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THE SACRAMENTAL IMAGINATION African Appropriation of Catholicism Before and After Vatican

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THE SACRAMENTAL IMAGINATION African Appropriation of Catholicism Before and After Vatican QL 94 (2013) 299-329 doi: 10.2143/QL.94.3.3007369 © 2013, all rights reserved THE SACRAMENTAL IMAGINATION African Appropriation of Catholicism before and after Vatican II1 Epigram Today, it seems opportune for me to pursue a deeper reflection on one of the key issues that your Conference submitted to me as priority, i.e. “African theology;” in other words, the African contribution to theological reflection. Generally speaking, this is not a new problem for the Church. The first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles indicate clearly that Peter and the rest of the Apostles had lived first of all in symbiosis with the Jew- ish environment of Jerusalem. However, soon after, issues with regard to the Hellenists arose, i.e. with regard to disciples, Jews or pagans, who belonged to the Greek culture. Again, two centuries have hardly elapsed when a third form of “Christianity” was born, the Latin Churches. Thus for centuries Jewish-Christian churches, Oriental Churches and Latin Churches cohabited. At times, this diversity was stressed to the point of tensions and schisms. Nevertheless, the coexis- tence of these different churches remains, in many ways, the most typi- cal and most exemplary manifestation of legitimate pluralism in cult, discipline, and theological expressions, as the Decree of Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio points out. (John Paul II, Address to the Bishops of Zaire on Ad Limina Visit, April 30, 1983)2 Preamble The celebration by CTSA, in 2012, of the 50 years of Vatican Council II rightly focuses on Sacraments and the “world” Church. Sacramentality 1. Originally presented at the Black Catholic Theological Consultation, Catholic Theological Society of America Convention, 2012: “Sacrament/s and the Global Church.” 2. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1983/april/documents/ hf_jp-ii_spe_19830421_zaire-ad-limina_fr.html [accessed, May 9 2012 My translation; “legitimate pluralism” underlined in the original; see Unitatis Redintegratio, 14-18]. 300 Elochukwu Uzukwu captures the very nature of the Church (cf. LG. 1). Vatican II Council had an overriding pastoral focus: Its first document, Sacrosanctum Concilium elaborated the way the church, rooted in local contexts breathes, moves and lives, thanks to its sacramental/liturgical celebration. The second session of the council closed December 1963 with the overwhelming positive vote approving and promulgating Sacrosanctum Concilium. The approval and promulgation, displayed the lineaments of the “world Church”! The fundamental option for the bold, difficult, and necessary pastoral shift towards renewal, intentionally ignited the Catho- lic sacramental imagination. The firm decision to embrace the vernacu- lar3 enabled the Council or rather Catholicism to adopt, as its own, the languages and cultures of the emergent “world church.” While guarantee- ing the respect for the rights of Latin in the Latin Rite, the Council re- jected a certain fixation on Latin as the sole tongue that could channel human imaginative creativity to express, without corruption, the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection.4 The decision of the Council echoed the words attributed to St Augustine: “It is better to have the learned re- proach us than to have the liturgy remain unintelligible to the people.”5 Vatican II upheld the imperatives of catholicity, reversed Tridentine ri- gidity and uniformity and aligned itself with the wisdom of the ancient Church: 3. For a review of the passionate debate over liturgical and theological language in the decade before the council, and in the preparatory commissions for Vatican II see, Joseph A. Komonchak, “The Struggle for the Council during the Preparation of Vactican II (1960-1962),” History of Vatican II: 5 vols, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY & Leuven: Orbis & Peeters, 1995) I, 206-226. See also Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948-1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990) 22-25, 45-46. 4. This could not have happened without many struggles, between bishops and the Roman Curia, within the preparatory commissions for Liturgy, Oriental Rites, Christian Unity, and Seminary formation; struggles complicated by John XXIII’s Veterum Sapien- tia. But Vatican II while acknowledging the position of Latin in the encyclical of Pius XII, Mediator Dei, went further and modified the role of this language in the way it ap- peared in Mediator Dei, #60: “The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth. In spite of this, the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission.” http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20111947_mediator-dei_en.html [accessed May 9, 2012]. The pushback today to Latinize is another way of re-establishing the pre-conciliar worldview and ecclesiology. A detailed historical account of the debates prior to the approval of Sacrosanctum Concilium is given by Mathijs Lamberigts, “The Liturgy Debate,” History of Vatican II, II, 107-166. 5. Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948-1975, 46. This is supposed to have been repeated by Paul VI. The Sacramental Imagination 301 Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. (SC 37) In some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adapta- tion of the liturgy is needed, and this entails greater difficulties. Where- fore: The competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, must, in this matter, carefully and prudently consider which ele- ments from the traditions and culture of individual peoples might appro- priately be admitted into divine worship. (SC 40). Texts like these confirm that the Council released the latent sacramen- tal imagination, the pulsating energies of human creativity particular to the church among diverse sociocultural groups. This realizes the katholou (catholicity) in its wholeness in the local celebration of the Paschal mys- tery. Catholicity is fully captured in living and celebrating the Word transmitted through the apostolic ministry, breaking bread with thanks, and being faithful to the apostolic mission.6 Though a pilgrim in this world en route for the Kingdom, the church-community, grasped in its celebration by the Spirit of the living Christ, symbolizes/realizes unity with the Triune God to effect the unity of the human family.7 African Fathers present in the Vatican II Council helped to tease out the enabling principles for integrating the genius of each sociocultural group into the worship of God. The insistence of African (and Third World) Bishops to give their linguistic and cultural particularity a rightful place in worship was honored by the Council.8 Their cultural diversity displayed their life worlds, their ways of symbolizing and ritualizing, of putting their finger on the intimate connection between the visible and the invisible, between the experienced and the mystery beyond experience, between the verbalized and the Word beyond words! These, and more, are the product of human imaginative creativity. They embody the pattern of creating and living meaning. They display the dimensions of the inte- grative capacity of the human imagination. For, imagination constitutes the human.9 6. See Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, L’Église locale – Ecclésiologie de Communion et Catholicité (Paris: Cerf, 1995) 40-42. 7. Convincingly described by Tillard, ibid., 42-56. 8. See Sacrosanctum Concilium #36. 9. See David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 128-129, 149, n96. Also George Worgul, “Imagination, Epistemology and Values: A Perspective from Religious Thinkers” (2003) https://preview.cua.edu/www_crvp/book/Series07/VII-4/chapter-6.cfm, Moral Imagina- tion and Character Development. Volume 1: The Imagination, ed. George F. McLean and John Kromkowski, https://preview.cua.edu/www_crvp/book/Series07/VII-4/front.cfm [accessed May 5, 2012]. 302 Elochukwu Uzukwu “Imagination,” used in this study, can be described as that “act or power of forming mental images”!10 However, imagination is more than the act of forming images. One must underline its capacity for integrating diverse dimensions of human experience and knowing. This is pertinent in the analysis of life in Africa. Since life in the African world is experi- enced as ambivalent, knowledge is not available in a pure detached mode. Our knowing is in the participant-performer dynamic – the experience of the other is also the experience of the self, within the rhythmic harmony of interaction. Embodiment that mediates interaction plays a crucial role in the interactional manifestation of the human person in gestures (speech, dance, music, ritual, and so on). Without being “romantic” African philosophers capitalize Life, underline its ambivalence and note the successful access to meaning through rhythm, sound and dance.11 Imagination broods over and effectively draws together the rational, the not so rational, the emotional, the intuitive, and the speculative dimensions of our knowing. The African Fathers who participated at Vatican II were deeply con- vinced
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