THE SACRAMENTAL IMAGINATION African Appropriation of Catholicism Before and After Vatican

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 rigidity 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 adaptation 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 elements 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 sacramental 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 mystery. 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 experienced 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 that the Africans’ connectedness to their plural universe rooted in relatedness enables imaginative creativity in the local church and in the communion of churches. Relatedness, an ontological imaginative devise, hovers over all patterns of living and being. Consequently, nothing stands alone: a thing stands and another stands beside it.12 Relatedness energizes the African religious imagination that analogically relates the sacred and the secular, avoiding dialectical separation while maintaining rhythmical difference! One can understand John Mbiti when he claims, from the perspective of African religious imagination, that the African is “incura- bly religious,” working, eating, and playing religiously.13 This religious imagination enriches the “sacramental imagination”; indeed it constitutes the basis for appreciating the dynamics of a “sacramental imagination.” In ritual-drama the divine and the human encounter each other for the divinization of the human and for the full flourishing of the human. Afri- cans’ sociopolitical imagination merges with a moral imagination to state that one is human along and with others. The focus on “we are” inspires transparency and freedom in assemblies that adopt the palaver approach to discourse. This becomes crucial not only for ethical theory but also for ecclesiology. The list continues. One is therefore not surprised by the excitement in Africa over Vati- can II. Its bold embrace of the vernacular, that channels the linguistic and

10. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. 11. See K. C. Anyanwu, “Sound as Ultimate Reality and Meaning: The Mode of Knowing Reality in African Thought,” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 10 (1987) 29-38. 12. This is a literal translation of the Igbo ontological principle, ife kwulu ife ak- wudebe ya. I explored this in the methodological section of Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness: Appropriating Faith and Culture in West African Style (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012). 13. John S. Mbiti, African Religions & Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969). The Sacramental Imagination 303 the religious imagination of the other, is in reality a new Pentecost. After the Council, the reform gradually took flesh among national and regional conferences of bishops. Indeed, as the Decree Ad Gentes #22 states: “In harmony with the economy of the Incarnation, the young churches, rooted in Christ and built up on the foundation of the Apostles, take to themselves in a wonderful exchange all the riches of the nations which were given to Christ as an inheritance.” The nations bring these riches in their stylized self-presentation as living church-community before the divine majesty. The best example of this experience in Africa is the “Za- irian rite” approved by the Holy See in 1988.14 It was applauded by the African conferences of bishops. During the 1st Synod of Bishops for Af- rica in 1994, the reporter, Cardinal Hyacinthe Thiandoum of Dakar, Senegal, referred to the approval of the Zairian liturgy by the Holy See as “a right” for all African conferences and not simply “a concession” granted only to the Congo.15 The notable diversity in creativity displayed in the reception of the catholic tradition among African peoples testifies to the very nature of the catholic tradition: the local is assumed into the communion of churches. Local African Catholic communities, rooted in what Benezet Bujo calls the “memorial of the ancestors,” display the sacramental and moral imagination by fusing the dynamic ancestral ritual and ethical performance into the Catholic practice. Ancestral assemblies, at critical junctures of life, normally display the community before the spiritual Originators that are invited to see, participate in, approve and complete the community’s ritual. Similarly, the catholic community’s self-presentation before the divine majesty is anchored in the recital of the Paschal Mystery, its “first principle” or “root metaphor.”16 Anamnesis transforms the celebrating community into the real body of Christ, while at the same time tend- ing towards its full eschatological realization. The power of the ritual- symbol in both the ancestral memorial and the Paschal mystery perhaps drew Africans to the Catholic faith; it still energizes the practice of the faith in a way that is Catholic and African. This article will first of all draw attention to the vitality of sacramental practice in contemporary African Roman Catholic churches. Demog-

14. See letters from Congregation of Divine Cult and Discipline of the Sacraments: 1986 Prot. N. 1520/85 approving the Zairian Eucharistic celebration; and 1987, Prot. 1520/87 stating that the official title for the Zaire liturgy is, Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaïre. See Conférence Épiscopale du Zaire, Supplément au Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaire: Présentation de la Liturgie de la Messe (Kinshasa: Éditions du Scrétariat Général, 1989) 8 & 9. 15. See Synodus Episcoporum, Bulletin, Bureau de Presse du Saint-Siège, April 11, 1994, no. 5, p.7. See my comments on the issue in Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, A Listening Church: Autonomy and Communion in African Churches (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996) 57-58, 62-65. 16. See George Worgul, “Imagination, Ritual and Eucharistic Real Presence,” Louvain Studies 9 (1982) 198-210. 304 Elochukwu Uzukwu raphically Africans form an important and vital Church in world Catholi- cism.17 The style and focus of worship in Nairobi, Abidjan or Lagos display an embodied church-sacrament. Secondly, the article will comment briefly on the situation of the Church in African communities before Vatican II, a colonial church struggling for an African identity. This forms the platform to appreciate, thirdly, the importance for Africa and the world Church of the Vatican II Council. The period following Vati- can II is Africa’s creative “springtime of the liturgy.” Today, with the rapid spread of Pentecostalism on the continent, one sees the sacramental imagination at play in the Pentecostalization of Catholic worship especially through the Charismatic movement and healing ministry. Finally, the article will conclude by suggesting what the world church will learn from the vitality of a celebrating and living church.

1. The Vitality of Sacramental Practice in Contemporary African Roman Catholic Churches

1.1. Swahili Mass in Nairobi

In 2010, I was attending a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, with two colleagues from Duquesne University.18 The conference focused on anthropology (the human person). We were given hospitality by the Spiritans. In addition to the school apostolate, they were pastors in St Mary’s parish, urban Nairobi. We wanted to attend a Catholic Sunday liturgy that embodies and perhaps reveals the Kenyan Church at prayer in an urban setting. We had two options: either to attend the 8:00am Swahili mass for the common or popular urban Kenyan residents; or to attend the 11:00am English mass for the wealthier classes. We chose the Swahili mass. The 8:00am mass at St Mary’s was a mass full of life. The Opening hymn and Entrance Procession, the rhythmic motions and gestures in sync with the sound of the drum, the gong and other musical instruments, the tapping and/or shuffling with the feet, and the clapping, swaying with measured gestures, interspersed with ululations from the mothers and young ladies, captured what Thomas A. Kane called the “Dancing

17. See David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing, “Missiometrics 2008: Reality Checks for Christian World Communions,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 32 (2008) 27-30. Available also online, http://www.house2harvest. org/docs/missiometrics.pdf [accessed May 22 2012]; see also John L. Allen, The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2009). 18. My colleagues were Dr. George Worgul and Dr. Gerald Boodoo. The Sacramental Imagination 305

Church.”19 The choir was leading. The presiding priest with the ministers and the whole congregation fully participated (SC 14). The whole assembly concelebrated. There were no spectators. During the homily, in Swa- hili, there was lively interaction between the homilist and the congregation. The highly imaginative participant-performer dynamics of knowing was at play: knowledge displayed in ritual is through performance.20 Banners in the church, in English and Swahili, captured the sense of the liturgical season, and the dominant message of the readings! The whole church-sacrament concelebrated; i.e. there was the realization of the presentation of the self of the united community before the all-seeing, all-hearing, divine presence, invited to accept, endorse and approve the community’s prayer. Through gestures, ritual and symbols, crafted in a language that belongs to the initial or raw perception of the Ultimate, a language of “first principles,” difficult to put into words, the church- assembly, creatively imaged, embodied and embraced the divine manifest in the Lord Jesus Christ! This whole dromenon, ritual drama, embedded in the celebration of the incarnate Word, displays the church-community as the real Body of Christ. The experience of the totality of the world as sacrament naturally enables the community-assembly, the focal point or converging center of this sacramentality, to live transformation, and embody/display the sacramental peak-experience of the world. “From the liturgy, therefore, and especially from the Eucharist, as from a font, grace is poured forth upon us; and the sanctification of men in Christ and the glorification of God, to which all other activities of the Church are directed as toward their end, is achieved in the most efficacious possible way” (SC 10). This is real- ized not only in the gestures,21 but also in the pattern of drawing the world of nature – the plants and flowers that beautify the place of assembly – into the symphony of praise. The community also presents from creative cultural surroundings the sounds and percussions (of drums) that embody the sound beyond sound (Sound as Ultimate Reality; Talking Drum as quintessential Word);22 and the community displays in fabrics

19. This is available now on DVD. See Thomas A. Kane, The Dancing Church around the World. DVD Collection: http://www.thedancingchurch.com/dvd_africa.htm [accessed May 30 2012]. 20. See T. W. Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” Journal of Religion 62 (1982) 111- 127. 21. See Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language: Introduction to Christian Worship: An African Orientation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997). 22. For the talking drum, see G. Niangoran-bouah, “La Drummologie et la Vision négro-africaine du sacré,” Médiations Africaines du Sacré. Actes du 3e Colloque international du CERA, Kinshasa 16-22 Fév. 1986 (Kinshasa: Faculté de Théologie Catholique de Kinshasa, 1987) 281-295; G. Niangoran-bouah, “The Talking Drum: A Traditional Instrument of Liturgy and of Mediation with the Sacred,” African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society, ed. Jacob Obafemi Kehinde Olupona (St Paul, MN: 306 Elochukwu Uzukwu that decorate the altar color symbolisms that translate root metaphors, and, associated with other objects of sacred art, lock the community into a wholesome embrace with the Spiritual Originators to become the real Body of Christ.

1.2. Kente and Adinkra Art in Cote d’Ivoire

The above is only a partial description and an attempt to analyze the liturgical experience in Nairobi. I expand this to draw attention to the functioning of art as integral to the life-generating celebrations in various sociocultural areas of Africa. In some West African church communities, plastic and chromatic art forms are drawn into the symphony of praise that transforms the assembly into the Body of Christ. Here, in liturgical art, the local is strongly affirmed as radically catholic: art forms drawn immediately from a social setting that bespeaks African traditional religion become part and parcel of catholic worship. This might surprise if not scandalize purists. Fabrics used to decorate altars, fabrics that hang on church doors, or that are wrapped around pillars in churches among the Akan of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, are a good example. While attending a conference at the Catholic university of West Africa, Abidjan in 2007, I observed that the kente and adinkra symbols bedeck carvings on church doors and seats, and adorned the whole university chapel. One must appreciate in these art forms the imaginative fusion of assembly-community with its universe, as real sacrament of God! This is vital in view of the fact that among the Akan, as among most Africans, God is named but hardly ever imaged. Kente and adinkra art forms display interesting God-symbols. Kente forms that are imprinted on cloth, carved into seats, sculptured, etc., originally connected with Asante royalty. “Stripes and checkerboard designs, crisscrossed rectangles and triangles, contrasts of dark and light colors, also found on masks and on architecture, are used to symbolize life on earth and in the spiritual realm.”23 In the liturgy they are integrated into the encounter with the God of Jesus Christ. Kente betokens joy; joy in a world created good, despite the cicatrices of fratricidal wars that plague this region of West Africa. This joy, in liturgical display, affirms an optimistic anthropology that denies death the last word.24 The triumph of life over death is sharply captured in the dark adinkra cloth patterns that communicate death and the afterlife. Kra or okra in

Paragon House, 1991) 81-92. For Sound as ultimate reality, see Anyanwu, “Sound as Ultimate Reality and Meaning.” 23. Robert B. Fisher, West African Religious Traditions – Focus on the Akan of Ghana (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998) 52. 24. On art, ritual, word and triumph of life over death, see Engelbert Mveng, L’art d’Afrique noire: Liturgie cosmique et langage religieux (Yaoundé: Clé, 1974); id., L’Afrique dans l’Église: Paroles d’un croyant (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986). The Sacramental Imagination 307

Asante cosmology is personal spirit or spark coming from God inhabiting each person; it returns to God after death. The pattern is also found on masks. Adinkra cloths are a “farewell to the soul,” to the departure of the personal spirit (kra or okra); the cloths are worn at funerals. Many of the adinkra designs on cloth, walls, stools, and drums, embody symbolisms of the imageless Nyame, God, distant but ever present. The most popular is Gye Nyame (except for God) which proclaims the omnipotence or im- mortality of God for the benefit of human life.25 Other symbols are Nyamedua (God’s tree), Nyame Bribi wo soro (God, there is something in the heavens – a sign of hope), and Nyame Ohene (God is king).26 These symbolic representations that now bedeck Catholic places of worship draw the church-community intimately to the reality celebrated in the Paschal mystery. Adinkra also adorns masks, the dominant symbol of the triumph of life over death and the core of ancestral mysticism, the language of the passage from the human to the spiritual. Africans see in the mask the ten- sion towards spiritualization (ancestral status); the ultimate focus of human life. The mask reveals that life is never taken at face value. There is more to life than meets the eye.27 In Cameroon, Christian art supervised by Engel- bert Mveng, tried to concretize this imagery in chromatic art: e.g. the im- posing painting of the Virgin and Child dominating the sanctuary in the cathedral of Yaoundé. Mveng captured it also in the painting of the Stations of the Cross embedded in the mask motif with an interesting combination of colors – red (for kingship and glory), white (for death and the spiritual), and black (for struggle and suffering). In Burkina Faso, the entrance door into the main church at Boni is carved as a mask. These symbols mesh with dynamic community participation to represent new life in Christ in the community celebrating the Paschal mystery.

1.3. Latin Mass in Lagos

The vitality and imaginative creativity that display the church-assembly, sacrament of Christ-God, is not limited to Nairobi and Abidjan. It is embodied also in the Latin mass of Africa. About the Latin mass, Vatican II says: “steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or

25. This pattern is adopted as symbol of the Ecumenical Association of African Theo- logians. 26. Fisher, West African Religious Traditions, 53-54. 27. Mveng, L’art d’Afrique noire; Engelbert Mveng, L’art et l’artisanat africains (Yaoundâe: Éditions CLE, 1980); id., L’Afrique dans l’Église, ch. 1; N. Tshiamalenga, “L’Art comme langage et comme verbe,” Cahiers des Religions Africaines 16, no. 31-32 (1982) 65; Malamba Gilombe Mudiji, Le langage des masques africains – Études des formes et fonctions symboliques des Mbuya des Phende, Recherches Philosophiques Africaines – Études publiées par la Faculté de Philosophie, 15 (Kinshasa: Facultés Catholiques de Kinshasa, 1989). See also, Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 294. 308 Elochukwu Uzukwu to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.” (SC 54) I was invited to preside at the 8: 00am mass at Our Lady of Fatima Parish, Festac city, Lagos Nigeria, 2010. The catechist informed me that it was Latin mass.28 I inquired whether I was supposed to preach in Latin. He smiled in the negative. Ultimately, the Kyrie (Greek), Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei (Missa de Angelis) were the only Latin chants. But note, they were sung like the rest of the English, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo songs at the Entrance Procession, the Responso- rial Psalm, Offertory, Communion and Recession. The choir was leading an assembly of over 2500 participants, in the mode common to the Nige- rian charismatic movement choir: sound of the drum, shuffling of the feet, rhythmic swaying and at times tapping to keep the beat. To conclude this section, suffice it to say that the vitality of the presentation of the assembly-community before God in many African catholic liturgies testifies to the impact of Vatican II in liberating the sacramental imagination of the local churches in Africa. It testifies to a lively and living Tradition. It proves that the “chosen people” of God is not a “frozen people”! Rather than being ossified, the church is a living and lively community: replicating the pilgrim assembly in the desert of Sinai, and also the Pentecostal assembly of Jerusalem! The recent statement of the International Theological Commission on “Doing Theology Today” highlights the priority of the living Tradition as “something living and vital, an ongoing process in which the unity of faith finds expression in the variety of languages and the diversity of cultures. It ceases to be Tra- dition if it fossilises.” (# 26)29 In the churches of Africa, one encounters a pulsating faith, embodying living and active sensus fidelium. Theologians and theological work “de- pend on the sensus fidelium, because the faith that they explore and ex- plain lives in the people of God.” Indeed, “part of the particular service of theologians within the body of Christ is precisely to explicate the Church’s faith as it is found in the Scriptures, the liturgy, creeds, dogmas, catechisms, and in the sensus fidelium itself … Theology should strive to discover and articulate accurately what the Catholic faithful actually believe.”30 What the catholic communities actually believe in Nairobi, Abidjan and Lagos in their diverse languages and cultures are displayed in worship. This is quintessential renewal in Catholic worship: liturgy as patrimony of God’s people. Paul VI said so on the occasion of the defini- tive approval and promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium:

28. This is the practice on first Sundays of the month. 29. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_ doc_20111129_teologia-oggi_en.html [accessed, May 8 2012]. 30. Ibid. art. 35-36 The Sacramental Imagination 309

If now we wish to simplify our liturgical rites, if we wish to render them more intelligible to the people and accommodated to the language they speak, by so doing we certainly do not wish to lessen the importance of prayer, or to subordinate it to other concerns of the sacred ministry or pastoral activity, or to impoverish its expressive force and artistic appeal. On the contrary, we wish to render the liturgy more pure, more genuine, more in agreement with the source of truth and grace, more suitable to be transformed into a spiritual patrimony of the people.31

This active belief and living faith, attentive to and built into cultural particularity, was not the practice before Vatican II in the African Catho- lic Church. I address this in the brief review of the church-assembly at worship before Vatican II.

2. The Church-Sacrament in African Communities before Vatican II

Catholicism in Africa from the 15th to the 20th century did not differ in any significant way from the Tridentine and uniform post-Tridentine pattern of celebrating.32 Despite the conversion of Mvemba Nzinga, King Afonso I of the Kongo, to Christianity late in the 15th century, and the flourishing of this church through the course of his reign (reigned 1506- 1542) and beyond, Kongolese worship was Latin and Portuguese. No effort was made by the Portuguese to learn Ki-Kongo, despite the fact that the Capuchins were aware of and welcomed the commonalities between 16th century European and Kongo cosmologies. Portuguese Catho- lic ritual practices had parallels with Kongo ritual architecture. With the dominant theology of radical displacement, the Christian practice replaced the traditional Kongo. The Christian priest (nganga) supplanted the traditional expert charged with all healing rituals (nganga). The protective medi- cine or charms (nkisi) were supplanted by the Christian sacramentals like medals or even the Cross (nkisi).33 The creation of the Kongo diocese at the end of the 16th century (1596) and the effort to reduce Portuguese control of the Kongo mission, thanks to the establishment of the Congre- gation for the Propagation of the Faith (1622) and the enthusiasm of the secretary of the Propaganda Ingoli, helped this church to gradually emerge from anonymity and to be known to Europeans other than the Portuguese. Developments in the 17th and 18th centuries in the form of the

31. Paul VI, Address Tempus iam Advenit, cited by Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948-1975, 38. th 32. I exclude the Ethiopian church whose tradition dates to the 4 century CE. See Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). Chapter 3. 33. See J. Thornton, “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of the Kongo, 1491-1750,” Journal of African History 25, no. 2 (1984) 147- 167, pp. 156-159. 310 Elochukwu Uzukwu translation into Ki-Kongo of the Portuguese catechism thanks to the Jes- uit linguist and first rector of the Kongo seminary at San Salvador, Mat- theus Cardoso, started to suggest the beginning of a distinct local Church. Mbanza Kongo or San Salvador, the capital, had a practicing catholic population. This did not extend to all villages. But Kongo Christianity was developing its characteristics: it was “centered sacramentally upon one great visible sign, the Cross.” This made up for the absence of the priest and the Eucharist in the countryside. Thanks to the catechist- interpreters (maestri) and the Catechism translated by Cardoso, the words transmitted from Nzambi-mpungu (God) through his nganga (priest) reached the people. In place of the shrines and charms that dominated the village square, the Cross, Santa Crux, was positioned as the dominant symbol that captured the local imagination. According to Adrian Hast- ings, Santa Crux of Kongo Christianity (the Christian symbol), stood “in the middle of the village in place of the fetish which had been torn down, and many a village had too its maestro treasuring and passing on across the generations his single tool of trade, Cardoso’s catechism.”34 The Cross assumed a Kongo character: this is achieved by positioning praying figures at the head and the foot of the cross, then on the left and the right hand side of the crucified. There was even the cross of St Anthony, the popular saint that attracted the famous Antonine “schismatic” movement in the 18th century. This church foundered in the 19th century following a number of causes: first, Portuguese obstructionist mission policy, then the evil of slave trade, the rigidity of canon law, the absence of a local clergy, and the decline of missionary enthusiasm in the 18th century.35 The vitality of the 19th century missionary movement, despite its limi- tations, set the stage for the eventual creativity or lack thereof that will follow the reforms of Vatican II. On the positive and optimistic side, Congo Christian art flourished. In 1936, there was the “First Exposition of Congolese Religious Art” in Kinshasa. Three other expositions of Congo- lese Christian art followed in Rome in 1942, 1950, and 1952.36 However, on the negative side, all over Africa, there was missionary antagonism toward initiation rites. These rites of passage have deep social, political, economic, and religious dimensions. All over Africa, and elsewhere in the world, initiation rites are very closely tied to the making of the human person. Vatican II gave wide latitude for the adaptation of these rites:

In mission lands it is found that some of the peoples already make use of initiation rites. Elements from these, when capable of being adapted to Christian ritual, may be admitted along with those already found in Chris-

34. Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450-1950, 92. 35. Ibid., 129. 36. See Badi-Banga Ne-Nwime, “Expression de la Foi chrétienne dans l’Art plastique zaïrois,” Cahiers des Religions Africaines 16, no. 31-32 (1982) 135-167, esp. pp. 148-150. The Sacramental Imagination 311

tian tradition, according to the norm laid down in Art. 37-40, of this Con- stitution.37

The adaptation proposed by Vatican II could not happen without major cultural struggle and imaginative creativity in various African sociocultural areas, in view of the calculated policy of missionaries and colonizers to destroy the rites. Colonization and colonial missionary evangelism shared a mutual interest to radically redefine the African person. The 19th century Western evolutionist ideology that dominated anthropology/ethnology characterized and defined the other, i.e. the non- European, as inferior. This informed the colonial and missionary propaganda.38 African initiation and passage rites were labeled primitive, fet- ishist, pagan and diabolical. The colonial control of the legitimate exer- cise of violence and the missionary supervision of education during the colonial period (and even into the post-colonial era), successfully im- posed and transmitted this negative vision of African rites.39 For example, in Kenya, the British imperial administration enacted legislation outlaw- ing initiation into age sets because of the political agitation these aroused. The intent was to mutilate and destroy, through an array of counter- insurrectional measures, the Kikuyu social reproduction and destroy Ki- kuyu ability to produce warrior age sets. This undercut the social-military service of young males. It undermined the reproduction of males to de- fend the socio-political and economic ideology of a stable group. It de- stroyed generational succession. All these were helped by ready-to-hand ethnographic material. Missionary propaganda denounced the “pagan ceremonies” that accompanied circumcision during promotion into given age sets.40 While the rites for male initiation tilted towards the reproduction of military, economic, political and ritual values, the female initiations focused on the reproduction of family, social and moral values. The overtly anti-colonial focus of male initiation made it the target of imperial power. It was less so with family-social-moral focus of female initiation. For example, the Kikuyu world pummeled by the combined forces of colonial military might and Protestant evangelicalism was crippled. It could no longer produce accomplished men and women following the imaginative devises of their ritual universe. The debate today in East

37. Sacrosanctum Concilium art. 65. 38. See V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, IN / Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988) 27- 28. Also Susanne Katherina Knauth Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942). 39. This in no way underestimates the positive import of education, under missionary supervision, for the advancement and liberation of the Africans. 40. Yvon Droz, “Circoncision féminine et masculine en pays kikuyu: rite d’institution, division sociale et droits de l’Homme,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 158, no. 40/2 (2000) 215-240, p. 233. 312 Elochukwu Uzukwu

Africa, and elsewhere in Africa, over female initiation or puberty rites (unfortunately reduced to circumcision and even to clitoridectomy), while helping to protect human rights of young women, ignores the imaginative ritual design in the making of the human female through initiation within given ethno-cultural areas.41 Most African societies are very conservative with regard to female puberty rituals that are intimately connected to marriage and the family. No institution was so viscerally assaulted by all churches as the pattern of making the woman and the family through puberty and marriage rites. For example, in Eastern Nigeria, during the first Catholic Congress of 1915, missionaries banned Christians from performing the puberty rites that constituted the necessary step into womanhood and marriage. This was followed by draconian measures in 1926 targeting recalcitrant teacher-catechists and catechumens who broke the rule: performing the puberty rite, mgbede, popularly called “fattening,” whether “Pagan or the so called Christian – is strictly forbidden.” Breaking the law attracted the following fines and penalties: “Husbands, fine £2; Wife £1. One pound is added if the husband is a Teacher.” The teacher could also be dismissed. Head Teachers attracted more sanctions: “fine as above, reduced to a substation for at least a year; goes back to his rank when he marries.” Even Catechumens were not spared: “fine as above, baptism postponed for six months or till they marry.”42 Marriage in Africa is a very complex, multilayered and imaginative ritual process. Therese Agbasiere described the puberty rites among the Igbo, especially the crucial rite of seclusion that was unacceptable to missionary logic, as serving “mainly as a means for an intensive education of the girls. It involves serious initiation into the ‘female secrets’ of married life in general and formal lessons in wifehood and motherhood in particular, and it offers an opportunity to give maidens a traditional form of marriage guidance and counselling.”43 The ritual within the enclosure (liminality) and the ritual of reintegration were/are powerful. Catechists who knew the imaginative potential of these rites adapted them to Chris- tianity. Intolerant missionaries banned such Christianization. African church leaders, successors of missionaries, internalized the negative estimation of the rites and championed the struggle against the

41. See the insightful article of T. M. Hinga, “Christianity and Female Puberty Rites in Africa: The Agikuyu Case,” Rites of Passage in Contemporary Africa: Interaction between Christian and African Traditional Religions, ed. James L. Cox (Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 1998) 168-180. 42. CSE: 191/B/VIII, P. Biéchy, “Regulations Newly Approved by Bishop Shanahan,” n.d., cited by Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka, The School in the Service of Evangelization: The Catholic Educational Impact in Eastern Nigeria, 1886-1950, Studies on Religion in Africa, 6 (Leiden / New York / København / Köln: Brill, 1989) 122. 43. Joseph-Thérèse Agbasiere, Women in Igbo Life and Thought. Edited with a foreword by Shirely Ardner (London & New York: Routledge, 2000) 99. The Sacramental Imagination 313

African rites, person and family. The rites either went underground or became marginal to the social, political, economic and religious formation of the African youth. In Malawi, Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, etc., the attitude was the same – i.e. militantly negative.44 The unfortunate side to this story is that the rites that embody highly creative structures in the formation of the youth through seclusion in the “bush school,” to learn how to be a human person, by what is revealed to the initiands, what they learn to say/recite/sing, and especially by what they do together, have been coopted in recent times by criminal war lords and big men of African politics and instrumentalized for their own private interests. In many African countries child soldiers were initiated to terrorize the communities that in normal circumstances are protected by the initiates. In the West African region, especially in Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the youth and mere children, the bulk of the fighting force, felt empowered after passing through initiatory rites suffused with ancestral imaginary devices. Some of the rituals are even patterned on pre-colonial secret societies, like the “man-leopard society,” that terror- ized colonialists and their collaborators. Initiates become invisible, invul- nerable and lethal, as soon as they put on the leopard mask (costume). Young Ivoirian initiates, on both sides of the conflict that peaked in the year 2000, believed they were magically protected to unleash terror.45 They are totally ignorant of the pedagogy and spirituality of initiation46 that would have transformed them into competent and responsible citizens at the service of the whole society, having successfully transited from adolescence to adulthood. Catholics, members of church-communities that are at the same time members of sociocultural groups that have received and lived this negative characterization of their foundational rituals, suffer from alienation and schizophrenia. The church in Africa, at the convocation of Vatican II in 1959 by Pope John XXIII, was a church made up of members with a

44. See the contributions in Cox, Rites of Passage in Contemporary Africa. 45. For interesting anthropological study, see Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (New York: New York University Press, 1999). I described this tragic scenario in Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, “Body and Belief: Exploration in African Ritology – the Magic of Body Language,” Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek 24 (2008) 199-218. See the detailed description of initiation and the war in Cote d’Ivoire in B. Guiblehon, “Ressources anthropologiques en temps de guerre: Violence dans la Fraternité des homes-panthères,” Revue de l’Université Catholique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest 29 (2007) 24-43, 65-91. See also David Pratten, The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007). Tabard recorded a similar pheno- menon in the Congo war in René Tabard, “Voie africaine de Christologie des Apparitions pascales” (PhD, Institut Catholique de Paris & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2007) 82, note 64. 46. See Victor Turner, The Ritual Process – Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969) 105-108; Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 249. 314 Elochukwu Uzukwu sense of alienation and belonging to societies struggling through decolonization. It is therefore a church in the process of decolonization. The Zairian episcopal conference concluded their preparatory meeting in 1961, in readiness for Vatican II Council, by declaring that the worship brought by missionaries to Zaire was foreign. In this way they summed up the monumental imaginative task of renewal that awaited African local churches. Both in the Congo and across Africa, one anticipates the predictable conflict and division that will trail the production of rites, that will dog experimentations, and that will prevent the approval of such experimentations by the Holy See. Many Christians (most Christians), some priests and, in exceptional cases, some missionaries, refused to accept the negative depiction of African rites (especially the marriage and family rites). One appreciates the compromised position of the church leaders and the struggle within the leadership to approve or not to approve experimentation on proposed rites. But all in all one appreciates the great inspiration that Vatican II was for the church in Africa; the great struggle to renew and decolonize the church in Africa. The Congo was exceptional. Joseph Malula, on the day of his episcopal ordination (1959), when the Congo was still under Belgian colonial rule, declared his wish to build a truly Congolese church in a truly independent African state.

3. Creativity in Catholicism inspired by the providential Reform inaugurated by Vatican II

One can call the post-Vatican II era, especially from the 1969 Missal of Paul VI to the 1994 Synod of Bishops for Africa, the “springtime of the liturgy” in Africa. The experience of the Eucharistic liturgy in Nairobi, Abidjan and Lagos narrated above is possible thanks to Vatican II. A brief inventory of the radical adaptations shows the adoption of the principle of “incarnation” (Ad Gentes 22 and SECAM 1974). There was a deliberate move towards inculturation, and setting aside superficial adaptations. It was a display of the imaginative creativity in African local churches. The list includes: (1) Nigeria – the Christianization of the rich Yoruba Naming Ceremony as an independent Christian rite; the inculturation of the marriage ritual in Ekiti and Lokoja dioceses (Yoruba and Ebira rites, in the 1990s) and in Enugu diocese (Igbo rite, 2001) that aligned the Yoruba, Ebira, and Igbo socio-religious marriage ritual with the 1991 Roman “Reformed Order of Celebrating Marriage”; (2) Congo – the inculturation of the rite of the consecration of religious women that adopted the radical motif of blood symbolism to highlight the covenantal rather than the matrimonial in the religious consecration; the Zaire mass; (3) Guinea Conakry and Burkina Faso – the inculturation of the Christian rite of initiation through a radical adaptation of an array of initiation rites found among diverse ethnic groups of West Africa; (4) East Africa – The Sacramental Imagination 315 under the umbrella of AMACEA – the wide ranging liturgical formation of pastoral agents and the liturgical creativity at the Gaba Pastoral Insti- tute; the creation and use ad experimentum of diverse Eucharistic prayers, at the pastoral center.47 In addition to all these, in more recent times, a Pentecostal wind is sweeping across the continent, merging Catholic and Protestant charismatic movements. The rituals of healing and exorcism confirm God as rophe (healer-doctor) through the ministry of charismatic ministers. The intoxicating joy in the Spirit of the risen Jesus, suffused with the singable and danceable liturgy, bridge the gap between the de- nominations. In this final section, I focus on three areas: (1) the overt adaptations of powerful symbols of kingship in Ghana and Nigeria to celebrate the kingship of Christ at Corpus Christi; (2) the bold adoption of patterns and structures of initiation rites in Guinea Conakry and Burkina Faso to elaborate Christian initiation, and (3) the very popular creativity in the Eucharistic liturgy in the Congo and the experimental sketches in East Africa.

3.1. Jesus Riding the Palanquin and Christ Celebrating Ofala: Innovat- ing Corpus Christi in Ghana and Nigeria

Let us start the story with the interesting adaptations of kingship in West Africa. Who could have imagined Jesus riding on the palanquin like the Asantehene, who could have imagined Christ celebrating Ofala (the outing of kings in Igboland)? An astonished observer of Asante Catholicism, A. P. Obeng, re- counted his observation of the very colorful celebration of Corpus Christi in 1979:

Little did I know as I stood among others who had lined the streets of Kumasi to see a procession of drummers, ceremonial sword bearers and monstrance being carried in a palanquin under a large Gye Nyame (Ex- cept God) umbrella in November 1979, that a book of this nature was going to emerge. The feast of Corpus Christi as celebrated by the Kumasi Catholic diocese was marked by drumming and dancing and a display of Asante royal artifacts. Initially I thought the Asante king was celebrating

47. See Chapter 5 of my book: Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language. See also Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, “The Word Became Flesh: Areas and Methods of Inculturation in the 21st Century” (paper presented at the The Church in Nigeria: Family of God on Mission. Acta of the First National Pastoral Congress, Ibadan, [2003] 2002). Patrick Chukwudezie Chibuko, Traditional Marriage and Church Wedding in One Ceremony – A Proposed Rite for Study and Celebration in Igbo and English (Enugu: SNAAP, 1999); Patrick Chukwudezie Chibuko, “Living Liturgy for the Family of God on Mission in Nnewi Diocese” (paper presented at the Living the Faith in the Family of God on Mission in Catholic Diocese of Nnewi, 116-138, Nnewi, 2005). 316 Elochukwu Uzukwu

his annual festival during which he blesses and greets the citizens of As- ante. Closer observation, however, revealed that the king in procession was Jesus Christ and not the Asantehene (the king Asante). Those Asante ritual symbols on display were the condensed expressions of Christ's royal power which was above and beyond the local political and religious authority of the Asante king.48

This is a harmless adaptation of the Odwira ceremonial, the annual outing of the Asantehene. It is co-opted at Corpus Christi to enthrone and honor Christ present in the Eucharist, and carried in procession around the city of Kumasi. Before 1970, according to Bishop Peter Kwesi Sar- pong, the Catholic Church in Kumasi celebrated Corpus Christi in procession with the brass band. However, when Sarpong became bishop he introduced the palanquin with large umbrellas, accompanied by the official king’s drum, fontomfrom and impintin. The king carried in procession is Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Some Catholics took offense: the bishop has come to spoil the church.49 A comparable development is witnessed in Eastern Nigeria. The Ap- ostolic Prefect, Bishop Joseph Shanahan, had great insight into the functioning of drums and musical instruments in festivals like the Ofala (royal annual outing of the Onitsha king), funerals, and other ceremonies characterized by drumming and dancing. Dancing during the funeral celebrations “attracted many school children to these pagan ceremonies.” The children skipped the mission schools to participate in the music and dance. In 1907, Shanahan introduced the brass band, flashy dress and all. The band performed at principal occasions. From a neighboring riverine parish, Aguleri, Fr Bisch came with canoes to ferry the members of the band to perform during Corpus Christi. John Jordan enthused: “The school Band at Onitsha Wharf … was a great public attraction on all large feasts. Fr. Bisch came all the way up from Aguleri with two canoes in 1909 to bring the Band down there for the Corpus Christi procession, and the flamboyant uniform of the players made the rude eyes of the Aguleri pagans goggle in amazement during the most striking procession in the history of the town.”50 Flamboyant Corpus Christi processions were a missionary adaptation in Nigeria as in Ghana. In the post-Vatican

48. J. Pashington Obeng, Asante Catholicism: Religious and Cultural Reproduction among the Akan of Ghana, Studies on Religion in Africa (Leiden / New York: Brill, 1996) ix. 49. Ibid., 11. 50. John P. Jordan, Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria (Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds, 1949) 87-88. Innocent Dim draws attention to the functioning of liturgical apostolate in the missionary school, and cites R.R. Olisa on Shanahan and the school band: Innocent O. Dim, Reception of Vatican II in Nigeria/Igbo Church with Reference to Awka Diocese, European University Studies. Series XXIII: Theology, 775 (Frankfurt am Main / New York: Peter Lang, 2004) 72-73. The Sacramental Imagination 317

II era, elements of the ritual performance like drumming and dancing were integrated into the Corpus Christi celebration. In particular the fir- ing of canon shots, the 21-gun salute accompanied by the acclamation Jesu Igwe (Jesus Sky-Deity), salute Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. From the 1980s, with the flourishing of the Charismatic movement, the charismatic band added color and beauty to the celebration. What is interesting is that the imaginative creativity of these sociocultural areas of Ghana and Nigeria inspired the adaptations. Some took offense, as should be expected. The drum was not only denounced but also feared by colonizers and missionaries. However, these adaptations though good signs of where the church should be going are relatively limited. The rituals surrounding the Odwira and Ofala, i.e. the seclusion rites, are not integrated, only the popular acclaim that follows the emer- gence of the king, rite of integration, was adopted. But it is a move in the right direction.

3.2. Christian Initiation into the Household of God in Burkina Faso

West African converts to Christianity were indocile to missionary propaganda. They ignored the threats and sanctions with regard to puberty rites. Indocility did not eliminate the alienation and schizophrenia! Christians shifted allegiances from local socio-religious self-definition to the Christian. Though Vatican II called for adaptation to local initiation practices (SC 65), these could be at odds with the Christian! The General Introduction to the 1972 RCIA states clearly that Christian initiation implicates a radical redefinition of the person.

Through the sacraments of initiation men and women are freed from the power of darkness. With Christ they die, are buried and rise again. They receive the Spirit of adoption which makes them God's sons and daughters and, with the entire people of God, they celebrate the memorial of the Lord's death and resurrection. (no.1)51

The labor of adaptation implies imaginative sacramental theological creativity. The best example in West Africa is the Church of Burkina Faso. In this West African region, individual missionaries, pastors and Christian communities, had taken the risk of integrating, juxtaposing or adapting the socio-religious initiation rites of their locality to the rites of Christian initiation. For example, in Guinea Conakry, Father Kolié de- cided to collaborate with the matrons, charged with female puberty rites

51. See Catholic Church and International Commission on English in the Liturgy, The Rites of the Catholic Church as Revised by Decree of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council and Published by Authority of Pope Paul VI (New York: Pueblo Pub. Co., 1978). 318 Elochukwu Uzukwu

(hanin). This collaboration enabled Christian girls from the Kpelle or Guerzé speaking groups, secluded in the initiation camp for 37 days (Au- gust to September 1978), to perform a Christianized hanin rite. This enabled 125 young women, and the entire community, to emerge from the rite energized by the “ancestral memory” and the recognition of Christ as the true “Master of initiation.”52 In response to the instruction of the 1972 RCIA (#30-31) to prepare “particular rites … adapted to the linguistic and other needs of the different regions,” the inter-territorial episcopal conference of francophone West Africa mandated its pastoral liturgical commission to research thor- oughly the local initiation rites and propose patterns of adaptation to Christian initiation. Diversity of ethnic nationalities implies diversity of rites. This is the story behind the Moore Catholic ritual of the Mossi of Burkina Faso. In the course of a four day study session by the inter- territorial commission at Koumi in Burkina Faso, 1974, the commission concluded that their task would be achieved not by translating the editio typica of the new RCIA but by actually creating new rites. “It is not enough to insert some African rituals into a Roman structure; rather what should be done is to rediscover the Christian inspiration and to create a rite that is truly African.”53 This is an accurate interpretation of the “more radical adaptation” of Sacrosanctum Concilium #40.54 It is also in line with the instruction, Comme le Prévoit, of the Consilium for Implement- ing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. In the concluding paragraph (#43) the Consilium says

Texts translated from another language are clearly not sufficient for the celebration of a fully renewed liturgy. The creation of new texts will be necessary. But translation of texts transmitted through the tradition of the Church is the best school and discipline for the creation of new texts so

52. See Anselme Titianma Sanon and René Luneau, Enraciner l’Évangile: Initiations africaines et pédagogie de la foi, Rites et symboles, 14 (Paris: Cerf, 1982) 41-42; see also Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 248. 53. From the minutes of the pastoral-liturgical commission; published in the bulletin of the commission, Le Calao 29/1 (1975) 29-30. See Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, “African Cultures and the Christian Liturgy,” West African Journal of Ecclesial Studies 2, no. 1 (1990) 59-83, pp. 76-77. Detailed description and evaluation of the Moore ritual, see Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 288-293. 54. This would be at variance with Varietates Legitimae: Fourth Instruction for the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy (Nos. 37-40) Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on March 29, 1994. Varietates Legitimae insists that “radical adaptation” does not imply the creation of new rites. Of course if the new rite is in organic continuity with the Roman rite, it should not be re- garded as a totally different rite. The Sacramental Imagination 319

“that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already in existence.”55

The West African inter-territorial commission could only lay general principles. It is for each local church, in each sociocultural area to prepare and present its own rite based on the Catechumenate by stages. It is on this basis that the diocese of Diebougou, Burkina Faso, prepared and presented its rite. Since I analyzed this rite in an earlier work,56 I will draw attention to the local socio-religious rites that inspired the Moore Christian ritual, and how it expands the sacramental imagination of the local church. The RCIA structured around the catechumenate by stages embodies flexibility to draw from the rich patristic tradition and the West African experience. For example, the first stage in the RCIA is Entrance into the Catechumenate. The following elements make up the celebration: Instruc- tion and Dialogue, Exorcism and renunciation of non-Christian worship, Entry into the church, Celebration of the word, Dismissal of catechumens, and Celebration of the Eucharist. The Moore ritual drew from an array of rituals: (a) Mossi family rituals that embrace rituals of politeness, welcome/hospitality, adopting a stranger, and also birth and mortuary rites; (b) Social rituals that are the site of an array of initiation rites that must include seclusion in the initiation camp for moral, social, civic, sexual, and mystical education; and (c) Royal ritual of investiture that concludes with the proc- lamation of honorific names. Father Ouedraogo and his committee produced a fine Moore Christian ritual! The concluding celebration takes place with baptism (3rd stage) during the Paschal Triduum. As sample, the first stage of the catechumenate has the following elements: Dialogue preparatory to welcoming the strangers; Welcoming the strangers; Preliminary interrogation; Exorcism and signation; (a crucifix is given to each catechumen to be worn around his or her neck); Welcome drink, (salt, water and flour); Naming; Entrance Pro- cession into the family court; Celebration of the Word of God; Eucharistic celebration in the presence of the catechumens.57

55. Consilium for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Comme le Prévoit: On the Translation of Liturgical Texts for Celebrations with a Congregation, #43: http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CONSLEPR.HTM [accessed May 26, 2012). This is perhaps set aside by Liturgiam Authenticam (#8): On the Use of the Vernacular Languages in the Publication of the Books of the Roman Liturgy (Congregation for Di- vine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 28 March, the year 2001). This particular #8 of the Fifth Instruction for the Right implementation of the of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council (Sacrosanctum Concilium art. 36) recognizes no previous instruction besides Varietates Legitimae. See http://www.vatican. va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_liturgiam- authenticam_en.html. 56. Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 288-293. 57. Digested from ibid., 290-291. 320 Elochukwu Uzukwu

The Moore rite, patterned on the catechumenate in stages, stretched the ritual imagination of the local Church. It was so successful, especially in the area of what is done (dromenon) and the highly developed pedagogy it instilled, that the diocese of Diebougou adapted it to enable those baptized as children to mature in the faith by stages. Similarly, some dioceses in France adopted this pedagogical pattern to initiate those baptized as children.

3.3. Eucharists of Eastern and Central Africa

The Eucharistic liturgy is the major attraction for adaptations and inculturation across Africa. During the fifth triennial conference of AMECEA (Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa), the bishops described the local church as a “Eucharistic community”: “The local church is essentially a Eucharistic community that is orientated to the Eucharist, finds its fullest meaning in the Eucharist, and lives from one Eucharist to the next.”58 It was vital for AMECEA that the Eucharist represent “church alive.” The highly imaginative creativity in the celebrations of Nairobi, Abidjan and Lagos is also the experience of Eastern and central Africa, and, indeed all of sub-Saharan Africa. In the buildup to his argument that at Vatican II the “world church” “began to appear,” in a modest way, Karl Rahner drew attention to the creativity native to each Catholic rite during the Council. He made the passing remark, “At Mass before the individual sessions, when the different rites of the Church were presented, one still could not see any African dances.”59 Excluding any patronizing intent from Rahner’s remark, one notes that it is conso- nant with the remark of John Paul II in 1983 to the Congo Bishops during their ad limina visit; a remark with which we opened this article. While John Paul II cited Unitatis Redintegratio to support the legitimate diversity of rites, Congo bishops love to point to Lumen Gentium #23 as cap- turing their understanding, for the Africa culture area, of the dynamics between catholicity and localization:

By divine Providence it has come about that various churches, established in various places by the apostles and their successors, have in the course of time coalesced into several groups, organically united, which, preserv- ing the unity of faith and the unique divine constitution of the universal Church, enjoy their own discipline, their own liturgical usage, and their own theological and spiritual heritage.

58. Fifth Triennial AMECEA Plenary Conference, “Building Christian Communities,” African Ecclesial Review 18 no. 5 (1976) 251. 59. Karl Rahner, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” Theological Studies 40 (1979) 716-727, p. 718. The Sacramental Imagination 321

When Cardinal Thiandoum at the 1994 Synod of Bishops for Africa referred to the promulgation of a special Zairian liturgy by the Holy See, he insisted that it is a right for the whole region of Africa. It is the con- crete evidence of inculturation.

3.4. Opening of the Eucharistic Celebration

Between Vatican II and the 1994 African Synod, the Entrance Hymn accompanied by the “Dance,” despite the disquiet it provoked in some quarters, has become normal in Congo, Cameroon, Kenya and other East African liturgies. It must be underlined that the Latin liturgy (the Roman rite), noted for its sobriety, has learned to tolerate this body language. (It is important to note that the inaugural Eucharistic celebration of the 1994 synod of Bishops opened with Entrance Hymn accompanied by liturgical dance. It is symptomatic of the reticence of a certain Latin sensibility that the dance was edited out of the closing liturgy of the same synod). The gestures, the music followed by the flexing of the body and members carry a fundamental message that has anthropological bearing: The body does not mediate sin-corruption; rather the body is reverenced as the “epiphany of the person.” While Latin liturgy, in the Western north At- lantic church, banned such rhythmic flexing of the body that follows music, claiming that it was disproportionate gesture (gesticulation), Latin liturgy in the African culture area e.g. Cameroon, Congo, and East Af- rica, canonize such gestures.60 (African Bishops at Vatican II objected to the term “Western rite” that was linked to the colonial; their preference for “Latin rite/s” as contained in art. 36 on liturgical language and trans- lations was adopted by the council).61 Consequently, in these African liturgies the first rule is joyous display (motion-prayer) “of the gathered Body of Believers before God;” it is the primary “word of response to the convenor of the assembly [God-Christ.]”62 Of the group of liturgies in this region, only the Congo (Zairian) liturgy makes a major addition to the

60. I explored this issue in a number of publications. See in addition to Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language. Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, “La Liturgie et les rites sacramentels dans l’Église Africaine,” L’Avenir de l’Activité missionnaire “Ad Gentes” Perspectives pour le XXIème Siècle. Actes du Congres International de Missiologie Tertio Millennio (Kinshasa: 11-17 juillet 2004), ed. Mgr Tharcisse T. Tshibangu (Kinshasa: Médiaspaul, 2005) 189-196; id., “Body and Memory in African Liturgy,” Concilium 3 (1995) 71-78; id., “Inculturation and the Liturgy (Eucharist),” Paths of African Theology, ed. Rosino Gibellini (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995) 95-114; id., Liturgy, Truly Christian, Truly African, Spearhead, 74 (Eldoret, Kenya: Gaba Publications AMECEA Pastoral Institute, 1982). 61. See Lamberigts, “The Liturgy Debate,” 120. 62. See Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, “Liturgy, Culture, and the Postmodern World: Echoes from Africa,” City Limits – Mission Issues in Postmodern Times, ed. Joe Egan and Thomas R. Whelan (Dublin: Department of Mission Theology and Cultures, Milltown Institute, 2004) 160-183. 322 Elochukwu Uzukwu

Opening rite, the invocation of the ancestors. A profound sense of the sacred permeates all religious rituals; and the collaboration of the ancestors is always sought in every important gathering. Proposition 36 of the 1994 Synod of Bishops for Africa acknowledged the “place of honor” the ancestors occupy in many African communities. The synod recommended “that ancestor veneration, taking due precaution not to diminish true worship of God or to play down the role of the saints, should be permitted with ceremonies devised, authorized, and proposed by competent authorities in the Church.”63 In the catholic liturgy, the ancestors are not confused with the Saints, but they are named along with the Saints. Congo liturgist, Kabasele- Lumbala, asserts: “Since my ancestors did not bear witness to the Christ, I do not include them among the examples of the Christian faith; but they constitute ideals of Bantu life; they are ‘with me’, as a tree carrying its branch; it is important for me and I do not need to canonize them.”64 All in all the memory of the ancestors, “pure of heart,” and the memory of the Paschal mystery mutually confirm each other in this sacramental memorial.

3.5. First Part of the Mass (Liturgy of the Word)

The power of the Word is unanimously upheld among the peoples in these regions. It plays a fundamental role in their community celebration. Word has mystical-dynamic power all over Africa: Word that builds community, the Word that extends into eternity; the Word, that in Bam- bara mythology, is “too large for the mouth” of an individual.65 There- fore, the community assembles to hear the Word in excitement and ex- pectation, not in apologia. Of course, one does not ignore the power of the negative word to divide. Hear the Malian bard of the Komo initiation society:

The word is everything, It cuts, flays. It models, modulates. It perturbs, maddens. It heals or kills.

63. See Maura Browne (ed.), The African Synod – Documents, Reflections, Perspectives (New York: Orbis, 1996) 99. This recommendation was totally lost and not reflected in the Post-Synodal exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa. See the interesting reflections in René Luneau, “Prêtres africains et traditions ancestrales,” La religion africaine réhabilitée? Regards changeants sur le fait religieux africain – Histoire et missions chrétiennes N-003, ed. Paul Coulon and Jean Pirotte (Paris: Karthala, 2007) 44-45. 64. François Kabasele Lumbala, “L’inculturation sacramentelle au Zaïre,” Lumen Vitae 42, no. 1 (1987) 75-84, p. 81, n14. 65. Louis-Vincent Thomas and René Luneau, Les religions d’Afrique noire: Textes et traditions sacrées, 2 vols. (Paris: Stock, 1981) 28; M. Griaule, Conversation with Ogotemmeli (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) 138f. The Sacramental Imagination 323

It amplifies or lowers according to its force. It excites or calms souls.66

That is why the community’s intentionality in focusing on the Word is to capture the transparency of the Word that unites, the Word that belongs to All. The grammar of the potent language of the Word is the village palaver that eschews any hidden agenda. Word is crucial in the development of the best thought through liturgy in the central and eastern African region and indeed in sub-Saharan Af- rica, the Zairian rite. The conceptualization of the Zaire rite is based on the structure of ritual assemblies and rituals of reconciliation: both are dominated by the openness of the palaver that has power to bridge the gap between humans and reestablish communion and true communication.67 Therefore, as assembly, the household of God, after the joyful entrance into the courtyard of God, sits to listen quietly to the Word. All readers are commissioned by the president, and all readings are received seated, including the Gospel: one sits to hear an important message. The homily, breaking/explaining the word, is always in the form of a conversation, borrowing from the pattern of palaver. The Liturgy of the Word concludes with the rite of reconciliation that re- establishes true communion and communication. This position is informed by the overall structure of this first part of the liturgy. It is after the assembly has been challenged by the Word of God that it asks forgiveness. For the Church on earth, a pilgrim people like the Jewish qahal of the desert, knows it is not a perfect society. Therefore, the Church acknowledges its defects. Today, more than ever, the ekklesia in the Congo, hurting from wars and disorder that have claimed more than 4m lives, has need to listen to the healing Word and ask for forgiveness. The most commonly used formula captures this:

Priest: Lord our God as the leech sticks to the skin and sucks human blood, evil has invaded us. Our life is diminished. Who will save us, if not you, our Lord? Lord, have mercy! All: Lord, have mercy!

66. Cited by Thomas and Luneau, Les religions d’Afrique noire, 28. 67. See Supplement au Missel Romain pour les Diocèses du Zaire: Présentation de la Liturgie de la Messe, 9 art. 29 ; p.15, art. 78. 324 Elochukwu Uzukwu

3.6. Liturgy of the Eucharist

This is the most sensitive part of the Eucharistic celebration. It comprises not only bringing the gifts, but includes the solemn Eucharistic Prayer. The formal approval of the “Roman Missal for use in the dioceses of Zaire” is therefore remarkable. The Zaire liturgy had to scale through the scrutiny not only of the Sacred Congregation of Divine Cult and the Dis- cipline of the Sacraments, but also the Sacred Congregation for the Doc- trine of the Faith. Generally, all over the eastern and central African region, the presentation of gifts is accompanied by the liturgical dance. This poses no problem; it is another issue with the Eucharistic Prayer. The east African regional conference, AMECEA, had mandated its pastoral center, Gaba Pastoral Institute (located in Eldoret, Kenya), to research and present adequate Eucharistic Prayers! The following were prepared, presented and used at the center ad experimentum: the All-Africa Eucharistic Prayer (1969), the Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayers (1973). There was also a Tanzanian mass put together in 1977. Apart from the pastoral institute at Eldoret, the Eucharistic prayers did not have wide pastoral influence. Their merit is presenting prayers, usable at the peak of the Eucharistic celebration, suffused with vibrant and captivating local imagery, and crafted in a language that draws congregational participation through responses comparable to the Coptic and Ethiopic liturgies. I illustrate with the Opening Praise of the Kenyan and the Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer68:

Kenyan Eucharistic Prayer: Opening Praise (Based on a Kikuyu Prayer) PC: O Father, Great Elder, we have no words to thank you, But with your deep wisdom We are sure that you can see How we value your glorious gifts. O Father, when we look upon your greatness, We are confounded with awe. O Great Elder, Ruler of all things earthly and heavenly, We are your warriors, Ready to act in accordance with your will.

Congregational Response (Based on a Galla Prayer) ALL: Listen to us, aged God,

68. Aylward Shorter, “Three More African Eucharistic Prayers,” African Ecclesial Review 15, no. 2 (1973) 152-160. The Sacramental Imagination 325

Listen to us, ancient God, Who has ears. Look at us, aged God, Look at us, ancient God, Who has eyes. Receive us, aged God, Receive us, ancient God, Who has hands.

Tanzanian Eucharistic Prayer: Opening Praise (Based on a Luguru prayer) PC: You, Father God, Who are in the Heavens and below. Creator of everything and omniscient. Conserver of the earth and the sky; We are but little children. Unknowing anything evil. We entreat your mercy. Also you, our Grandparents, Who sleep in the place of light. All ancestors, men and women, great and small. Help us, have compassion on us. So that we can also sleep peacefully.

Response: (From a Safwa Prayer) ALL: You who are in the bright place. We are here in your compound. We have come before you.

The pity is that the Kenyan and Tanzanian prayers did not gain wide approval. They have never been approved by the Holy See. The Zaire Eucharist has a Eucharistic prayer that draws from the highly imaginative imagery of the vast country: rivers, forests, fauna, earth, sky. A captivating imagery is the praise name of God, “the sun we cannot gaze at directly:” this captures the distant-near God, the all-seeing one whose eyes are the sun at its zenith. God is lauded, invited to accept the praise and approve the community’s prayer:

You, the sun that is not gazed at directly, You, sight itself, You, the master of human beings, You, the Lord of life, You, the master of all things ....

326 Elochukwu Uzukwu

Community participation is assured, as the church privileges the oral style than the written, especially in the Lingala version. This pattern of participation is felt at the doxology that combines the pattern of community affirmation of decisions as happens in the dominant palaver mode, the “we ethics” of Bujo. The community as one corporate personality gives voice and consent to the whole prayer.

Celebrant: Lord, may we glorify your name, People: Amen! Celebrant: Your name, People: Amen! Celebrant: Very honorable, People: Amen! Celebrant: Father People: Amen! Celebrant: Son People: Amen! Celebrant: Holy Spirit People: Amen! Celebrant: May we glorify it People: Amen! Celebrant: Today People: Amen! Celebrant: Tomorrow People: Amen! Celebrant: For ever and ever People: Amen!

In participating in this liturgy one feels the bonding, the unanimity of the community; an affirmation of its faith in the Eucharist (thanksgiving) addressed to the Father, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. It is not only the transformation of the elements into the body and blood of Christ, to feed the church-sacrament, rather the whole community is transformed to become the body of Christ. The doxology says this in a powerful and emotional way. One recalls Justin the Martyr: “And when he [the Presi- dent] has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by sayingAmen. This word Amen answers in the He- brew language to γένοιτο [so be it].”69 The people’s ratification of the prayer by their acclamations is fundamental to the synaxis. In the Roman

69. Justin Apology, I: 65, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm [accessed May 30, 2012]. The Sacramental Imagination 327 basilicas the hearty cries of Amen reverberated, according to Jerome, like the clap of heavenly thunder.70 In the approved liturgy of Zaire, the concluding doxology is the living testimony of a living church community whose imagination is stretched to the limits thanks to the providential reform of Vatican II.

4. New Shift: The Holy Spirit at the Heart of Community Celebra- tion

The Pentecost experience, the birth of the church-community, was for the church surprise and excitement: “we hear, each of us, in our own native language.” (Acts 2:8) There is communication, thanks to the Spirit of God. But the church as well faces the threat of Babel: test every spirit to ensure that they are of God (1John4:1-6). Churches in Africa today, including the Catholic Church, experience the excitement and communication of Pentecost, and at the same time hesitate before certain manifesta- tions that appear heterodox. In the Catholic Church, this is experienced in the Charismatic movement. The style of worship they favor merge ex- periences of the African initiated churches and Pentecostal movement: the favorable presence and manifestation of the Holy Spirit in speaking in tongues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of healing (Catho- lic priests engage in widespread healing masses), the bonding together of participants through lively Gospel music. The Gospel music is defined by Evangelical “born again” Christians as the “ministration of the Good News in songs”; the “communication of the gospel through beat with a message.”71 In addition to these common practices, imaginative creativity of Catholic priest-healers and pastors and ministers in African Initiated churches incorporate abundant use of Holy Water, candles (AICs intro- duce candles of diverse colors); these are not welcome to the evangelical “born again” Pentecostals. But all groups integrate the dance and hand- clapping into worship, rallies and crusades, healing masses and fellow- ships incorporate the gospel music because it is ‘dance-able’, full of en- tertainment and attractive to the youth. The Catholic imagination is further stretched by the Charismatic movement that embraces ready to hand ways of gathering as Church and celebrating the Paschal Mystery used by African initiated churches and Pentecostal churches. Catholic Bishops in Nigeria and elsewhere in Af- rica, partly approve of this style of worship, and at the same time impose

70. See Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 2 vols. (New York: Benziger, 1951) Vol. I, esp. pages 22 and 236. Jungmann cites Justin Martyr, Jerome and others who attest to the strong community participation. 71. Ezra Chitando, “Songs of Praise: Gospel Music in an African Context,” Exchange 29, no. 4 (2000) 296-310. Also Matthews A Ojo, “Indigenous gospel music and social reconstruction in modern Nigeria,” Missionalia 26 (1998) 210-231. 328 Elochukwu Uzukwu control: reducing and taking the stress off speaking in tongues; reducing the importance of priest-healers and healing masses, by encouraging widespread use of this pastoral style in every parish. What one sees in the normal Sunday liturgy, in popular areas of our cities and in rural parishes, is the dominance of the style of worship associated with the Catholic Charismatic movement. This is what is seen in the worship of Nairobi and Lagos. It has been acquired and is displayed as the way the church- sacrament presents itself before the divine majesty in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

What does the African sacramental imagination bring to the communion of churches? First of all, calming the nerves; diversity does not imperil unity. Rather, unity is verified in diversity! This is the way John Paul II during his homily in Sweden, 1989, describes the impact of the event of Pentecost in the Church: “It shows the Church in her unity: a unity that embraces diversity and that is verified in diversity.”72 In African culture areas profoundly soaked in the sacred, the invitation or inclusion of the totality of the world in the worship of the divine majesty crafted in a highly imaginative symbolic language should be shared with other churches (note the enrichment of the Roman rite with Eucharistic prayers of the Eastern rite). The genuineness and catholicity of what emerges from the African linguistic and cultural imagination that prioritizes community participation and embraces the imaginative creativity of the palaver ensures that our worship of God is not a private affair; worship displays a firm bonding with the Triune God so that the community becomes the symbol of the unity of the human race! Consequently, one should view the stretching of the sacramental imagination in African culture areas as making the liturgy, in the words of Paul VI, “a spiritual patrimony of the people.” Secondly, the Congo Episcopal conference correctly argued that the historic liturgies of patriarchal churches “enjoy their own discipline, their own liturgical usage, and their own theological and spiritual heritage,” (LG 23) within the unity of the faith. In a similar way the Latin Church must stretch its ecclesiological and sacramental imagination to realize real diversity in the unity of faith. This is why the episcopal conferences of the Churches in Africa lay so much stress on inculturation and “Afri- can theology.” The Hebrews and the Hellenists recognized difference in the unity of faith. The Oriental and the Latins recognize difference in the

72. John Paul II, Homily at the Globe Stadium, Stockholm, Thursday 8 June 1989 – http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1989/documents/hf_jp- ii_hom_19890608_stockholm_en.html [accessed June 4, 2012]. The Sacramental Imagination 329 unity of faith. The African liturgical-sacramental creativity described in this brief study inserts difference in the unity of the one faith. (By exten- sion Asian, American and Oceania creations in the liturgy should be acknowledged as difference in the unity of faith). John Paul II agreed with the Zairian Bishops during their ad limina visit that the difference in rites is not only a legitimate but also a justifiable desire in the one Church. This is as old as Christianity itself. The recognition, by sister churches, of the diverse ways of celebrating within each sociocultural area and the openness to share models, display, like the kente cloth, the many colors that make up the Catholic Church. “Stripes and checkerboard designs, crisscrossed rectangles and triangles, contrasts of dark and light colors” confirm the unity in the one faith.

McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Elochukwu UZUKWU C.S.Sp. Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA 15282 [email protected]