
and rediscover the essentials that we seem to have allowed to slip away.
In
this paper I shall not focus on the normal themes like the wider context that
affects the message, as we are familiar with our context: religious pluralism,
religious intolerance, communalism, and fundamentalism; the massive poverty of
the millions; illiteracy; female infanticide; child labour; abuse of women and
many other factors that deeply affect our mission work. This is an important area that
we have to keep in mind. But I rather want to focus on the reasons for the
present impasse, which unfortunately the Lineamenta
does not seem to do, and see what it is that is going to be ‘new’ in our present day approach.
Without a proper diagnosis, one cannot prescribe a remedy.
1.
The Old Approach
At first we shall
look briefly at the ‘old’, as what happened in the past has its effects on the
Church today, and especially on the abandoning of the faith by millions of
‘believers’. In the early centuries, ‘gossiping the gospel’ by every member of
the believing community was the way the faith spread; also the mutual love of
the members of the community brought in followers (Acts). Later with more
aggressive evangelisation, due to the natural-supernatural divide that made baptism
absolutely necessary for salvation, evangelisation came to be the task only of
the Clergy and Religious. In this period certain emphases marked our efforts.
1.1 Great importance to doctrines
The evangelisation
work in the past emphasized a great deal (far too much) the importance of
dogmas, doctrines and statements of faith formulated and taught by the Church. Faith itself was understood as an assent to
these truths. Catechism books emphasized doctrines and children had just to
memorize many unintelligible formulae. This emphasis had devastating
consequences like heresy
hunting, the Inquisition, burning of heretics, torture, witch-burning and other cruelties
in the name of the God, and divisions in the Body of Christ. There was a time
when people were in awe of words like ‘hypostatic union’, ‘transubstantiation’,
‘consubstantial’, etc, but today people just do not care about these and
similar words; they just ignore such. I
am not saying that doctrinal developments are unnecessary; they all had their
reason at certain time in history; but now we need to go back to the Gospels
and present Jesus to the people. What was originally a revolutionary, counter-cultural
movement became dogmatic and ritualistic rather than being faithful to its original
call to be radical, revolutionary and prophetic. There was also a shift from experiencing
Jesus to thinking and talking about Jesus.
1.2 Emphasis on cultic practices
Another emphasis of
this period was cultic practices and rituals. The Church has built thousands of
beautiful churches and developed elaborate, lengthy liturgies in various Rites.
The number of sacraments grew and finally, thanks to Peter Lombard’s synthesis,
the 4th Lateran Council declared that there were the present seven
sacraments. Prayers, Novenas and other devotions too grew, as also the number
of saints and blessed, though it was during John Paul II’s time that the
greatest number was added to the list of saints and blessed. The mediatory role
of the saints was very much emphasized, as God came to be seen more and more
like the emperor, inaccessible to the ordinary, requiring mediators on earth
and in heaven. So, our unique God-given Mediator, Jesus suffered a setback.
1.3 Monoculturalism
Mono-culturalism
ruled the Church for centuries. The church as it was in Europe was literally transplanted
in the so-called mission countries allowing no creativity in these countries.
Examples abound: Mateo Ricci, de Nobili and others who attempted something in
line with the culture and habits of the people were not only opposed but were
condemned. The perennial theology of St Thomas was compulsorily taught everywhere and that too, in
Latin. That assured uniformity which was considered a great value. The Church
remained basically Euro-centric; even today when one looks at the number of
office bearers in the Vatican Curia and central commissions, and the number of
Cardinals one sees that it is mostly Euro centric, though there are more
Christians in Africa and Asia compared to the European countries.
1.4 The Clergy-Laity Divide
The
clergy-laity divide is another characteristic of this period that has deeply
affected the life of Christians. Without denying the great good the clerics
have done throughout the centuries, we must not ignore the harm it has done to
the Church. This division which was not known for the first two centuries,
would eventually control the life of the Church. This division does not stem
from Jesus, for he did not seem to want a two-tier Church made up of a superior
class called Clerics and an inferior class of the laity. For Jesus, all his
followers are equal as brothers /sisters/friends (Matt 23.8ff; Jn 13), though
they have distinct functions. Paul was clear about the distinction of charisms and functions but without the notion of a
hierarchy of persons (1Cor 12. 12ff; Rom 12.4ff; Eph 4.11ff) and was unaware of
what today we call ‘priests’[1].
Jesus
did not leave behind him a hierarchy, a class of people called “priests”.
Whenever he used the term ‘priest’ it was about the Jewish priests for whom he
had little regard (Luke 10.31; 17.14). Jesus never spoke of himself or any of
his disciples as priests; the gospels and the genuine Pauline epistles do not
present Jesus as a priest. If Jesus had spoken of himself as a ‘priest’ that
would have totally misled the people about his identity and mission. Only the
letter to the Hebrews, with justifiable reason presents Jesus as a priest and
his murder as a sacrifice; but then that is the end of priesthood. The main
function of the Jewish priests at Jesus’ time was offering sacrifices, and Jesus,
like the prophets before him (e.g., Amos 5.21-22, 25) was opposed to sacrifices
(Matt 9.13; 12.7); his cleansing of the temple, the prediction of its
destruction and his words to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4. 21-24) show that he
wanted a completely new form of worship and a new type of community which would
give primacy to interpersonal relations over cultic acts (Matt 5.23; 25. 31ff).
Jesus does not seem to have interest in cultic practices. His visits to the
temple were primarily to teach. Through his attacks on them the temple priests
became the arch enemies of Jesus and, ultimately it is they who turn him over
to the Romans. Had Jesus wanted the priesthood to be the backbone of his
community, definitely he would have spoken about it. The generally held view
that on Maundy Thursday Jesus ‘ordained priests’ has no foundation in the NT. Besides, from what I have mentioned above, it
is clear that Jesus could not have thought of ordaining ‘priests’ before his
death, as ‘priests’ were not in his horizon. Professor Herbert Haag of the
Catholic Universities of Tubingen and Lucerne says: “The New Testament does not
recognize any priesthood, whether sacramental or universal” (H. Haag 1997: 72)[2].
Quoting Haring, Haag says: “The Church of the first three centuries did not
know…either the concept or the reality of a ‘clergy’” (p. 45); he traces the
formation of classes of priests separated from the people back to the “fall of
the Constantinian era” (p. 45).
The NT had a multiplicity of
ministries, but by the 3rd century these are channeled into the
threefold ministry of Bishop, priests and deacons, formed into a hierarchy of
an order of priests. With this, there emerged a class called the laity, the
non-clerics. Clerics are the norm, just as when we used to speak of
‘non-Christians’ the understanding was the norm was ‘Christian’. “The
brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet 5.9) eventually became 2 classes, the
ordained and the non-ordained, one superior to the other, and their distinction
became characteristic of the Church. The
majority of the members of the Body of Christ are devalued, as only the
ordained can hold offices in the Church, preside over the worship and
participate in the decision making processes.
1.5
The leaders Jesus wanted
Jesus spoke about and wanted to leave behind him leaders who would be
different from leaders in the world and gave them very clear and precise
instruction. “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, It
will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you, must be
your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave” (Matt
20.24-28); “But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and
you are all brothers. And call no one your father on earth…The greatest among
you will be your servant” (Matt 23. 8-11); “But not so with you; rather the
greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who
serves… I am among you as one who serves” (Lk 22. 24-27); see Mark 10. 35- 45
and John 13. 1-18).
Can
anyone recognize in the present day Church leaders(Reverends, Lords, Graces,
Excellencies, Eminences, Holiness) the kind of leaders Jesus envisaged? The
function of the leaders Jesus wanted to leave behind was to “feed my lambs”,
“take care of my sheep” and “feed my sheep” (Jn 21.15-17); namely, to care for
and build up the community, and not the service of God by offering sacrifices
and by producing and defending doctrines. The early disciples of Jesus followed
his teaching and practiced the “brotherhood throughout the world” as is evident
in the writings of Paul. While, he was conscious of his authority as an apostle
(Gal 1.1), he speaks of himself as a servant (1 Cor 3.5), others as his
brothers/ sisters/ fellow prisoners (Rom 1.13; 1 Cor 1.10; 2 Cor 1.8). Paul
commissioned Timothy and others to leadership in the community by laying hands
on them, but this cannot be seen as an ordination to the ‘priesthood’. The idea
of a ‘priest’ does not arise in the first two centuries. Haag concludes: “This
survey has shown that all ministries are the creation of the Church. None can
be traced back to Jesus, not even that of the bishop, and least of all that of the
priest.” (Haag,108). The ministries arose as response to the problems the
community faced (e.g., Acts 6).
The later leaders either ignored or refused
to follow the teaching of the Lord, and on their own authority declared
themselves ‘priests’ busy with ‘sacrifice’, and patterned themselves on the
empire, taking titles, dress code and behaviour pattern from the empire system:
Reverends, Lords, Eminences, Excellencies and Holiness which have nothing to do
with what Jesus wanted, and in fact, are explicitly opposed to what he had
wanted. The empire system with its craze for power, privileges, wealth and
luxury corrupted the leaders. The civil societies of Greece and Rome were
highly hierarchical and that is the pattern the Church leaders followed instead
of the Gospels. They also moulded God unto the image of the emperor. Yves Congar,
in Power and Poverty in the Church,[3]
has shown clearly how this development on the pattern of the empire happened. At a time when the Bible was
not read by the people, any practice could be defended as coming from the
Bible; but today, as everyone can read what is in the Bible, and biblical
scholarship is spreading very much, we may not ignore what is given there so
clearly about the leaders and how they have deviated from what Jesus wanted.
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