Inculturation: a Conditio Sine Qua Non for Effective Evangelization in Cameroon in the Light of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa

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Inculturation: A Conditio Sine Qua Non For Effective Evangelization in Cameroon in the Light of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa

Eugene Chianain

A Thesis submitted to the University of St. Michael's College and the Graduate Center for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theology awarded by the University of St. Michael's College and the University of Toronto

Inculturation: A Conditio Sine Qua Non for Effective Evangelization in Cameroon in the Light of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa

Eugene Chianain

Master of Theology

University of St. Michael’s College and the University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

Early missionaries to Cameroon dismissed fundamental cultural and religious practices of the people, especially the cult of the ancestors as paganism and sought to replace it with the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints. Considering the significant liturgical-cultural shifts that occurred at the Second Vatican Council and the propositions of Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia in Africa this research analyses both the theology and rituals around the communio sanctorum and the veneration of ancestors and demonstrates that ancestral veneration is not bound up with superstition and error but is replete with parallels to the doctrine of the communion of saints. It articulates their differences and similarities and argues for the liturgical inculturation of ancestral veneration in the domains of the litany of the saints, the Eucharistic liturgy and the use of ancestors’ names at baptism. This will enable Cameroonians to become Christians and remain Africans.

ii Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to Prof. Darren

Dias, OP for directing my thesis with tremendous patience, fraternal love and academic rigour that helped to shape and focus this research. I am also thankful to the two other members of my thesis committee, Prof. Michael Attridge for reading this thesis and proffering constructive criticisms and Prof. Ann Anderson who has been my greatest source of inspiration and encouragement at Saint Michael’s College.

I am immensely grateful to Saint Michael’s College and its benefactors for offering me this wonderful opportunity to further my studies in theology. Special thanks to the members of my religious family, the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate

Conception (C.F.I.C) of the African Province and the North American Delegation as well as the good people of Immaculate Conception Parish in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada where I presently serve as pastor. Thank you all for your incredible love, encouragement and relentless support throughout my academic journey at Saint Michael’s College. I remain forever grateful to Rev. Fr. Dr. Idara Oto, MSP for his fraternal love, valuable criticisms, regular phone calls and academic advice.

Finally, I would like to express filial gratitude to my beloved mother Song

Lawrentia, my siblings Priscilla Song, Nestor Song, Walters Song and Jude Song. Lastly,

I would like to dedicate this work to my father, mentor and role model, Song Stephen

Chongwain and my darling sister, Fuentum Emma Song (Emmsong) who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. May the Lord welcome them into the communion of saints in heaven.

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgments ...... iii

Table of Contents ...... iv

Chapter 1 General Introduction ...... 1

1.1 From A Eurocentric To A World Church: The Crisis Of Non-Inculturation ...... 1

1.2 Thesis Statement ...... 9

1.3 Methodology ...... 9

1.4 Procedure ...... 10

Chapter 2 Magisterial Teachings On The Theology Of Inculturation ...... 13

2.1 Introduction ...... 13

2.2 The Theology Of Inculturation In Some Vatican II Documents ...... 14

2.2.1 Sacrosanctum Concilium ...... 14

2.2.2 Gaudium Et Spes ...... 19

2.2.3 Ad Gentes ...... 21

2.3 Post-Vatican II Magisterial Teachings On Inculturation ...... 22

2.3.1 Pope Paul VI ...... 22

2.3.2 Pope John Paul II and Inculturation ...... 26

2.4 The Theological Understanding of the Term Inculturation ...... 28

2.5 The First African Synod and the Theology of Inculturation...... 31

2.5.1 Ecclesia In Africa and the Urgent need for Inculturation ...... 33

2.5.2 The Theological basis for Inculturation ...... 34

2.5.2.1 Incarnation ...... 34

iv 2.5.2.2 The Paschal Mystery ...... 35

2.5.2.3 The Pentecost Event ...... 37

2.5.3 Inculturation As Dialogue Between Faith And Culture ...... 39

2.6 Conclusion ...... 41

Chapter 3 The Theology Of The Communion Of Saints and Ancestor Veneration in

Cameroon ...... 42

3.1 Introduction ...... 42

3.2 A Brief Historical Overview of The Cult Of Saints In Christianity ...... 43

3.2.1 The Development of The Process of Canonization ...... 45

3.3 The Concept Of Sainthood In Catholic Christianity ...... 47

3.3.1 The Catholic Doctrine Of The Communion Of Saints ...... 48

3.4 The Concept Of Ancestors In Cameroon ...... 51

3.4.1 The Ritual of Ancestor Veneration Among The Mada Of Northern

Cameroon ...... 53

3.4.2 Some Comparisons Between Ancestor Veneration And The Communion Of

Saints ...... 56

3.5 Jesus As Mediator Par Excellence ...... 60

3.6 Conclusion ...... 63

Chapter 4 Toward The Integration Of Ancestor Veneration In Christian Worship

In Cameroon ...... 65

4.1 Introduction ...... 65

4.2 The Litany Of The Saints ...... 66

4.3 Ancestor Veneration In The Context Of The Eucharist ...... 68

v 4.4 The Use Of Ancestors’ Names At Baptism ...... 73

4.5 A Critique Of Ancestor Veneration In Cameroon ...... 77

4.6 Conclusion ...... 81

Chapter 5 Implications Of This Study ...... 82

5.1 Introduction ...... 82

5.2 Theological Implications ...... 83

5.2.1 Ecclesiological Implications ...... 84

5.2.2 Liturgical Implications ...... 85

5.3 Challenges To The Praxis Of Inculturation in Cameroon ...... 86

5.4 Recommendations For Effective Inculturation in Cameroon ...... 88

5.5 Further Questions And Areas For Research ...... 90

5.6 Conclusion ...... 90

General Conclusion ...... 93

Bibliography ...... 95

vi Chapter 1 General Introduction

1.1 From A Eurocentric To A World Church: The Crisis Of Non-Inculturation

Right up to the twentieth century, the attitude of the Catholic Church toward

African cultures and values was predominantly contemptuous. European missionaries who arrived in Africa in the early and mid-nineteenth century carrying the Good News wrapped in western cultural clothing attempted to make a tabula rasa of the spiritual, cultural riches of the people by imposing western religious cultural values as the promise of salvation. Missionaries dismissed African cultural and religious practices especially the veneration of ancestors as idolatrous, animistic and fetishist and sought to substitute

African religiosity with European religiosity. David Bosch regrets that,

Western Christians were unconscious of the fact that their theology was culturally conditioned; they simply assumed that it was supracultural and universally valid. And since western culture was implicitly regarded as Christian, it was equally self-evident that this culture had to be exported together with the Christian faith.1

The missionaries were oblivious that Christianity was not the private property or monopoly of any particular people or culture. Christianity is a universal (Katholikos) religion that could have meaning for everyone irrespective of color, race, language or culture.

Although Christianity is a universal religion, it is always incarnated and expressed in a particular culture and at a particular time because the “Christian faith never exist

1 David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 448.

1 2 except as ‘translated’ into a culture.”2 Pope John Paul II rightly noted that, “faith that does not become culture is not wholly embraced, fully thought out, or faithfully lived.”3

The question is, what exactly is culture and what are African cultural values? These terms need to be clarified because they shall be recurrently used in this essay. Culture is the totality of a people’s way of life that is not transmitted biologically but sociologically.

According to Bernard Lonergan it is a set of meanings and values informing a common way of life, and there are as many cultures as there are distinct sets of such meanings and values."4 While African cultural values refer to, “those habitual, basic frames of minds of the Africans which influence their general attitude towards life and motivate their actions in their selection of what is worthwhile and what is not; what is good and what is bad.”5

For instance, respect for the Supreme Being, the family, respect for human life, community life and respect for elders are core values in Africa. Ecclesia in Africa highlights two major cultural values, the African religious sense and the African concept of the family. “Africans have a profound religious sense, a sense of the sacred, of the existence of God the creator and of a spiritual world. In African culture and tradition the role of the family is everywhere held to be fundamental.”6 The evangelizer must take into account the cultural values of the people being evangelized just as the apostles adapted the gospel to the culture of the people they evangelized.

2 Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, 447. 3 John Paul II, Speech to the participants of the national congress of the Movimento Ecclesiale di Impegno Culturale, 16 January (1982). 4 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, New York, Herder and Herder, 1973), 301. 5 Anthony Ekwunife, Spiritual Explosions: Reflections on Christian Lives and Practices in Nigerian Context (Enugu, Nigeria: SNAAP Press Ltd., 1995), 1. 6 Ecclesia in Africa, 42-43.

Christ’s great commission to go and make disciples of all nations (Mat 28:19) and the mandate to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the remotest ends of the earth (cf. Acts 1:8), defy cultural boundaries. This explains why as a missionary to the

Gentiles, Saint Paul resisted Jewish cultural pressure to compel the Galatians to give up their cultural identity as Gentiles and become Jews (Gal 2:14) through circumcision (Acts

5:5) in order to be saved. The council of Jerusalem in 49 AD made it clear that non-

Jewish converts did not need to be circumcised according to the prescriptions of Mosaic

Law in order to be saved. Gentiles would be saved as Gentiles for God has no favourites

(Acts 10:34).

John Dadosky intimates “that the early church did not throw out Mosaic Law but rather appropriated it to the changing needs of the church. While pastorally it did not make circumcision a requirement, it did preserve some of the basic values of Mosaic

Law.”7 Just as the early church integrated Christian identity in a culturally pluralistic context so too the missionaries who brought the Gospel to Asia and Africa were expected to take into account the cultural specificities of the people to whom the good news was proclaimed. I could not agree more with Karl Rahner who boldly affirms that,

The difference between the historical situation of Jewish Christianity and the situation into which Paul transplanted Christianity as a radically new creation is not greater than the difference between western culture and the contemporary cultures of all Asia and Africa into which Christianity must inculturate itself if it is now to be, as it has begun to be, genuinely a world church.8

7 John Dadosky, “Has Vatican II been Hermeneutered? Recovering and Developing its Theological Achievements following Rahner and Lonergan,” Irish Theological Quarterly Vol. 79 (4), (2014): 327–349. 8 Karl Rahner, “Towards A Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” in Theological studies, 40 no. 4 Dec (1979): 716-727.

Unfortunately, European missionaries constrained Africans to give up their cultural identity, dignity, freedom, thought-patterns, language and religious practices and embrace western Christian cultural identity in order to be saved.

In the specific context of Cameroon, a central African nation, missionaries banished deeply rooted cultural practices like, initiation rites, ritual sacrifices, pouring of libations, polygamy, juju (masquerade) dancing, playing the drum, consulting the witchdoctor and the veneration of ancestors which are widely considered intermediaries between the Supreme Being and the community of the living. The enduring presence of ancestral veneration in the religious consciousness of the people of Cameroon after over a century of missionary evangelization has triggered my interest to research ancestral veneration in correlation to the communion of saints in Christianity. The persistence of the ancestral cult implies it is a fertile locus for engaging with the doctrine of the communion of saints and developing a theology of ancestors in Africa. Any form of evangelism that ignores the fundamental concept of ancestral veneration is bound to be inadequate and hollow. Jean-Marc Ela attests that no evangelization can be authentic in

Africa if it fails to address the veneration of ancestors, which “is so widespread throughout Africa that it is impossible to avoid the questions this practice raises for

Christian life and reflection.”9

Ela then poses a series of questions; “how can we live our faith so that it will not marginalize and discredit our ancestors? (…) How does the gospel regard the cult of ancestors? Can the church become the place in Black Africa where communion with the

9Jean-Marc Ela, My Faith As An African. Trans. by John Pairman Brown and Susan Peryy, (Orbis books, Maryknoll, New York, 1989), 14.

5 ancestors is possible?”10 I add my own queries to his: Is ancestor veneration tantamount to the veneration of saints or is it an act of superstition? Can the doctrine of the communion of saints in Christianity be reconciled with the veneration of ancestors who are considered the “saints” of African Traditional Religion? Can the paradigm of ancestral veneration be a hermeneutical key for understanding and integrating the cult of ancestors within the conceptual framework of the communion of saints?

These questions and more have ignited vivacious scholarly discussions among notable African theologians such as François Kabasele (who shall be a major interlocutor in this research). In his book, Celebrating Jesus Christ in Africa. Liturgy and

Inculturation,11 Kabasele articulates some aspects of compatibility between the Christian liturgy with the practice of veneration of ancestors in Africa especially in the areas of ritual meals, prayer and mediation and advocates for their integration in worship. By the same token I shall engage Emmanuel Orobator’s thought in his monograph, Theology

Brewed in an African Pot,12 because he makes a convincing correlational assessment of the communion of saints and ancestor veneration in Africa as indicative of the continuity of life in the hereafter and a reverberation of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.

Another major theologian that shall be engaged in this research is Cameroonian theologian Jean-Marc Ela whose theology of ancestors is deeply rooted in his experience among the Kirdi people of Northern Cameroon where he served as a pastor for about

10 Ela, My Faith As An African. 14. 11 François L. Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books), 1998. 12 Emmanuel A. Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2008).

6 fourteen years. In his book, My Faith as an African13 Ela makes a strong case for the ecclesial recognition of the veneration of ancestors based on their role as intercessors and the merits of their heroic virtues. When it comes to the practicality or the implementation of liturgical inculturation following the liturgical reforms ushered in by the Second

Vatican Council, I shall turn to Eugene Uzukwu’s book, Worship as Body Language14 in which he elucidates the efforts made by the church in different parts of sub-Saharan

Africa to create new liturgical rites that incorporate the invocation of the good ancestors in the Eucharistic prayer and the litany of the saints.

From a western theological perspective, I shall engage Elizabeth Johnson’s

Friends of God and Prophets, in which she explores the communion of saints from a feminist liberation perspective. She contends that the concept of the communion of saints

“points to an ongoing connection between the living and the dead, implying that the dead have found new life thanks to the merciful power of God.”15 After evaluating these theologies of the ancestors I will show that inculturation generally speaking will enhance an authentic expression of the faith and resolve the perennial pastoral problem of alienation and double belonging debilitating evangelization and transformation in the

Cameroonian church.

The aforementioned theological inquiries to the problem of integrating aspects of non-European culture into the faith flourished in the aftermath of the Second Vatican

Ecumenical Council (1962-1965) that recognized positive values inherent in other

13 Ela. My Faith as an African, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988. 14 Eugene E. Uzukwu. Worship as Body Language; Introduction to Christian Worship. An African Orientation, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press), 1997. 15 Elizabeth Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets. A feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of saints, (New York: Continuum, 1998), 7.

7 religions/cultures vital for the church and for Christ and that the church is not tied to any particular culture whatsoever.16 This ushered in a significant paradigm shift in the domain of missiology and ecclesiology, described by Bernard Lonergan as the movement from a classicist notion of culture to an empirical notion of culture17 where lived experience has now become the locus theologicus or the source of theological reflection. There was also a paradigm shift from a Eurocentric to a world church in which western missionaries could no longer approach mission as senso- unico (one way) traffic. It was in this light that Karl Rahner described “Vatican II as the first major official event in which the church actualized itself precisely as a world church.”18

With the impetus from the Second Vatican Council, African theologians tried to recover, reformulate and reinterpret the gospel message in a way that incorporates the distinctive religious and cultural values of Africans. As a result theological trends emerged in Africa such as, South African black theology19 that emerged from the context of apartheid in South Africa; the theology of inculturation, which explores ways and means of integrating African indigenous cultures into Christianity; and African liberation

16 Cf., Vat. II. Gaudium et Spes No. 53. 17 John D, Methodological Presuppositions for Engaging the Other in the Post Vatican II Context: Insights from Ignatius and Lonergan. Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue (March, 2010): 11. 18 Karl Rahner, “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II,” in Theological Studies, Munich): 716-727. 19 South African Black Theology emerged around the 1960s and 1970s to resist the excesses and imbalances of power between the ruling white minority and the oppressed black majority in South Africa. This theological trend attempted to interpret the Gospel in relation to the racial discriminations suffered by blacks in apartheid South Africa. Blacks questioned the type of Bible read by their white oppressors whose actions were complete antitheses of the core gospel message of love. South African Black Theology affirmed the human dignity and the uniqueness of the identity of black people. “They drew inspiration from African-American theology, biblical hermeneutics and the raw material of their own experiences and suffering, whilst simultaneously creating a new theological paradigm and political orientation to liberate Black South Africans from apartheid and European domination.” (Cf. MWAMBAZAMBI, K.. A Missiological Glance at South African Black theology. Verbum et Ecclesia, 31, Nov. 2010. Available at: . Date accessed: 31 May), 2017.

8 theology20 designed to free Africans from oppressive socio-political and economic structures that engender hunger, poverty, exploitation and the marginalization of women.

These are forms of contextual theology which hold that since God entered the world through a particular context to redeem humankind, evangelization has to take into account the hic et nunc (here and now) context of the people to whom the word is being addressed. That is inculturation.21

To enhance the theological discussion on inculturation in Africa, Pope John Paul

II, on the solemnity of the Epiphany, 6 January 1989 convened the first Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops with the aim of delineating as clearly as possible ways and means of effectively communicating the Good News across Africa. The synod was held in Rome from April 10th to May 8th 1994 on the theme, "the Church in Africa and her Evangelising Mission Towards the Year 2000: 'You shall be my witnesses' (Acts

1:8)". The outcome was the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa that was given in Yaoundé-Cameroon on September 14th, 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

20 Like the proponents of black theology, African liberation theologians such as Jean-Marc ELa contend that the Gospel message must be liberative for Africans in the context of poverty, oppression, marginalization and discrimination. 21 Inculturation theology is an “attempt to give African expression to the Christian faith within a theological framework. It involves a conscious engagement of European Christian thinking and African religious thought in serious dialogue for the purpose of integrating Christianity into the life and culture of African people.” (cf. Justin S. Ukpong, Current Theology. The Emergence of African Theology, (Theological Studies, 45, (1984), 501-536. A case of successful liturgical inculturation is the Zairian Rite approved in 1988 by the Congregation for Divine Worship with the title, The Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire.

1.2 Thesis Statement

Given the significant liturgical-cultural shifts in the teachings of the Second

Vatican Council this thesis examines the veneration of ancestors in the Cameroonian religious-cultural experience within the conceptual framework of the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints and highlights a pathway toward inculturating the cult of ancestors in the Catholic Church in Cameroon. The thesis argues that, although Christ is the unique mediator between God and humans, ancestors who are believed to be in close proximity to the Supreme Being are also mediators like the Christian saints. The thesis then makes the case for the integration of the cult of ancestors in the liturgy which will be a response to both the African synod and the Cameroonian church’s quest for an authentic Cameroonian Christian identity that will enable Cameroonians to become

Christians and remain Africans.

1.3 Methodology

In this research I shall be asking the questions: what do Cameroonian cultural beliefs contribute to a better understanding of the communion of saints and vice versa?

What are the similarities and differences? What can be transposed and corrected with the light of the gospel or out rightly rejected? I shall use David Tracy’s critical correlational method to analyse both the theology and rituals around the communion of saints and the veneration of ancestors and articulate their differences and similarities and make a case for the liturgical inculturation of ancestral veneration in the Cameroonian church.

David Tracy’s critical correlational method that shall be used in this research is inspired by Paul Tillich’s “method of correlation.” Tillich’s task was to describe important questions that arise in a particular cultural situation and then use Scriptures and

Tradition, the two major sources of theology to resolve them. In other words, Tillich sought to correlate the questions that arise from the situation with the answers provided by the Christian message.22 David Tracy for his part expanded Tillich’s method by evoking the hermeneutic circle. That is, the answers to the questions that arise from a given cultural situation shall not be provided by theology alone. Rather both theology and the situation shall mutually interpret each other. Tracy contends that the theologian’s task is to establish a mutual critical correlation between the teachings and doctrines of the

Christian tradition and the historical situation. According to him, "only by a method which develops critical criteria for correlating the questions and the answers found in both the 'situation' and the 'message' " can the task of theology be adequately carried out.23

1.4 Procedure

This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is the general introduction, which outlined the goals and objectives of my research and the method I shall use to obtain the desired outcome.

22 Cf. Howland T. Sanks, David Tracy’s Theological Project: An Overview And Some Implications, (Theological Studies, 54, 1993), 698-727. 23 Cf. Howland T. Sanks, David Tracy’s Theological Project: An Overview And Some Implications, (Theological Studies, 54, 1993): 698-727.

In chapter two I shall critically examine Vatican II and post-conciliar teachings of the magisterium on the evolution of the theology of inculturation and analyse how they either enhance or stifle the praxis of inculturation in a pluralistic church. I shall articulate the lofty theological propositions of Ecclesia in Africa on inculturation and offer a theological critique of the document.

In chapter three I shall look at the specific aspect of the Christian understanding of the doctrine of the communion of saints and communion with the ancestors in African

Traditional Religion. Taking a leap from the Mada ritual of ancestor veneration I shall offer a comparison between the two belief systems and make a case for the integration of the Cameroonian practice of veneration of ancestors in the Christian liturgy.

In chapter four I shall show how the integration of ancestor veneration can be operative in the areas of the Eucharist, the litany of the saints and the use of Cameroonian ancestors’ names for baptism. I shall highlight the specific aspect of ancestors’ names as baptismal names, which will be an element of response to Sacrosanctum Concilium that called for liturgical reform. I shall show that the names of the good ancestors are theophoric (God-bearing) and should be integrated in the rite of baptism.

In chapter five I shall highlight the implications of this study at the ecclesiological, theological and liturgical domains and articulate the limits and challenges to the praxis of inculturation in the Cameroonian church. I shall also show the prospective cultural aspects that are begging to be studied, purified with the light of the gospel as the case maybe and integrated into Christian worship in order to enhance evangelization.

In conclusion, I shall build on the entire discussion and enunciate how the practice of inculturation could bring about a Cameroonian Christian convert that is truly African and fully Christian. The general evaluation and conclusion of this research will focus on the objectives and process, which informed our research, and we shall show how inculturation is vital for effective evangelization in Cameroon.

Chapter 2 Magisterial Teachings On The Theology of Inculturation

2.1 Introduction

This chapter shall explore the concept of inculturation as used in Roman Catholic magisterial documents beginning with the Second Vatican Council, which boldly recognized the diversity of human cultures and acknowledged that the universality of the

Christian faith could no longer be defined in terms of monocultural uniformity in a culturally diverse world. The Christian faith needs to be rooted in various cultural contexts in order to stay alive, relevant and credible. The conciliar teachings set the stage for the development of the theology and praxis of inculturation in Catholicism. Although many of the conciliar documents are relevant to the study of inculturation, only a few shall be considered in this research.

Sacrosanctum Concilium shall be critically examined in relation to its lofty propositions to make the liturgy take root in different cultures because the Christian faith implanted in mission territories could no longer be confined to a Euro-centric cultural manifestation. Gaudium et Spes shall also be explored to demonstrate how the church favors dialogue with the modern world with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and anxieties in order to bridge the gap between faith and culture. The Decree on the Missionary

Activity of the Church, Ad Gentes, shall also be examined because it highlights the economy of the incarnation as paradigmatic for evangelization and acknowledges that the seed of the gospel is present in every culture.24 Moreover, this chapter shall examine the development and implementation of the concept of inculturation in the Post-Vatican II magisterial teachings of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and in the Post-Synodal Apostolic

24 Ad Gentes, 11.

13 14

Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. The theological views of select theologians on inculturation shall also be analyzed.

2.2 The Theology of Inculturation in Some Vatican II Documents

Pope John XXIII officially opened the Second Vatican Council on October 11,

1962 with an unprecedented turnout of attendees from Latin America, Asia, Oceania and

Africa that was symptomatic of the cultural pluriformity and universality of the church.

According to Karl Rahner it was “the beginning of a tentative approach by the church to the discovery and official recognition of itself as world-church.”25 The debates at the council resulted in a significant doctrinal-ecclesiological and liturgical aggiornamento emblematically described by Yves Congar as an ecclesial “October Revolution.”26 The council treated inculturation as a major issue of pastoral concern even though the term was not expressly used in any of the sixteen conciliar documents.

2.2.1 Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC)

The first conciliar document to be approved by the fathers of the Second Vatican

Council was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963. The Liturgical Movement27 facilitated the speedy completion of the document because it had been developing the

25 Karl Rahner, “Basic theological interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. 20, (1986): 77-89. 26 Presmanes, J., O.P. "Inculturation as Evangelization: The Dialogue of Faith and Culture in the Work of Marcello Azevedo," U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 30 no. 1, (2012): 59-76. 27 Belgian Benedictine Lambert Beauduin is considered the founder of the liturgical movement that was aimed at urging the church to restore the active and intelligent participation of all the faithful in the Holy Mass. The movement critiqued the elitist nature of Christian worship and demanded that the rites be simplified and the liturgical texts translated from Latin to the vernacular to promote the participation of all peoples. These demands appeared in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

15 literature since the turn of the century helping the preconciliar Liturgy Commission do its work. The constitution favored the revision and adaptation of the liturgy into particular circumstances and cultures because the Christian faith implanted in mission territories could no longer be confined to a Euro-centric cultural manifestation.

Although SC upheld the use of Latin in the Latin rite, it favored the translation of liturgical texts from Latin to the vernacular language28 with the approval of the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority.29 This was a giant step toward making the word of God feel at home in other-than-european cultures of the world. Cameroonians worship in spirit and in truth when they use their vernacular language in lieu of the foreign Latin texts that have become obsolete and incomprehensible to the indigenous people. Karl Rahner asserts that, “the language of a small and particular cultural sphere,

Latin could not be the language of a world-church.”30 The constitution also allowed for the revision of liturgical books for different regions and peoples, which was a significant step toward realizing the much-desired world-church and boost “a full, conscious and active participation”31 of the faithful in the liturgical celebration.

The reforms ushered in by SC have had a multiplier effect on the church’s liturgy in Cameroon, which is indicative of the beginning of inculturation. Firstly, the bible has been translated into various local languages for liturgical use in different parts of

Cameroon thus enabling the people to hear God speaking to them in their own tongues and languages (Acts 2:16). In the words of Karl Rahner, “the victory of the vernacular

28 SC, 36 29 SC, 36. 30 Karl Rahner, Concern for the Church, trans. Edward Quinn, (New York, Crossraod, 1981), 80. 31 SC, 14.

16 languages in the church’s liturgy is a clear and urgent signal of the coming-to-be of a world church, with its particular churches each existing autarchically in its own cultural group, rooted in that culture and no longer exported from Europe.”32

Secondly, in Sub-Saharan Africa and Cameroon in particular, traditional gestures, arts, songs, drums, dances and rhythmic handclapping that were considered taboo in the missionary era, have been integrated into Christian worship. These developments have effectively brought about vitality and active participation in Cameroonian liturgical celebrations even though some theologians have critiqued the achievements as superficial. They contend that, “one gets the impression that Africans have only song and dance to contribute to the message and practice of the Christian faith.”33 While others have levied the blame on SC for not making provisions for the creation of local liturgical rites and for placing stiff safeguards on liturgical development.

A cursory reading of the constitution shows that safeguards were put in place to stifle the creation of new local liturgical rites. Article no. 37 holds that, “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.”34 However, in article no. 38 it strongly upholds the preservation of the “substantial unity of the Roman Rite”35 as an indispensable condition for all liturgical renewal. This may be seen as a conciliar attempt to restrict the freedom of particular churches from creating new liturgical rites or integrating certain cultural aspects that may seem detrimental to the integrity of the

32 Rahner, Concern for the Church, 80. 33 Orobator, Theology Brewed in An African Pot, (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis Books, 2008),130. 34 SC, 37 35 SC, 38

17 gospel, the unity of the Roman rite and the bond of communion between the particular and universal church.

The church is reluctant to radically integrate in the Roman Rite, the African traditional religious practice of venerating ancestors. Ancestral veneration is a highly revered traditional religious practice in Cameroon that the church dismisses as a form of superstition and paganism, in spite of its myriad of similarities with the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints. I recognize that there are aspects of ancestral veneration that need to be purified with the light of the gospel but a blanket condemnation of the entire practice is counterproductive to evangelization. Notable theologians like Uzukwu think that authentic liturgical inculturation imperatively necessitates the creation of new local rites within the lose federation of a Roman (western) liturgical family.36 Many local rites emerged in Africa pertaining to specific cultures such as “the Ndzon-Melen Mass of

Yaoundé, the Zairian rite, the Eucharistic liturgies in East Africa, and the Mossi initiation rite in Burkina Faso.”37 Nonetheless I will argue for the original intention of

Sacrosanctum Concilium for a “single, reformed Roman Rite, with the possibility of

‘legitimate variations and adaptations’ foreseen by the liturgical books.”38

I am advocating for an even more radical adaptation in the liturgy by urging the church to approve, integrate and allow for the invocation of Cameroonian ancestors within the framework of the existing Roman liturgy. In the same way as the Old

Testament Jewish ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) are invoked side-by-side the

36 Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 64 37 Uzukwu, A Listening Church, 62. 38 Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 191.

Christian saints in the Eucharistic prayer in the Roman canon, in the litany of saints and in baptismal liturgy so too Cameroonian ancestors should have their place in the roll call of invoke-able saints in Christianity. Furthermore, the Roman Canon makes reference to

Melchesedeck who was certainly outside of the Abrahamic tradition. In addition, the

Eastern churches in their liturgical calendar celebrate the feasts of some Old Testament patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on August 21, Samuel on August 20 and the prophet Jeremiah on May 1. They are considered saints of the Old Testament because they lived their lives in anticipation of the coming of Christ the messiah.

Evans Armatas contends that, “by remembering these saints in her liturgical calendar, the Orthodox Church demonstrates her understanding that the Body of Christ transcends limitations of time and space.” 39 He goes on to demonstrate how this awareness is expressed at every Divine Liturgy of the Eastern churches: “And again we offer unto You this reasonable service for all those who in faith have gone before us to their rest: patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith.”40 K. Bediako for his part maintains that the Old Testament validates the theology of ancestors. It presents us with the history of God’s dealings in the lives of his people whose faith was not perfect, and that the Old Testament itself offers a paradigm through which to understand the similar journeying in the past.41 Therefore, the inculturation of ancestors in the liturgical

39 Cf,. Evan Armatas, “Saints of the Old Testament,” March 30, 2013, http://www.stspyridons.org/ 40 Cf., Armatas, “Saints of the Old Testament,” March 30, 2013, http://www.stspyridons.org/ 41 Bediako, K. Theology and identity: the impact of culture on Christian thought in the second century and modern Africa. (Oxford: Regnum Books). 1992.

“celebration may be appropriate and enhance both the African Christian’s self- understanding and grasp of the Christian tradition.”42

It is important to note that neither the creation of local rites nor the rehabilitation of ancestors in the Roman rite jeopardizes the unity and communion of the church.

Rather it consolidates and strengthens the church’s unity in diversity. However, if the church is moving theoretically toward effective liturgical inculturation, it is not just because of the reforms that occurred in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Aylward Shorter is convinced that it is “because of other conciliar documents that struck a chord in the hearts of non-western worshippers, and because the use of the vernacular encouraged the hope of more thorough going adaptation.”43 For this reason I now turn to Gaudium et Spes which gave the highest attention to the topic of faith and culture and opened the floodgates for the proliferation of the theologies of inculturation within Catholic circles.

2.2.2 Gaudium et Spes (GS)

Gaudium et Spes, (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) promulgated by Paul VI on December 7, 1965 is the most pertinent Vatican II document in the study of inculturation because it takes cultural pluralism seriously and promotes dialogue between the faith and the cultural values of different peoples. This is significant because the gospel is addressed to people who live in societies and are associated with cultural traditions and values that influence their behaviour and enable them to attain full humanity. The document holds that, “the human person can achieve true and full

42 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 50. 43 Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation, (Maryknoll New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 195.

20 humanity only by means of culture.”44 Culture is therefore an indispensable vehicle both for evangelization and for transformation toward attaining full humanity.

If evangelization aims at touching and transforming people’s hearts from within then it must take into cognizance the cultural values that shape their lives and their moral behaviour. In the Cameroonian context, the cult of ancestors is a fundamental cultural value that shapes the lives and behaviours of people. The good ancestors,45 while on earth handed down a code of conduct to their living relatives through their particular words, actions and ritual sacrifices that should be continued. They are the invisible guardians of morality in the community of the living. They “act as the invisible police of the families and communities.”46 When the living “rehearse this inheritance, they are not only relating the lives of their ancestors but confronting their own lives with what these people did and said.”47

The most significant paradigm shift in the pastoral constitution was its recognition of the plurality of cultures, which was a real attempt to actualize the concept of a world- church. The document affirms that,

The church sent to all peoples of every time and place, is not bound exclusively to any race or nation, nor to any particular way of life or customary pattern of living, ancient or recent. Faithful to its own tradition and at the same time conscious of its universal mission, it can enter into communion with various cultural modes, to its own enrichment and theirs too.48

Therefore, in the encounter between faith and culture, faith purifies and corrects the

44 Gaudium et Spes, 53. 45 Later in chapter three I shall present the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ancestors and explain how this determination is made and why. 46 John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1989), 81-82. 47 Bénézet Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context. Trans. by John O’Donohue. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1992),77. 48 GS, 58.

21 culture with the light of gospel values and triggers its spiritual riches to blossom from within. This seems to be more than a hint of what is really meant by inculturation.49

Culture makes faith present and comprehensible. While Sacrosanctum Concilium is described by Shorter as “ecclesiologically immature,”50 Gaudium et Spes was decisive for an effective development of the theology of inculturation. It paved the way for a new pastoral approach to evangelization ad gentes.

2.2.3 Ad Gentes (AG)

Ad Gentes, (Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church) promulgated by

Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965 has as one of its purposes circumventing a reoccurrence of past errors by missionaries. At the same time, AG affirms that the church is indeed missionary by her very nature. However, this mission is recast as sharing in the mission of the Trinity. It provides some guidelines on inculturation even though it does not use the term explicitly. The document discusses the analogy of the incarnation and the implantation of the church among cultures and envisages the transformation of cultures from within with the light of the gospel. The decree states that,

Christ’s incarnation is the paradigm for the young churches, insisting that if the church is to be in a position to offer to all the mystery of salvation and the life brought by God, then it must implant itself among every group of people in the same way that Christ by his incarnation committed himself to the particular social and cultural circumstances of the people among whom he lived.51

Although the decree makes positive affirmations about culture, its language is basically ecclesiocentric and Eurocentric, especially with the use of expressions like

49Shorter. Toward a Theology of Inculturation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 202. 50 Shorter. Toward a Theology of Inculturation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 203. 51 AD Gentes, 10, 22.

‘implantation’52 and ‘young churches.’53 These expressions create the impression that the identity and autonomy of particular churches are intrinsically derived from western communities.

2.3 Post-Vatican II Magisterial Teachings On Inculturation

Having established the positive tone set by the Second Vatican Council in its recognition of cultural pluralism, I will now turn to the post-conciliar magisterial teachings of Popes Paul VI (1963-1978) and John Paul II (1978-2005) in their addresses and letters and highlight their significant contributions toward the development of inculturation. Then a critical evaluation of the lofty propositions of Pope John Paul II in

Ecclesia in Africa for effective inculturation shall conclude this chapter. This study shall not delve into the teachings of Popes Benedict XVI and Francis on the subject because neither of them has written explicitly on mission and inculturation.

2.3.1 Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI brought the challenge of inculturation home to Africans in 1969 when he visited Kampala, Uganda and addressed the closing session of the First Plenary

Assembly of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar

(SECAM) on evangelization and the cultural adaptation of the faith. The pontiff acknowledged cultural pluralism and made an historic statement urging African Bishops to recognize that:

52 AG, 10. 53AG, 16.

An adaptation of the Christian life in the fields of pastoral, ritual, didactic and spiritual activities is not only possible, it is even favored by the church. The liturgical renewal is a living example of this and in this sense you may and you must have an African Christianity.54

This was the first time a reigning pontiff endorsed the prospect of an African Christianity.

The Pope was envisaging an extensive dialogue between faith and culture in every aspect of the church’s life.

I am persuaded that the restoration of family bonds between the living and the ancestors within the framework of the liturgy is one of the fundamental goals of that

“African Christianity.” The African family is made up of the living, the ancestors and the not-yet-born with the father (the family head) acting as mediator between the living and the living-dead. As the Pope acknowledges in Africae Terrarum, “in certain African civilizations, the father of the family ‘has a typically priestly function assigned to him whereby he acts as a mediator not only between the ancestors and his family, but also between God and his family, performing acts of worship established by custom.”55 The inculturation of ancestral veneration will therefore enhance the cohesion of the

Cameroonian family bonds, which extends to the ancestral realm.56

Following the Pope’s challenge for an “African Christianity” and as a result of

Africans becoming more involved in the theological disciplines, African Bishops and theologians developed the theology of incarnation to replace the obsolete and out-dated

54 Pope Paul VI, address at the closing of the All-African Bishops’ Symposium. (Cf also, Peter Schineller, A Handbook on Inculturation (New York: Paulist Press, 1990). 129. 55 Africae Terrarum, Message of Pope Paul VI to the Sacred Hierarchy and all the people of Africa for the promotion of the religious and social welfare of their continent, October 29, 1967. Cited by Jean Marc Ela, My faith as an Africa, 32. 56 Later in this study I shall articulate the patriarchal dominance in this system that undermines the role and place of women.

24 theology of adaptation.57 The incarnational model gained currency because the church that is sent on mission (Acts 1:8) must “become flesh” in every time and culture if it is to continue to offer the salvation brought by Christ.58 Whereas adaptation was rejected because it “did not go far enough to express the reality of the indissoluble marriage between Christianity and each local culture.”59 Adaptation meant the church searched for stepping-stones (pierres d’attente) or values that corresponded to Christian values as a starting point for evangelisation. Moka Di Mpasi frowns at this terminology that depicts a missionary stratagem to transplant a theology developed elsewhere into Africa as if

Africans have no culture of their own on which the Christian faith could anchor.60 The limitations embedded in the praxis of adaptation led Uzukwu to conclude that it was a mere transplantation of the western church into Africa.61

In 1974, Paul VI convened a Synod of Bishops on Evangelization and its outcome accounts heavily for the maturation of the concept of inculturation. African bishops at the synod were deeply concerned about the superficiality and shallowness of the Christian life in Africa ignited by the lack of genuine dialogue between the Gospel and the religio- cultural values of the people. The Bishops made a crucial statement at the synod stating that:

57 Adaptation: Orobator sees the term adaptation as the one term that describes the relationship between faith and culture. “It involves a selective modification of Christian faith and worship using elements from African religion that are considered compatible with the Christian message.”57 58 Cf., J. M. Walliggo, Making a Church that is Truly African in J. M. Walliggo et al., Inculturation: Its Meaning and Urgency (Kampala: St Paul Publications-Africa, 1986), 11. Cf. also, Gregory Olikenyi, African Hospitality: A model for the Communication of the Gospel in the African Cultural Context (Nigeria: Snaap Press, 2001), 54-55. 59 Cf., J. M. Walliggo, Making a Church that is Truly African in J. M. Walliggo et al., Inculturation: Its Meaning and Urgency (Kampala: St Paul Publications-Africa, 1986), 11. Cf. also, Gregory Olikenyi, African Hospitality: A model for the Communication of the Gospel in the African Cultural Context (Nigeria: Snaap Press, 2001), 54-55. 60 Cf., Moka Di Mpasi, “Quand l’africain dit inculturation,” in Telema, 63-64, (1990): 45. 61 Cf., Uzukwu, “Missiology Today: The African Situation” in E.E. Uzukwu, (Ed), Religion and African Culture: Inculturation-A Nigerian Perspective (Enugu-Snaap Press, 1988), 152-153.

Our theological thinking must remain faithful to the authentic tradition of the church and at the same time be attentive to the life of our communities and respectful of our traditions and languages, that is of our philosophy of life. Following this idea of mission, the Bishops of Africa and Madagascar consider as being completely out-of-date the so-called theology of adaptation. In its stead, they adopted the theology of incarnation.62

The Bishops advocated for the incarnation of African cultural and artistic riches into the

Christian faith so as to enable the Gospel to take flesh in the daily lives of Africans. The incarnation is the theological foundation for inculturation because it reflects “that embracing of humanity by God in Christ, in order to give flesh to the gospel again in different cultures.”63 Although this model has solid biblical and Christological foundations, the pontiff cautioned the bishops to not “speak of diversified theologies according to continents and cultures. The content of the faith is either catholic or it is not.”64 The Pope seemed to deviate from the pluralism, which he favored in his Kampala address calling for an “African Christianity.” Above all he feared that diversified theologies would rupture communio with particular churches, endanger the churches traditions and undermine the unity of the universal church under the successor of Peter.

In 1975 Paul VI issued the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (On

Evangelization). It is considered as the most positive official magisterial document on the subject of inculturation. In this document he showed how the gospel message could be integrated within any given culture by bringing the Good News of Christ into all the strata of humanity, so that humanity itself becomes a new creation. The Pope stated that,

Evangelization loses much of its force and effectiveness if it does not

62 Cf. Shorter, Toward A Theology of Inculturation, 213. 63 Michael Paul Gallagher, Clashing Symbols: An introduction to faith and Culture, (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, London, 1997), 122. 64 Emmanuel Martey. African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1993), 66.

take into consideration the actual people to whom it is addressed, if it does not use their language, their signs and symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it does not have an impact on their concrete life.65

The most remarkable shift in Pope Paul’s theology was his call for the evangelization of cultures in the ‘fields of pastorals, rituals and didactic activities,’66 which unfortunately has remained wishful thinking in the vast African continent where “the split between the gospel and culture is without doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times.”67

Pope Paul VI sowed great seeds for the flourishing of the theory and practice of inculturation, while his successor, Pope John Paul II took it to another level.

2.3.2 Pope John Paul II and Inculturation

Pope John Paul II is the most widely travelled pontiff and his pastoral trips across the world brought him face to face with the reality of cultural pluralism, which he addressed in his many speeches and letters. He was an advocate for dialogue between

Christianity and the various religious-cultures of the world. The Pope created “the

Pontifical Council for Culture to help the Church be involved in the saving exchange in which inculturation of the Gospel goes hand in hand with the evangelization of cultures.”68

In his encyclical letter, Redemptoris Missio the Pope defines inculturation as “the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration in

65 Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN), (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1975), 63. 66 Pope Paul VI’s Homily at Mass at the conclusion of the Symposium organized by the Bishops of Africa, Kampala-Thursday, 31, July 1969. 67 EN, 20. 68 John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture, 14 March 1997, L'Osservatore Romano, 26 March 1997.

Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human cultures.”69 His definition highlights the dialogical and mutual enrichment involved in the process of inculturation. That is, the gospel values purify and enrich the culture and the cultural values enrich the church in the areas of the liturgy, Christian life and theology. John Paul

II avows that the church “transmits to them [cultures] her own values, at the same time taking the good elements that already exist in them and renewing them from within.”70

The definition becomes problematical when the pontiff talks of “the church’s insertion into people’s cultures.” ‘Insertion’ is not in alignment with the contextual theological understanding of inculturation. Instead of the word ‘insertion,’ Gregory

Olikenyi suggests the expression “‘integration into a culture’ ‘so as to bring to the fore the reciprocal character of the process.”71 This is fundamental because it is possible to insert the church in a culture without the church becoming an integral part of the life of the people of that culture, as was the case in Cameroon. Inculturation does not happen when “faith is ‘inserted’ but when faith is embodied, incarnated and expressed in the lives of the faithful.”72 Furthermore, with the word insertion, we get the impression that the church is superficially being imposed on the people without being interiorized.

Without any prejudice to the observations made above, I find John Paul II in Slavorum

Apostoli veering from his concept of “inserting the gospel into a culture” to the concept of the incarnation which I will develop later in my evaluation of Ecclesia in Africa.

69 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter, Redemptoris Missio, no. 52. 70 Redemptoris Missio, 86. 71 Olikenyi, African Hospitality: A model for the Communication of the Gospel in the African Cultural Context (Nigeria: Snaap Press, 2001), 50. 72 Anthony J. Gittins, “Beyond Liturgical Inculturation. Transforming the Deep Structures of Faith,” Irish Theological Quarterly, no. 69 (2004): 47-72.

It was in Catechesi Tradendae (1979) that for the first time the word inculturation was mentioned in an official papal document though the Pope used it side by side with acculturation,73 which is the encounter between two cultures that leads to the emergence of a new culture. The term acculturation is no longer in popular use in mission theology because the encounter between Christianity and other cultures leads to the birth of another culture that is not Christian. However, acculturation is “a necessary condition for any inculturation process.74 Pope John Paul II defined inculturation as “the incarnation of the gospel in autochthonous cultures, at the same time, the introduction of those cultures into the life of the church.”75 The Pope’s definition resonates with Father Arrupe’s theological understanding of inculturation as “incarnation,” an analogy that has been used by many theologians as paradigmatic for defining inculturation.

2.4 The Theological Understanding Of The Term Inculturation

Inculturation is neither transplantation nor implantation. That is, it is not the exportation and imposition of a western-style Christianity on other peoples and cultures.

Rather the neologism inculturation widely used by Roman Catholic theologians seeks to describe what happens when the gospel message encounters a particular culture. The origin of the term ‘inculturation’ is attributed to Jesuit Father Joseph Mason of the

Gregorian University in Rome who, in 1962 shortly before the Second Vatican Council,

73 Acculturation refers to the continuous first hand encounter between two cultures with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both cultures. Cf. Olikenyi, African Hospitality, 47. (Cf. also, R. Redfield et al., “A Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation” in Man, 35, 1935. 74 Ibid. 75 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter, Slavorum Apostoli, (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, June 2, 1985), 21.

29 coined the phrase Catholicisme enculturé or (inculturated Catholicism).76 However, it was Father Pedro Arrupe, former Jesuit Superior General who defined inculturation as,

The incarnation of the Christian life and of the Christian message in a particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements proper to the culture in question but becomes a principle that animates, directs, and unifies the culture, transforming it and remaking it so as to bring a ‘new creation.’77

Arrupe’s definition has survived the crucible of theological critique because it encompasses the significant elements involved in the theological understanding of the term. It incorporates the paradigm of the “incarnation”78 which is the theological basis for inculturation. It also hints on cultural pluralism, that is, the Gospel using valuable aspects of a culture to express itself in a more intelligible and comprehensible manner. The major theologians in this study root their understanding of inculturation in the incarnation analogy that is generally used in Roman Catholic theological circles.

For instance, Uzukwu employs the model of the incarnation derived from the

Christian experience of the “word became flesh,” to articulate his understanding of inculturation. However, he contextualizes the analogy within Africa by imaging the seed or the sperm of the Christian message impregnating the fertile womb or land of Africa.

76 Cf., Joseph Mason, “L’Eglise Ouverte Sur Le Monde” in Nouvelle Review Théologigue-NRTH, Vol.84, (1962): 1032-1043. Cf. Also, Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, Orbis, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 10. 77 Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Letter to the Members of the Society of Jesus, cited by P. Charentenay, A Proposito d’Inculturazione, in La Civiltà Cattolica (1994/2): 240; Cf. General Directory For Catechesis, (1997),109. 78 I shall explain the term “incarnation” as the theological basis for inculturation later in this study.

The result is the birth of African Christianity and an intimate bond between African cultures and the Christian message.79

Another understanding of the concept that is relevant for this research is by

Aylward Shorter, who defines inculturation as, “the on-going dialogue between faith and culture or cultures. More fully, it is the creative and dynamic relationship between the

Christian message and a culture or cultures.”80 Shorter highlights the dialogical nature of inculturation between the Christian message and human culture because faith can only exist when transmitted in a culture. He also evokes the aspect of reciprocity and shows that inculturation is two-way traffic; it is a process of giving and receiving that is completely bereft of any form of prejudice, bias or cultural superiority.

Jean-Marc Ela, has written on inculturation though there is no explicit definition of the term ascribed to him. He takes a leap from the declaration of Pope Paul VI in

Kampala, Uganda calling for an “African Christianity” to articulate his understanding of the concept of inculturation. Ela perceives inculturation as the desire in many African churches to root the Gospel in local realities since it is a fundamental option demanded by the proclamation of the Good News. He further depicts inculturation in the light of the attempts by African theologians to reinterpret the Gospel in the context of misunderstood or rejected cultures so that local communities can express their faith in their own unique way. Ela avers that, “Christianity must inculturate itself if it does not want to be perceived as an apparatus or an ideological ‘phase’ of colonialism.”81 Ela particularly

79 Uzukwu, A Listening Church, Autonomy and Communion in African Churches,(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996), 6. 80 Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 11. 81 Ela, My Faith as an African, xiii.

31 addresses the relationship between the ancestors and Christianity that merely transfers dogmas, rites, rules, and customs formed overseas for African traditions.82 He then argues for the Christianisation of the ancestral cult in order to efficiently evangelize the African.

To effectively incarnate the gospel message in the African cultural context, Pope

John Paul II convened and presided over the first special Assembly for Africa of the

Synod of Bishops on the theme, "The Church in Africa and her Evangelising Mission

Towards the Year 2000: 'You shall be my witnesses' (Acts 1:8)."

2.5 The First African Synod and the Theology of Inculturation

On the solemnity of the Epiphany, 6 January 1989 Pope John Paul II stunned the

African continent when he announced during the midday Angelus that there will be a

Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops. The convening of the synod struck a deep and optimistic cord in the hearts and minds of Africans who hoped it would offer a platform to develop a theology rooted in their concrete historico-cultural experiences and communicate to a broader audience the wisdom and rich cultural values of the African people. The Instrumentum Laboris stated that the purpose of the synod was,

To assist the Church in Africa to deepen, her commitment to the mission of evangelization, taking into account her history and development as well as the whole cultural, social, political and economic context in which she lives.83

The synod deliberations were held in Rome from April 10th to May 8th 1994 and it represented the most important ecclesial gathering for Africa since Vatican II. It was the

82 Ela, My Faith as an African,13. 83 John Paul II, Instrumentum Laboris, of the Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, (Feb 1993), no.1.

32 first time that the pastors of Africa gathered cum et sub Petro to reflect on new ways and means of carrying out the evangelising mission of the church on the continent that is notoriously religious on the one hand and full of social, political and economic problems on the other hand.

The synod occurred at a momentous time in the history of Africa when the continent was sinking in a socio-politico-economic quagmire orchestrated by cancerous corruption, diseases, women’s marginalization, wars, Islamic extremist terrorism, the violation of fundamental human rights and ethnic conflicts. While the Bishops were gathered around Pope John Paul II in Rome, they received the awful news of scathing genocide in Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsi tribes in which over eight hundred thousand people were massacred in that tiny predominantly Roman Catholic country.

With these vicissitudes debilitating sub-Saharan Africa, the synod of resurrection, the synod of hope84 urged evangelizers to proclaim the hope of life rooted in the Paschal

Mystery that Christ our Hope is alive; we shall live!" Africa is not destined for death, but for life!85

The outcome of the synod was the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa that was given in Yaoundé-Cameroon on September 14, 1995 by Pope John

Paul II. The main highlight of the document was its emphasis on inculturation as a conditio sine qua non for effective evangelization. For the Christian faith to be credible and relevant to Africans, it must be inculturated. The exhortation is divided into five chapters, but chapter three on Evangelization and Inculturation will be our main focus

84 Ecclesia in Africa, 57. 85 Ibid.

33 because it lays out a set of pastoral priorities for evangelization that include proclamation and inculturation.

2.5.1 Ecclesia in Africa and the Urgent need for Inculturation

As mentioned in the general introduction to this study, early missionaries to

Cameroon made a blank sheet of authentic religious-cultural values and imposed a

Christian faith wrapped in western cultural clothing that did not make sense to the indigenous people. Christianity failed to take into cognisance the total situation in which

Cameroonians live, move and have their being. As a result, those who embraced the faith simultaneously remained glued to traditional religious practices such as offering ritual sacrifices to the ancestors. This double belonging, which is symptomatic of shallow evangelization, ultimately became a huge pastoral concern for the Catholic Church in

Cameroon and Africa at large. Archbishop Paul Verdzekov of Bamenda-Cameroon in a

Pastoral Letter On Superstition, lamented that many Christians “go to church, receive the

Sacraments and afterwards go to diviners to seek solutions concerning illnesses, deaths, marriage, theft, business problems, employment promotions in their work and so forth.”86

Considering the shallowness with which Christianity penetrated the taproot of the people’s faith and culture, Ecclesia in Africa emphasised inculturation as “an urgent priority in the life of particular churches and for the firm rooting of the Gospel in Africa.

It is a path towards full evangelization and one of the greatest challenges for the Church on the continent on the eve of the third millennium.”87 In the exhortation, Pope John Paul

86 Verdzekov Paul, Pastoral Letter on Superstition (Bamenda-Cameroon, 1982), 3. 87 Ecclesia in Africa, 59.

II noted that inculturation was “a requirement for evangelization.”88 He then expanded his teaching on the incarnation analogy as the theological basis for inculturation by incorporating the Paschal Mystery and the Pentecost event because the incarnation model alone was inadequate in its description of inculturation. As Franz Xavier Scheuerer opines, “to base inculturation only on the mystery of the incarnation without referring to the entire mystery of Christ is highly inadequate.”89

2.5.2 The Theological Basis for Inculturation

In Ecclesia in Africa Pope John Paul II theologically rooted the concept of inculturation in three main events in the life of Christ, which I shall discuss under the sub-headings, the incarnation, the paschal mystery and the Pentecost event.

2.5.2.1 Incarnation

Pope John Paul II used Ecclesia in Africa as a platform to continue his reflection on the mystery of the incarnation, which is the most crucial theological foundation for inculturation. It refers to the process by which the word (logos) became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). That is, God became human in the person of his Son Jesus Christ so as to reconcile humanity to himself (2Cor 5:18). Just as the word became flesh and dwelt among us so too the Good News of Jesus Christ must take flesh in the life situation of its hearers. Ecclesia in Africa expressed the analogy of the incarnation “as a mystery

88 Ecclesia in Africa, 59. 89 Frank. X. Scheuerer, Interculturality- A challenge for the mission of the church, (Asian Trading Corporation, Bangalore, 2001), 117.

35 which took place in history, in clearly defined circumstances of time and space, amidst a people with its own culture.”90

The incarnation analogy was popular and generally accepted in its theological usage in Roman Catholic circles. However, towards the end of the twentieth century it was critiqued for being inadequate in expressing the process of inculturation. When considered in isolation, this model seems to overlook the existence of evil in human culture as well as the innumerable challenges the faith encounters as it seeks authenticity within a particular culture. Paul Gallagher buttresses the point by affirming that,

On its own, to speak of inculturation as echoing the incarnation can seem too complacent and innocent about the struggles involved. Besides the analogy itself may be misleading insofar as what is inculturated is never the transcendent word of God but faith, which is always an already inculturated response to God. 91

In response to the inadequacies of the incarnation model, Pope John Paul II linked inculturation with the cross and the resurrection of Jesus (Paschal Mystery) in order to complement what was lacking in the incarnation model. He argues that, “the work of human salvation was accomplished principally through the Paschal Mystery which is the redeeming death of Christ and his resurrection-ascension to glory as Lord.”92

2.5.2.2 The Paschal Mystery

90 Ecclesia in Africa, 60. 91 Ecclesia in Africa, 123. 92 Shorter, Towards a Theology of Inculturation, 83.

Pope John Paul II asserts that the incarnation was not an isolated event “but tends towards Jesus' ‘Hour’ and the Paschal Mystery.”93 Christ’s Paschal Mystery encompasses his passion, death, glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven. Through the resurrection Christ assumed a new form of existence such that He is not bound to any specific people or particular culture but transcends the physical limitations of an earthly life bounded by time, space and, of course, culture. The resurrection made it possible for

Christ to identify explicitly with all cultures at all times and in every place through the proclamation of the Gospel.94

In Ecclesia in Africa Pope John Paul II asserts that,

Given the close and organic relationship that exists between Jesus Christ and the Word that the Church proclaims, the inculturation of the revealed message cannot but follow the ‘logic’ proper to the Mystery of Redemption”. ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it bears much fruit’ (Jn 12:24). Jesus says: ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself’ (Jn 12:32). This emptying of self, this kenosis necessary for exaltation, which is the way of Christ and of each of his disciples (cf Phil 2:6-9), sheds light on the encounters of cultures with Christ and his Gospel. 95

Therefore, just as Christ died and rose again so too every culture that encounters the

Gospel “must ‘die’ to all that is not worthy of humanity in their traditions, all that is a consequence of accumulated guilt and social sin.”96 For instance, the killing of twins in most African countries including Cameroon needs to die or be purified with the light of the Gospel of Christ in order to give birth to an authentic Christian culture. Ecclesia in

Africa holds that, “just as the Word of God became like us in everything but sin, so too the inculturation of the Good News takes on all authentic human values, purifying them

93 Ecclesia in Africa, 61. 94 Shorter, Towards an African Theology of Inculturation, 83. 95 Ecclesia in Africa, 61. 96 Shorter, Towards an African Theology of Inculturation, 84.

37 from sin and restoring to them their full meaning.”97 The model of the Paschal Mystery is a reminder that the Risen Christ is present and active in the church through the actions of the Holy Spirit who urges the apostles to transcend the limits of their own communities and cultures and to announce the kerygma of the Risen Christ to all nations.98

2.5.2.3 The Pentecost Event

On Pentecost day, religious people gathered in Jerusalem from all parts of the world. When the apostles spoke, they were all excited because they heard them speak in their own different languages (Acts 2:5-7). People from different countries in the world, culturally diversified but united as a Church and hearing the Gospel in their own various languages, was the beauty of this Church and the cause of feeling at home for new believers.99

Ecclesia in Africa uses the model of Pentecost as an analogy for inculturation in order to emphasize the mystery of unity in diversity that was almost lost in the process of western missionary evangelization in Cameroon. According to Darren Dias, “the ecclesial effect of the gift of the Spirit in Acts is that the disciples are able to be understood in a variety of languages and so communicate with people of different languages.”100

The Pentecost event is the birth of the missionary church “symbolized by an extraordinary preaching into the languages of diverse cultures”101 such that the listeners were able to say “we hear them speaking in our own tongues the mighty works of God”

(Acts 2:11). With the Pentecost model, Ecclesia in Africa shows that the spirit is already present and working in different cultures towards drawing people of every cultural, linguistic and racial background into the church-family-of-God where they can

97 Ecclesia in Africa, 61. 98 Shorter, Towards an African Theology of Inculturation, 84 99 Anthony K. Ikechukwu, “Inculturation and the Christian faith in Africa,” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 17; (Sept 2012): 236-244. 100 Darren J. Dias, Each in their own Language: Dialogue in the New Pentecost in Science et Esprit, 68/2-3 (2016): 243-256. 101 Michael Paul Gallagher, Clashing Symbols, 125.

38 experience a new Pentecost and be able to “profess in their own tongue the one faith in

Jesus, and proclaim the marvels that the Lord has done for them.”102

The mystery of the Pentecost implies the church can no longer lay claim to monolithism but must embrace the confusion of Babel that draws into a bond of unity the various peoples and languages of the earth. Dias contends that, “Pentecost does not result in a single language but is about being able to understand one another.”103 He goes on to cite Gutierrez as arguing that “multiple languages are not replaced with a single language but people are able to understand the followers of Jesus in their own language: all are speaking their own language but they understand one another.”104 The Spirit imparts the language of love in the hearts of all believers such that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female (Gal. 3:28). Pope Benedict XVI avers that, “the Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes the hearts of the believers with Christ’s heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them.”105

The Pentecost analogy further indicates that, “the spirit has already been at work in cultures-even before the coming of evangelization.”106 Missionaries did not bring

Christ to Africa. Rather, the Holy Spirit already sowed the “seed of the gospel” in different African cultures and in the hearts of ancestors prior to the advent of Christianity.

Even though the ancestors did not know Christ, yet they knew God thanks to the Spirit

102 Ecclesia in Africa, 61. 103 Darren J. Dias, Each in their own Language: Dialogue in the New Pentecost in Science et Esprit, 68/2-3 (2016): 243-256. 104 Cf. Darren J. Dias, Each in their own Language: Dialogue in the New Pentecost in Science et Esprit, 68/2-3 (2016): 243-256. 105 Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Dec 25, 2005), no 19. 106 Gallagher, Clashing Symbols, 125.

39 that sows the seed of the word in every human heart and guides people to act according to their conscience. Pope Paul VI stated that world religions “are all impregnated with innumerable “seeds of the Word” and they can be seen as a “ preparation for the

Gospel.”107 The Instrumentum Laboris of the 1994 African Synod also stated that; “the

Holy Spirit sows the ‘seeds of the Word’ and leads human cultures and religions from within towards their full realization in Christ.”108 Therefore, there was need to reject

European cultural monolithism and to establish honest dialogue between faith and the cultures of the people being evangelized because faith can only exist when rooted in cultural forms through dialogue.

2.5.3 Inculturation As Dialogue Between Faith And Culture

The survival of Christianity, its relevance, its credibility and acceptability in

Africa is contingent on its ability to be expressed within the various mentalities, cultures, cosmologies and traditions of the people at different places and in different times. Pope

John Paul II noted that, "the synthesis between culture and faith is not only a demand of culture but also of faith, because a faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived."109

In the dialogue between faith and culture, there is bound to be mutual enrichment in the sense that the Gospel brings something new to the culture and the culture brings added richness to the Gospel. Every culture has sets of values and traditions that need to be studied and purified as the case maybe with the light of the Gospel. The Gospel

107 Evangeli Nuntiandi, 53. 108 Pope John Paul II, Instrumentum Laboris, Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, no 90. 109 Ecclesia in Africa, 78.

40 message must be open to different cultures and tied to no particular culture. Pope John

Paul II affirmed that,

Through inculturation the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces people, together with their cultures, into her own community. She transmits to them her own values, at the same time taking the good elements that already exist in them and renewing them from within.”110

An indispensable element in the dialogue between faith and culture is the need for mutual listening. Genuine and effective dialogue can only take place through mutual and respectful listening.

The Christian faith must listen to the cultures of people and let the cultures be judged solely with the light of the Gospel. Paul Cardinal Poupard, then prefect of the

Pontifical Council for Culture in a keynote address at the University of Santo Tomás in

Manila underscored that:

Dialogue demands the difficult discipline of listening: This listening, that is at the core of the dialogue between faith and culture is reciprocal. It is precisely in the reciprocity of this listening that both faith and culture are enriched. When this listening is absent, dialogue remains sterile and barren.111

Mutual listening will promote mutual understanding and foster a harmonious and peaceful relationship between faith and culture. David Bosch also stresses the importance of listening stating that, “true dialogue implies witnessing to one’s deepest convictions while listening to those of his partner without prejudice.”112

110 Redemptoris Missio, 52. 111 Paul Cardinal Pouoard, “The Dialogue between faith and Culture”. Keynote address at the university of Santo Tomás-Manila, in a Colloquium of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, (January 14, 1996), no 1. 112 Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, 484.

The partner in dialogue must be open and respectful of the other’s values without prejudice. The partner in dialogue must not consider as profane what a cultural group holds as sacred or use condemnatory language on the cultures of others else it will be an assault on Vatican II’s core teaching on cultural pluralism. This is important because one of the flaws of the missionaries was their blanket rejection of ancestral veneration in

Africa. They considered the ancestral cult as profane without realising its analogies to the communion of saints in Christianity, as I shall demonstrate in the next chapter.

Underneath every cultural practice lies a wealth of deep spiritual riches that need to be discerned and integrated into Christianity for effective evangelization.

2.6 Conclusion

This chapter has assessed the development of the concept of inculturation in some

Vatican II documents, which have favoured the maturation of an ecclesio-theological and liturgical renewal within the Catholic Church, although restricted with safeguards. It has also examined the post-Vatican II teachings of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II and evaluated their commitment to promoting dialogue between the Christian faith and the genuine cultural values of the people. Furthermore, it has espoused a working definition of the concept of inculturation from a magisterial and theological perspective and examined the lofty propositions of Ecclesia in Africa on inculturation. It has also analysed the theological foundations of inculturation and closed with the need for honest dialogue between faith and culture, which is indispensable for a realistic evangelization.

The foregoing presentation has set the stage for this researcher to focus this study on a specific aspect of inculturation, which is, the correlation between ancestral veneration in

Cameroon and the doctrine of the communion of saints in Catholic Christianity.

Chapter 3 The Theology Of The Communion Of Saints And Ancestor Veneration in Cameroon

3.1 Introduction

The veneration of ancestors is a fundamental aspect of the religious-cultural heritage of the traditional Cameroonian that missionaries disparaged as “pagan superstition” and sought to replace with the Christian doctrine of the communion of saints. Missionaries suggested Christian saints as mediators between God and humans while Jesus Christ was presented as mediator par excellence. The traditional

Cameroonian could not understand Christianity’s major point of departure that ancestors by no means were intermediaries and that they had to turn to the saints. Tatah Humphrey

Mbuy describes the quandary of the traditional Cameroonian who felt to snub the ancestors “would tantamount to cultural sacrilege for which the punishment ranged from incurable illnesses to ‘bad death’ or continuous misfortune. No one wanted this”113 and so conflict ensued.

After over a century of missionary evangelization, the veneration of ancestors continues to blossom among Christians who simultaneously profess their belief in the

“communion of saints” and venerate their ancestors. This chapter therefore seeks to develop a Christian theology of the communion of saints in correlation to the ancestral cult in Cameroon and to make a case for the inculturation of ancestor veneration in

Christian faith and practice.

113 Humphrey Tatah Mbuy, The Impact of Catholic Christianity on the Cameroonian Society, (Limbe, Cameroon: Centenary Publications, 1991), 3.

42 43

To achieve this goal, I shall make a brief overview of the pagan origin of the cult of saints in the Greco-Roman world and articulate the concept of saints in Christianity as well as the doctrine of the communion of saints in Catholicism. I shall also explore the concept of ancestors in the traditional Cameroonian cosmology and analyse the ritual of ancestor veneration among the Mada people of Northern Cameroon as a case study. Then

I shall layout some parallels and similarities between the communion of saints and communion with ancestors and argue that Christians should be allowed to simultaneously honour their good ancestors and the Christian saints within the contextual framework of the liturgy without being labelled syncretists, pagans or idol worshippers. This will significantly resolve the escalating pastoral problem of double belonging and alienation in Cameroon.

3.2 A Brief Historical Overview Of The Cult Of Saints In Christianity

Although an account of the historical emergence of the cult of saints transcends the scope and purpose of this study, it is fundamental to situate the historical origins and theological assumptions that led to the emergence of the doctrine of the communion of saints. The veneration of saints developed in about 64 CE against the background of

Christian persecution in the Roman Empire when emperor Nero accused Christians of setting fire to the city of Rome. His actions set an ugly precedent for the ruthless persecution of Christians under successive Roman emperors until 313 CE when emperor

Constantine passed the Edict of Milan granting religious freedom to Christians.

During the persecution, Polycarp died at Smyrna in A.D.156 and Justin at Rome a few years later under Marcus Aurelius. Perham Michael avers that the “Christian felt instinctively that his saintly bishop, martyred for his faith, was now enjoying the perfect joy of heaven.”114 As such, Romans would gathered around the tomb of the martyrs on the anniversary of their death or in times of crisis to pray, share a memorial meal, celebrate the Holy Eucharist and “steep themselves in the spiritual force of the martyr.”115

This practice has parallels in Cameroon ancestral veneration, which shall be examined later.

Praying on the tombs of martyrs was an ambiguous pagan practice that enjoyed popular piety because of the belief that the martyr who became a spiritual entity simultaneously dwelled in the heavenly courts and in the tomb. Through prayer and sacrifices Christians establish a spiritual link with the martyr who intercedes for them in the presence of God. But from the vantage point of church teaching, Saint Augustine and his mentor Saint Ambrose of Milan criticised the practice as a “pagan cult.” Pierre-Yves

Emery contends that accusations were leveled at devotions to martyrs as being nothing but a transposition of the pagan cult of heroes.116

About the fourth century, the popular cult was extended beyond martyrs to incorporate “confessors and virgins on the grounds that a life of renunciation and holiness

114Michael Perham, The Communion of Saints, XI. 115 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 46. 116 Pierre-Yves Emery, L'unite Des Croyants Au Ciel Et Sur La Terre - La Communion Des Saints Et Son Expression Dans La Priere De L'eglise (Tr. D.J. and M. Watson, The Communion of Saints, (New York: Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1966), 48.

45 might equal the devotion of those who had died for Christ.”117 Kabasele also contends that, “beginning with martyrs, the cult of saints slowly spread to include confessors, monks, pastors of the church, and finally to all who had given eloquent witness to the love of Christ in a life dedicated to God and to the kingdom.”118 Moreover, there were simply no more martyrs. To enhance the comprehensibility and acceptability of the

Christian message, the church slowly inculturated this “pagan cult” of popular piety on the theological basis that “it [the church] was fortified by the blood of the martyrs and that the lives of the saints helped to support the faithful who continued to struggle below.

The cult of saints was placed on this theological basis.”119 From the above historical presentation, it is evident that the canonization of saints was by popular acclamation. The local community had a huge say in the making of a saint until the Middle Ages when the process shifted to Rome.

3.2.1 The Development of The Process of Canonization

The historical development of the process of canonization began in the Middle

Ages when the local community and the Bishop through popular acclamation and devotions determined the saintliness of a person. According to E. Johnson there was a spontaneous canonization of the saints and if the person’s appeal was universal enough, other churches would follow.120 As the veneration around a particular holy person gained traction, the Bishop formally requested that the Pope should officially recognize and proclaim the individual’s heroic virtues in the church through canonization.

117 John A. Hardon, The Catholic Catechism: A contemporary catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church, (USA, 1975), 215. 118 Hardon, The Catholic Catechism: A contemporary catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church, 215 119 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 46. 120 Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 100.

In 1170 Alexander III decreed that papal authorization was required for anyone to be honoured as a saint. In 1234, Pope Gregory IX passed laws asserting the absolute

“jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff over all causes of saints and made it binding on the universal church.”121 The pontiff argued that, “since saints were objects of devotion for the entire church, only the Pope with his universal jurisdiction possessed the authority to canonize. From this point on, the canonization process became increasingly fastidious”122 because it was the pontiff who determined the worthiness of a saint though the local bishops were consulted. Johnson is critical of the magisterial takeover of the process blaming it on the love of power. She states that, “since the right to name the community’s exemplars reinforces the authority of the one who canonizes, this was one more lament in the centralization of power in the hands of the papacy, aggrandizing that office even at the expense of local episcopal authorities.” 123

The downside of the papal takeover of the process of canonization is that it has become a complex, central bureaucratic process in the hands of the congregation for the

Causes of Saints created by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The process is prolonged, fastidious and expensive to the point where lay faithful cannot afford. Also the scrutiny seems to favour religious, bishops, clergy as well as men against women. As Johnson affirms, Rome’s operative model favours religious orders or organised lay societies and disqualifies the poor and other struggling segments of the church from ever beginning

121Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 100. She was quoting, Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church determines who becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t and Why (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1990),70. 122 Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 100. She was quoting, Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church determines who becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t and Why (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1990),67. 123 Johnson, Friends and Prophets,100.

47 pursuit of official recognition of those whose holy lives have touched them.124 This explains why Sub-Saharan Africa where the seeds of the Gospel have been sown for over a century can barely count her autochthonous saints. Also, the theological meaning of the term “saint” which embraces all persons of love and truth has been overshadowed by a bureaucratic depiction of ideal perfection.125 On the other hand, the papal oversight of the canonization process has instilled order, serenity, careful evaluation and scrutiny because in the past “saints sprang up from the fertile imaginations of hagiographers like so many mushrooms.”126 This leads me to the examination of the concept of saints in

Christianity.

3.3 The Concept Of Saints In Catholic Christianity

There are two distinct understandings of the designation “saints” in Christian theology. The first usage from the New Testament refers to those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, are members of his Mystical Body the church and are called to a life of holiness. Saint Paul frequently addresses the members of the ekklesia (church) as “the saints ” using expressions such as, “to all God’s beloved in Rome who are called to be saints,”127 “to all the saints in Christ Jesus,”128 “all the saints greet you.”129

The second understanding of the concept, which is relevant for this research, narrows the concept of saints to those paradigmatic persons who have excelled in heroic virtues and are believed to be enjoying the beatific vision in the presence of God. They

124 Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 103. 125 Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 102. 126 Johnson, Friends and Prophets, 101. 127 Rom 1:17 128 Phil 1:1 129 2Cor 13; 12-13

48 are the great multitudes from every nation, from tribes and peoples and tongues that no one can count (Rev. 7:9). They have “shared our humanity, they reveal God’s face, and voice, give splendid example of the following of Christ, and signal to the pilgrim church that it is worthwhile to hope.”130 Some have been officially recognized as such by the church’s magisterium through a definitive and irreformable act of canonization based on trustworthy evidence that “they practiced heroic virtues and lived in fidelity to God’s grace”131

The church proposes saints to the community of believers as role models and intercessors132 stating that it is “supremely fitting”133 to invoke these friends of Christ in prayer in order to obtain favours from God, to venerate their memory and to emulate their sterling witness of life. By their death and admission into the celestial realm on the merits of their theological and cardinal virtues the church is confident that they have joined the communion of saints in heaven.

3.3.1 The Catholic Doctrine Of The Communion Of Saints

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), the communion of saints refers first to the "holy things" (sancta), above all the Eucharist, by which "the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ, is both represented and brought about.”134 Secondly, it refers to the communion of "holy persons" (sancti) in Christ who

130 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 124. 131 Cf., Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), no. 828. 132 Cf., CCC, 828. 133 Lumen Gentium, no 50. 134 Cf. CCC, 960.

"died for all," so that what each one does or suffers in and for Christ bears fruit for all.”135

The communion of saints brings together the living-saints and the living-dead into a relationship through the death and resurrection of Christ. The unity of the dead and the living “extends across time and space and is not severed by death. It is the core of the doctrine of the communion of saints”136 and an important article in the Apostles’ Creed:

‘We believe in the communion of saints.’

The church, which is the communion of saints, is one body in Christ Jesus and exists in a tripartite-interrelated state. This also brings to mind the just as God is one and exists as a trinity. Firstly, there is the church of the living persons (militant church), made up of the faithful still wayfaring on earth and struggling against the temptations of sin.

Secondly, there is the penitent church (suffering church) made up of those who are not yet in full union with God but are being purified in purgatory in the hope of integrating the beatific vision. Thirdly, there is the church of the saints in heaven (triumphant church) or those who are already in the presence of God contemplating the beatific vision.137 The three states of the church form a Trinitarian community linked together by the person of

Jesus Christ who reconciles unity and plurality in an extraordinary way. It is also indicative of the Trinity where each person has different functions but are held together by a powerful bond of unity in an indivisible Trinity. The actions of the Trinity ad extra are indivisible though each person has appropriated qualities; the father is the creator, the

Son is the saviour and the Spirit is the sanctifier.

135Cf. CCC, 961 136 Patrick Madrid, Any Friend of God’s is a friend of mine. A Biblical and Historical Explanation of Saints, (San Diego, Basilica Press, 1996), 10. 137 Cf. CCC, 954.

Christ’s victory over death is the greatest guarantee that physical death cannot separate Christians from this world. Rather through death they are born into this communion of saints in heaven. As the Preface for the Dead states, “indeed for your faithful Lord, life is changed not ended.”138 Death is simply a transition to eternity but it does not sever connections with the living. November 1st, All Saints Day, “ is the festival par excellence of the communion of saints, giving comfort and consolation to those who are grieving the loss of beloved persons and awakening in all community members hope and joy in their solidarity with the friends of God and prophets of all ages.”139

Having examined the historical origin of the cult of saints, the Christian concept of saints and the catholic doctrine of the communion of saints, I shall now focus on the concept of ancestors in the traditional religion of Cameroon and draw analogies between the two religious traditions to buttress my case for the inculturation of ancestral cults. I will be speaking only of the good ancestors, not the bad ancestors. It is the community that determines who becomes enlisted as a good or bad ancestor. The community identifies bad ancestors as those “whose earthly lives cannot serve to build up, or edify, the clan (…), whose activities after death spread fear and anxiety rather than love among the living.”140 The community classifies good ancestors as those “God-fearing ancestors who exercise a good influence on their descendants by showing how the force which is life is to be used as God wished it to be used.”141

138Cf. Preface For Christian Dead, no.1. 139 Johnson, Friends of God and prophets, 99. 140 Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 79. 141 Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 79.

3.4 The Concept Of Ancestors In Cameroon

In Cameroon just like in the vast African continent, “an ancestor is a blood relative of the living community; this relationship could be of common parentage or shared ancestry.”142 However, not all ancestors have consanguineous affiliations with those that venerate them. The ancestor is believed to reside in the presence of the

Supreme Being from where he or she performs the dual functions of intercessor and protector of surviving relatives.

Although ancestors are physically dead, they “are spiritually alive and share in the community life and the life of their respective families”143 because death is not the annihilation of a person but a transition into the ancestral abode. Death is the birth into the prestigious and highly desirous ancestral realm where one acquires supernatural status. This concept perfectly resonates with the Christian eschatology by which death is, in some cases, never the end but the birth into new life with the communion of saints. No doubt in Cameroon, one often hears the expression, les morts ne sont pas morts (the dead are not dead). Pope John Paul II notes in Ecclesia in Africa that Africans “believe intuitively that the dead continue to live and remain in communion with them. Is this not in some way a preparation for belief in the communion of the saints?”144

It is important to underline that not every dead person ipso facto becomes an ancestor, just as in Christianity not all deceased Christians are saints in heaven. There are

142 Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 114. 143 Chukwuagozie E., African Communitarian Ethic: The Basis for the Moral Conscience and Autonomy of the Individual, Igbo Culture as a case study, (Peter Lang, European Academic Publishes, Bern, 2005), 43. 144 Ela, My Faith as an African, 43.

52 exigencies described by Orobator as “akin to what is known as canonization in the catholic tradition, whereby a departed person is officially proclaimed a saint. In other words, he or she is declared to be a model of Christian living.”145 A candidate for ancestorhood must have led a righteous and upright life in consonance with tribal canons and traditional moral norms because “people look at the type of life the person lived before proclaiming or making him [her] an ancestor.”146 This is akin to the process of canonization in Christianity.

Moreover, the person must have been married and had progeny. Pope John Paul II corroborates this exigency in Ecclesia in Africa stating that, “the African loves children, who are joyfully welcomed as gifts of God (…). It is precisely this love for life that leads them to give such great importance to the veneration of their ancestors.”147 Having children assures the perpetuity of the family lineage and guarantees a befitting funeral rite of passage for a deceased ancestor. Elaborate funeral rites imply that the deceased person has become an invisible guardian and protector of the family or tribe from the world beyond. This is important because an ancestor can only live on if he or she is remembered and invoked by surviving relatives through ritual sacrifices. A person who dies without procreating is considered “ a useless person whose name should be blotted out of memory.”148 Besides having children the ancestor must have lived to a ripe old age

145 Orobator, Theology Brewed in An African Pot, 114. 146 Ferdinand E. Chukwuagozie, African Communitarian Ethic: The Basis for the Moral Conscience and Autonomy of the Individual. Igbo culture as a case study. (Peter Land, European Academic Publishers, Bern, 2005), 44. 147 Ecclesia in Africa, no 43. 148 Peter Sarpong, Ghana in Retrospect. Some Aspects of Ghanaian Culture, (African Books Collective Ltd, 1991), 35.

53 and died of natural causes excluding deaths by accidents, suicide, unclean diseases or during childbirth.

Ancestors are invoked by their surviving relatives during tribal festivals and family ritual celebrations such as births, initiation rites, marriage ceremonies, reconciliation, and so on. “This consists largely in pouring libations, making incantations and slaughtering either an animal or a fowl.”149 According to Pope John Paul II, the ancestral ritual is indicative that the African has “a profound religious sense, a sense of the sacred, of the existence of God the creator.”150 The ancestral ritual does not only uphold the links of communication and communion with the living-dead but also recognizes the ancestor as an integral member of the community of the living. This is what communion and remembrance of the ancestors actually mean.

An example of ancestral veneration for this research is from “the mountain peoples of northern Cameroon, where the cult of the ancestors is highly developed.”151

Relying on the work of Jean Marc Ela, I shall now demonstrate how the Mada cultural practice of honouring the ancestors promotes communion between the living and the living-dead and is paradigmatic for comparison with the communion of saints.

3.4.1 The Ritual of Ancestor Veneration Among The Mada Of Northern Cameroon

Jean Marc Ela was a Roman Catholic priest who served as pastor among the

Mada people of northern Cameroon. In his book, My Faith as an African he describes the

149 Tatah, The Impact of Catholic Christianity on the Cameroonian Society. 3 150 Ecclesia in Africa, 42. 151 Ela, My Faith as an African, 15.

Mada ritual of ancestor veneration. According to Ela, “each head of the underline Mada family possesses a jar, which represents his deceased father or grandfather. The jar is called Baba, the same word with which a man addresses his father while alive.”152 The people believe that the soul of Baba dwells in the empty jar which is often kept underneath the millet granary which is the heart of the mountain home, giving the ancestors a privileged place in precisely that spot. No sacrifice to the ancestors is possible without the existence of the pra. This word denotes both the jar representing the ancestor and the cult, which is offered.153

The symbolic significance of the ancestor’s Jar is that it makes spiritually present the physically absent father, Baba and establishes relations between the living and the ancestors. The pra functions as a symbolic sanctuary of communion and communication between those alive and the ancestors. The cult is presided over by the father of the family who exercises a priestly function in moments of misfortunes like sickness, a poor harvest of millet, drought, sterility of a couple, death of a wife or child154 or before the harvest of millet. The celebrant goes to the pra where the jar is preserved and invokes the ancestor through prayers, incantations and orations and then he pours wine (millet beer) known as bili bili into the pra beseeching the ancestors to mediate on their behalf in the presence of God. The pouring of wine is a “sign of deference and acknowledgment that ancestors continue to participate in their lives.”155

152 Ela, My Faith as an African, 15. 153 Ela, My Faith as an African, 15. 154 Ela, My Faith as an African. 21. 155 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus Christ of Africa, 43.

The people of Mada believe that the ancestor is present in the pra and so, “when they pray over the pra, they speak as if they are really talking to an actual person, for it establishes a true channel of communication between the being symbolized and the person entering into contact with that being.”156 Note that the cult is not a religious act of worship (latria), which is reserved for God alone. Both Christianity and African traditional religion are monotheistic and believe in the basic axiom that God alone is deserving of all worship. The ritual is indicative of a relationship of love, connection, family bonding and veneration (dulia) that the people of underline Mada direct toward their ancestors.

Missionaries dismissed this fundamental Mada religious practice and sought to replace it with the doctrine of the communion of saints, which has not been able to unseat ancestral veneration in Cameroon. Robertson Smith notes that,

A new scheme of faith can find a hearing only by appealing to religious instincts and susceptibilities that already exist (…) and it cannot reach these without taking account of the traditional forms in which all religious feeling is embodied, and without speaking a language which men accustomed to these old forms can understand.157

The missionaries also sought to replace ancestral symbols like the pra with “western

Christian symbols [such as] medals, statues, tabernacles, candles and altars.”158 Replacing the pra or the jar with scapulars, relics and statues of saints from a distant country unknown to the people reinforced alienation and double loyalty. If missionaries labelled the pra as paganism and superstition, then the people of Mada may be tempted to

156Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus Christ of Africa, 16. 157 Robertson W. Smith, The Religion of the Semites, (New York, 1957), 2. 158 David Kyeyune, “The Presence of the Triune God in the Church,” chap. in Inculturating the Church in Africa, Theological and Practical Perspectives, ed. Cecile McGarry and Patrick Ryan,(Nairobi- Kenya, Pauline Publications 2001), 166.

56 perceive the relics and statues of Christian saints as the whiteman’s pra or his own form of superstition or fetishism. There is a lot of spiritual wealth inherent in ancestral veneration that the church needs to integrate in its liturgy because they resonate with the

Christian doctrine of the communion of saints.

3.4.2 Some Comparisons Between Ancestor Veneration And The Communion Of Saints

In the Instrumentum Laboris of the first African synod of 1994, the bishops questioned whether the African concept of ancestor veneration could be harmonized with the teachings of the communion of saints in Christianity.159 This rhetoric indicates that the Bishops were wrestling with the possibility of integrating ancestral veneration in

Christian faith practice in Africa.160 To address this pastoral concern, I will establish some compelling parallels between the two cults and respond in the affirmative based on their similarities and on the presumption that Christian saints and Cameroonian ancestors

(baptized or not) form the communion of saints linked together by Christ’s paschal mystery.

The first discernable parallel is that Cameroonian ancestors just like Christian saints are believed to reside in the presence of God (the triumphant church) from where they exercise the important role of mediators between the Supreme Being and the living.

They are solicited through prayers to plead our cause before God. Neither Christians nor indigenous Cameroonians attribute absolute powers to ancestors. They do not have the

159 Instrumentum Laboris of the First African Synod of 1994, no. 72. 160 In the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa (no. 43) the Bishops succinctly addressed ancestral veneration without responding to the question that was raised in the Instrumentum Laboris whether ancestor veneration could be harmonized with the teachings of the communion of saints in Christianity. The Bishops rather saw ancestral veneration as preparation for belief in the Communion of the Saints.

57 powers to bless or answer prayers but they can mediate God’s favours because of their privileged position in the heavenly courts. Lumen Gentium holds that, “after they have been received into their heavenly home and are present to the Lord, they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us.”161 The ancestors like the saints are persons who walked the earth and know the needs of humans and so are “the best intermediaries between humans and God because (…) they have full access to channels of communicating with

God.”162 This parallel shows that ancestors can effectively be incorporated in the liturgy.

Another parallel is that, in Christianity there are sacred religious objects and arts such as statues, scapulars, relics and images that make present the saints they represent.

The arts “help the faithful to celebrate, meet God and pray.”163 These objects are either carried around by Christians or kept in homes and churches and treated with respect because “the honour given to the image is given to its subject.”164 Similarly, the indigenous Cameroonian keeps masks, relics, images and statues of their holy ancestors which are neither diabolic nor “fetish” as collectors of exotic arts first led Europeans to believe. The statues and masks are never worshipped. They represent on a human level the spiritual presence of the ancestors.165 As seen in the Mada ritual, there can be no prayer without the symbolic pra that makes present in a spiritual way the deceased ancestor. There is a deep spirituality here because devotion is not directed to the pra but to the spirit of baba incarnated in the symbol of the pra. Ela asserts that, “in the mountains, the pra of the father is respected; in African churches, the bones of some

161 Lumen Gentium, 49. 162 Tatah, The Impact of Catholic Christianity on the Cameroonian Society, 2-3. 163 Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, The Roman Liturgy and Inculturation, IVth Instruction For the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy, (nn.37-40). (Bombay, St Paul Publications, 1994), 42. 164 Ibid. 44. 165 Ela, My Faith as an African, 15.

58 unknown person, placed on the altar stone, appears to be a kind of fetish.”166 Given this similarity, ancestors should be considered for integration in Christian faith and worship.

The Mada ancestral ritual echoes belief in life after death, which is analogous to the resurrection in Christianity. The Mada people did not wait for the advent of

Christianity with the Nicene-Constatinopolitan creed to believe in the resurrection (life after death) and the world to come. The central thrust in both the traditional religion and

Christianity is that life is a continuum and death is not the end. Just as Christians believe that the saints live on in the communion of saints in heaven, so too the ancestors are believed to live on in the presence of the Supreme Being and so belong to the communion of saints. Therefore, I conclude with Orobator that, “the Christian faith in the communion of saints and the resurrection of the dead expressed in the creed find deep resonance in the traditional belief and understanding of the meaning of life and death.”167 There would be no communion of saints without the element of the resurrection in Christianity just as there would be no ancestral veneration without the belief in life after death. Therefore, ancestors have a place in Christian liturgy.

In the Greco-Roman world, the sacred places (cultum sanctorum) for the veneration of saints were tombs, graves, shrines and monuments. These loci were originally pagan places of spiritual encounter and for communion with the living-dead as shown above. Christians gathered around these places to express their love and devotion to the heroes of the faith and pray for their protection and intercession. As Peter Brown avers, “the graves of the saints (…) were privileged places, where the contrasted poles of

166 Ela, My faith as an African, 27. 167 Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 111.

Heaven and Earth met.”168 This pagan practice became incorporated into Christianity. In the same way, ancestral veneration in Cameroon takes place in specific sacred loci like shrines, tombs and graves of ancestors. These are sacred places for sacrifice and encounter between the living and the dead analogous to what was obtainable in the

Greco-Roman world. Just as the Greco-Roman practice was purified and integrated into the church so too ancestral veneration can be purified and effectively integrated into

Christianity.

Like the Christian saints, ancestors are not worshipped in the traditional religion but are venerated (dulia) while worship (latria) is reserved for God (Supreme Being) alone. As Alexander Jebadu rightly affirms, “ancestors or the holy living dead are never worshipped as God but venerated, honoured, remembered and loved because of their closeness with God in heaven. Through them and with them the living kin can praise and worship God.”169 Also, just as there are feast days and memorial celebrations of saints in

Christianity with Eucharist, novenas, processions with relics, songs, dance, food and drinks, so too native Cameroonians celebrate the memorial of their ancestors with the same spiritual pomp and gaiety. This parallel is ground for harmonizing the two systems through inculturation.

Based on the foregoing parallels, I argue that the ancestral cult with its deep spiritual values is compatible with the doctrine of the communion of saints and should be recognized by the universal church as a fertile area for inculturation. The theological

168 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 3. 169 Alexander Jebadu, Ancestral Veneration and the Possibility of its incorporation into the Christian faith. Exchange, 36, 3, (2007):246-280.

60 rehabilitation of the ancestors in the communion of saints will send a powerful message that the competent ecclesial leadership recognises the ancestors as effectively residing in the same heavenly locus as the Christian saints, exercising the same intercessory role as full fledged members of the triumphant church (in heaven), which is spiritually linked in a bond of unity and communion with the suffering church (in purgatory) and the militant church (on earth).

I therefore echo the proposition of Dieudonné Watio (now Bishop in Cameroon) who, in his 1986 doctoral thesis on the cult of ancestors among the Ngyemba of west

Cameroon said,

the Church can gradually accept the possibility of acknowledging that Christians can invoke their ancestors too, just as they invoke the Christian saints: having recourse to them as mediators and intercessors with God at difficult moments, and this without fear of possible excommunication on the Church’s part.170

Although the ancestors play the vital role of mediators between the living and God, it is fundamental to note that their mediatorship is subservient to that of Jesus Christ who is the mediator par excellence.

3.5 Jesus As Mediator Par Excellence

As we know from the apostle Paul, " there is one God and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as redemption for all" (1 Timothy

2:5).171 Lumen Gentium also states that, “Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the

170 Dieudonné Watio, ‘Le culte des ancêtres chez les Ngyemba (Ouest-Cameroun) et ses incidences’ pastorales (dissertation: University of Paris-Sorbonne, 1986), 361-362. 171 Lumen Gentium 60.

61 church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation.”172 He accomplished the task of mediator of divine graces through his miracles but above all by his passion, death and glorious resurrection. And even after his death, he continues to participate in the life of the church he founded as the unique and universal mediator.

If Christ is the unique and universal mediator, “does it mean that there is no need for other mediators? Does it imply God could not turn to another human being to save someone?173 Suffice to state that Christ’s role as mediator par excellence does not annihilate or supplant the time-honoured intercessory role of African ancestors who

“were the only sign of nearness to God prior to the revelation of Christ. They remained so after his revelation.”174 Kabasele asserts that the mediation of Christ is universal and ultimate while the mediation of the ancestors is limited to their descendants and does not achieve the plenitude of the kingdom of God.175

In a relentless search for a Christ-image that fits into the African ancestral pattern, various Christological formulations emerged linking Christ to the African ancestor. Some theologians concur that a more profound hermeneutics of ancestor theology will not only enhance a deeper understanding of the doctrine of the communion of saints but also deepen knowledge of the person of Christ. Charles Nyamity, a guru in ancestral

Christology bestowed on Christ the title of “brother-ancestor” while Bénézet Bujo gave

Him the title, “proto-ancestor” (or model-ancestor).

172 Lumen Gentium, 14. 173 Kabasele , Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 45. 174 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 47. 175 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 47.

According to Nyamity’s ancestral Christology, Christ fits in with the title

“brother- ancestor” because he shares a common parentage with humans and is the mediator par excellence between God and humanity. Nyamity argues that during Christ’s earthly mission and ministry, he eminently incarnated and fulfilled the saving role identified with African ancestors through mediation and good conduct that deserves recognition from the living through “sacred communication.”176 Therefore, Christ met the prerequisites to qualify as brother-ancestor in Africa.

Similarly, Bujo developed the portrait of Christ as “proto-ancestor” in his

“ascending Christology” or “Christology from below.” He built his argument on Jesus’s earthly ministry that is replete with heroic virtues similar to those required of African ancestors. He affirms that, “in his earthly life, Jesus manifested precisely all those qualities and virtues Africans like to attribute to their ancestors which lead them to invoke the ancestors daily.”177 Christ therefore fulfilled the requirements for ancestorhood in the highest degree possible performing signs and wonders, healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead to life. He lived his mission for his fellow-humans in an altogether matchless way.”178 These ancestral Christological formulations better explain Christ to Africans not just as a mediator analogous to their ancestors but as mediator par excellence.

Orobator agrees with the ancestral Christological formulations of both Bujo and

Nyamity but contends that, “there is a difference. Considering Christ’s origin as Son of

176 Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 75. 177 Bujo. African Theology in its Social Context, 80. 178 Bujo. African Theology in its Social Contextt, 79.

God, his divine-human personality, and his Trinitarian status (second person of the

Trinity), his ancestorship subsumes and eminently transcends the limited notion of brother-ancestorship.179 Moreover, Jesus died at the age of thirty-three whereas in Africa to qualify as an ancestor, one must have lived to a ripe old age. In addition, Christ did not have any biological children, which is a requirement to become an ancestor. In spite of these critiques, I conclude with Kabasele that Africans may continue to turn to their ancestors to ask spiritual and material graces of them, as long as these appeals are understood as subordinate to Christ, who alone is our salvation.”180

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter has traced the historical origin of the Communion of Saints and articulated the concept of saints in Christianity as well as the catholic doctrine of

Communion of Saints. It has also highlighted the concept of ancestors in Cameroon and examined the cult of ancestral veneration among the Mada people of Northern Cameroon.

It has established a myriad of persuasive parallels and analogies between the doctrine of the communion of saints and ancestral veneration and concluded that, “if the deep communion established among the members of a family is not broken by death, but is maintained despite and beyond death, then nothing in this relationship is contrary to the

Christian faith”181 and should therefore be integrated into Christian worship.

Cameroonian Christians should be permitted to entreat their saintly ancestors side by side the Christian saints in the liturgy in order to deepen their faith in the communion of

179 Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 76. 180 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 48. 181 Ela, My Faith as an African, 20.

64 saints. The native Cameroonian Christian shall also be able to communion with the

Christian saints and the ancestors within the context of the same Christian liturgy. The next chapter proffers specific areas for the possible implementation of the ancestral cult in Christian worship.

Chapter 4 Toward The Integration Of Ancestor Veneration In Christian Worship In Cameroon

4.1 Introduction

In the preceding chapter, I have demonstrated that the veneration of ancestors is not bound up with superstition and error but is replete with parallels to the doctrine of the communion of saints that should be assimilated into Christian worship in order to

“deepen understanding of Christ’s message and give it more effective expression in the liturgy.”182 In the present chapter, the focus of attention is on the practical application of ancestor veneration within the framework of the existing Roman liturgy because “the liturgical introduction of the feast of All Souls on November 2 certainly has not solved all the problems of the cult of the ancestors for Africans Christians.”183 While remaining faithful to the western Christian heritage we need to find a new way to celebrate the departed in our communities.184

My primary focus shall be the domain of the litany of the Saints. I shall demonstrate how the saintly ancestors can be enlisted in the official canon of the saints and invoked in the Litaniae Sanctorum as recognition that both the ancestors and the saints are in the presence of God, praying for us. I shall proceed to show that the incorporation and invocation of ancestors into the Eucharistic liturgy alongside Christian saints both baptized and unbaptized shall enhance the acceptability and credibility of

Christian worship among Cameroonians who continue to perceive Christianity as a foreign religion. I shall also argue for the use of indigenous/ancestors’ names at baptism

182 Gaudium et Spes, 58. 183 Ela, My Faith as an African, 27. 184 Ela, My Faith as an African, 27.

65 66 as the colonial practice of imposing Christian saints’ names on the newly baptised in

Cameroon is fading away. The chapter shall conclude with a critique of the cult of ancestors.

4.2 The Litany Of The Saints

The first area for the liturgical integration of ancestors under consideration in this study is the litany of the saints (Litaniae Sanctorum). The litany is an ancient form of prayer used during baptism, Christian initiation of adults, at the Easter vigil, at ordinations and so on. In the litany, the church makes a “roll call of saints; after each name is called, the people respond, “pray for us.”185 The litany is a call to remember and honour the memory of the saints in heaven and to ask for their prayers and intercessions

“as human beings united with us in one and the same communion.”186 Their prayers procure benefits to us on the pilgrim journey to join the communion of saints in heaven.

The first name in the litany is Mary, Mother of God while the last invocation is directed to “all holy men and women,” a reference to the ‘uncanonized saints’ that includes ancestors.

Ancestors are classified under the category of unnumbered and unnamed multitudes never explicitly mentioned in the litany because they have not been scrutinized through the official canonization process. In spite of popular devotions and cults built around particular ancestors, venerated for their heroic virtues in the family, tribe or nation, the Roman bureaucracy retains the monopolistic authority to determine who is to be elevated to the prestigious elitist rank of saints and to be invoked in the

185 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 134. 186 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 133.

67 litany. It exercises this authority through the Congregation for the Causes of Saints whose officials make the judgment under the guise of Christ’s pronouncement that, “what you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”

When the litany was introduced into worship, there was no formal canonical procedure to become a saint. Admission to the litaniae Sanctorum was simply based on popular devotion and the local ecclesial authorities made such decisions. Though it was not a perfect system, the community was heavily involved in recognizing the heroic virtues of a paradigmatic figure such as a martyr or a saint and developed a cult around him or her as seen above in the historical development of the processes of canonization.

With the transfer of power from the local community to the Roman bureaucracy, the procedure for canonization has become fastidious, prolonged, expensive and even political to the point where the lay faithful cannot afford.187 Furthermore, the canonization process conspicuously favours religious, bishops and the clergy who can afford the exorbitant costs involved. A cursory look at the roll call of “official saints” reveals that men are highly favoured against women and the rich against the poor. This partly explains why African saintly ancestors and exemplary Christians rarely get a chance even after over a century of evangelization.

Cameroonians like most Africans are not satisfied bonding with their saintly ancestors under the canopy of “all holy men and women.” Based on the merits of the heroic virtues of Cameroonian ancestors as reported through oral tradition and seen in ancestral rituals, Cameroonians are craving for the names of their particular family, tribal, regional or national ancestors to be added in the canon of saints and invoked side by side

187 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 100.

68 with European, Christian saints in the litany of the saints. As Johnson notes, “summoning the memory of particular ones [saints] out of the unnumbered multitude and asking them to ‘pray for us’ has the effect of strengthening the bond of persons today with the whole holy people of God throughout time, thereby deepening one with God in Christ.”188

Cameroonians are disinterested in venerating saints from distant countries unknown to them.

By enlisting and validating the invocation of ancestors in the litany of saints, the church will bear witness to the fact that both the church of the living and the church of the living-dead are joined in one spiritual body. It will also restore the equality of all the saints, friends of God and enable the Christian people to ‘take part in the rites fully, actively and beneficially’189 as Christians and Africans. Cameroonians should therefore be allowed to invoke their family/tribal saints during the litany because they reside in the heavenly courts performing the dual functions of protectors and intercessors. When the ancestors shall have been enrolled in the canon of the saints, then they could be integrated also in the Eucharistic celebration. Ela is persuaded that there can be no effective evangelization in Cameroon unless the church recognizes and restores community bonds with the invisible world in the context of the Eucharist.

4.3 Ancestor Veneration In The Context Of The Eucharist

Another area for the integration of the cult of ancestors in the Roman liturgy is the

Eucharist. It is the paramount instance by which the church venerates the saints in its

188 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 134. 189 Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, The Roman Liturgy and Inculturation, IVth Instruction For the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy, (nn.37-40). (Bombya, St Paul Publications, 1994), 35.

69 public liturgy.190 In Catholic Christianity, the Eucharist is a prayer of thanksgiving to

God for the life, death and triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is “the source and summit of the Christian life”191 and the locus par excellence for fellowship with Christ and with the communion of saints. Analogously, in the traditional religion of Cameroon, the ancestral cult is a propitious setting for upholding the unbreakable bond of unity and communion between the living and the ancestors as seen in the ancestral ritual among the

Mada people. The ancestors occupy a vital place in the daily lives of Cameroonians who cannot imagine a Eucharistic meal bereft of their participation. Kabasele affirms that,

“Christians could not conceive of celebrating the Eucharist without including the ancestors”192 whose veneration has not been replaced by the veneration of the Christian saints.

Interestingly, Cameroonian Christians venerate the memory of the saints in the

Eucharist193 and return home to offer ritual sacrifices to their ancestors who are not explicitly mentioned and invoked in the Eucharist. This is symptomatic of the people’s deepest spiritual hunger to stay connected with their ancestors and maintain kinship relations with them beyond death. I am suggesting that the ancestors be integrated into the Eucharist and the best form of such integration is by invocation especially in the

Eucharistic prayer. As Johnson notes, “in every Eucharistic prayer (…) the church calls to mind the memory of all who have died in God’s friendship including Mary, the

190Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 123. 191 Lumen Gentium, 11. 192 Kabasele , Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 48. 193 Cf., Roman Canon, “In communion with those whose memory we venerate…..”

70 apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints.”194

The Eucharist actualizes that bond of unity among the living and the living-dead.

Particular ancestors could be invoked by name on their feast day, which is the day they died and were born into the communion of saints. Mentioning the ancestor by name is a form of personal invitation to, “be with us, make yourself present in what is happening at this moment,”195 participate in the prayer and the sacrifice being offered and mediate the blessings and graces from God. Invoking the ancestor will not only be an act of veneration but also recognition that life is a continuum into the hereafter. It “reveals that there is a movement toward communion, toward solidarity and harmony in the project of life inaugurated by Christ and transmitted through the Eucharist.”196

The locus standi for invoking unbaptized ancestors in the Eucharist is the communio sanctorum which includes the great multitudes of holy men and women from every nation, tribe and peoples and tongues who never knew Christ, through no fault of their own but who nevertheless sought God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, tried in their actions to do his will, as they knew it through the dictates of their conscience.197 The invocation of unbaptized ancestors in the same Roman Canon (Canon

I) alongside the unbaptized ancestors of the Israelites (Abel, Abraham, Melchizedek) will be appropriate because they are “all the dead whose faith is known to you alone” (Canon

IV),198 they are those "who have died in your mercy” (Eucharistic Prayer II). Ela rightly argues that, “a church, which includes Abel the just one along with the sacrifices of

194 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 123-124. 195 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation 48. 196 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation, 48-49. 197 Lumen Gentium, 16. 198 Cf Canon IV. Also, Ela My faith as an African, 30.

Abraham and Melchizedek in its memorial, cannot exclude our ancestors from its memorial.”199

In the Eucharistic celebration, the community of the living offers prayers for the dead awaiting purification in purgatory in order to assist them in their journey to heaven.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) asserts,

In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the church in its pilgrim members has honoured with great respect the memory of the dead because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins' she offers her suffrages for them. Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.200

Also in the Eucharist the living church does not only pray for the dead but prays with the dead in the communion of saints. The three states of the church, which are, the church militant, the church suffering and the church triumphant are all united in prayer in every

Eucharistic celebration. As the CCC states, “by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.”201

By intentionally integrating ancestors in the Eucharist Cameroonian Christians will not have to celebrate two separate commemorative ceremonies each year, one dictated by the official church calendar; and the second in the context of traditional life.202 Yearly or monthly masses could also be celebrated for the ancestors in order to

“avoid a situation in which practically all the Masses in a week are devoted to the

199 Ela, My faith as an African, 30. 200 CCC, 958. 201 CCC, 1326. 202 Ela, My Faith as an African, 27.

72 memory of some deceased relative, so that a normal liturgical life is impossible for the contemporary community.”203 Cameroonian Christians should therefore be permitted to invoke their holy ancestors in the context of the Eucharist just as the saints are invoked to intercede on behalf of the living. The ecclesial endorsement of the invocation of ancestors in the Roman liturgy will be theologically significant in solidifying the faith of Christians in a single communion of saints devoid of hierarchical differences between the ancestor saints and Christian saints. It shall also strengthen the bonds of unity and communion between the living and the living-dead.

Ancestral veneration becomes problematical for inculturation in situations where the ancestral cult “may amount to an illicit form of spirit worship, especially where human ancestors have become divinities.”204 In this case, the ancestral cult becomes incompatible with the Gospel, with evangelization, with Christian spirituality and with the Christian faith. In other words, “we should separate any idea of religion (worship) from the cult of the ancestors”205 before incorporating the cult into the Eucharist as was demonstrated in the case of the “Chinese Rites Controversy” of the Sixteenth Century.

Matteo Ricci and other Jesuit missionaries to China faced the challenge of integrating into worship the veneration of Confucius and the cult of ancestors which was characterized by prostrations, the burning of incense and the offering of food at graves.206

The fundamental question that Rome had to resolve was whether the sacrifices and honours rendered to Confucius had a religious connotation or were mere civil and political rites.

203 Ela, My faith as an African, 30. 204 Shorter, Toward A Theology of Inculturation, 159. 205 Cf. Ela, My Faith as an African, 20. 206 Shorter, Toward A Theology of Inculturation, 159.

The Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith reminded the faithful of the distinction between an element of culture that does not of itself constitute an obstacle to the purity of the faith, even if it is of religious origin, and a rite of strictly religious character that may well be incompatible with the requirements of the Gospel.207

Rome emphasized that missionaries should always make a distinction between acts whose goal is religious and acts carried out as a gesture of honour to a distinguished person according to ancestral traditions. An even more explicit distinction must be made between a cult, which is the expression of a religion, and respect, which may be regarded as exclusively civil.208 Besides integrating the ancestors in the Eucharist, the church in

Cameroon should also allow for the use of ancestors’ names as baptismal names.

4.4 The Use Of Ancestors’ Names At Baptism

Another domain that merits attention toward true inculturation is with the use of indigenous/ancestors’ names at baptism. The time-honored colonial practice was to compel Cameroonians to take up names of Christian saints at baptism because their indigenous/ancestors’ names were heathen and could not enter the “Book of Life.”209

Cameroonians do not haphazardly name their children. Various circumstances and life experiences determine the choice of names given to children in Cameroon. As Orobator writes, “our names oftentimes tell of the experience of our parents, families, clans, ancestors, and so on. On some occasions names tell a whole story about the circumstances of a child’s birth.”210 In this section I shall examine the practice of the indigenous Beti ethnic group of Cameroon in naming a child after an ancestor as narrated

207 Ela, My Faith as an African, 20. 208 Ela, My Faith as an African, 20. 209 Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Hearing and Knowing: Theological Reflections on Christianity in Africa (Maryknoll, New York, Orbis, 1986), 33. 210 Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 17.

74 by French anthropologist and specialist in Beti culture, Philippe Laburthe-Tolra in his book, Initiations et sociétiés secretes au Cameroun. Essai sur la religion beti.211

Laburthe-Tolra recounts that, prior to the official child naming ceremony, every new born male child is simply referred to as nkudu, le “bagarreur,” (fighter) while every female is “ngon” (young lady) until the father summons his brothers and the village notables to his abáá (the man’s hut) for the official presentation and naming ceremony.

The ceremony is carried out in a festive manner with lots of food and drinks served to the guests as an expression of unity and communion. In the meantime, the mother is hailed for ensuring the continuity of her husband’s lineage, especially if it is her first progeny.

In the Beti culture that is typically patriarchal, the biological father invites the audience to stand while he addresses them, revealing the name he has chosen for the child mostly from the repertoire of ancestors that might include a grandfather, an uncle or a famous member of the tribe.

The father addresses the audience in these or similar words: Voici le bébé que ma reine (mkpëg) a mis au monde. Je le nomme “Zë Mendouga.” (Here is the baby that my queen (mkpëg) has brought into the world. I name him, Zë Mendouga).”212 He then hands over the child to the elders and each elder, holding the baby, utters blessings and predicts the future of the child. Zë Mendouga was a highly revered tribal chief (chef supérieur) of the Mvélé people. By naming the child after the chief, the father entrusts the child with a mission to emulate the virtues of his patron ancestor and grow up to become a leader of the people in the spirit of Zë Mendouga. The most important feature in this brief naming

211 Philippe Laburthe-Tolra, Initiations et societies secretes au Cameroun. Essai sur la religion Beti, Paris, Editions Karthala, 1985. 212 Philippe Laburthe-Tolra, Initiations et societies secretes au Cameroun, 221.

75 ceremony is the “imposition of a name or names that display the web of relationships through which the individual is defined.

The naming ceremony links “the neonate to loved ancestors, to prayers made to

God or spirits, to particular wishes or experiences of the parents, and so on.”213 Also, through the naming ceremony the child is no longer anonymous but has an identity and is inserted into the family and the society. Hillman opines that, “such customs teach individuals that they are not merely biological products, but cultural creations within a social process (…) enabling them to become fully human.”214 This is analogous to what obtains in the sacrament of baptism whereby the neophyte takes a new name, a new identity (child of God) and member of a new community, which is the Church. The newly baptized now shares in the holiness of Christians not primarily by performing virtuous actions but by membership in the Christian community.

In the Cameroonian context, naming a child after an ancestor is important because it immortalizes the ancestor and upholds the bonds of unity, continuity and communication between the living and the living-dead. Also the child is entrusted to the protection and intercession of the patron ancestor. Furthermore, the child is expected to look up to the ancestor as a role model, to emulate his/her exemplary life and conduct and ultimately strive to reach the same final blessed destiny where the ancestor resides. This resonates with the importance of naming children after saints in Christian baptism. The

1917 code of Canon Law states that; “the pastor shall take care that the one being baptized receives a Christian name; if they do not succeed in this they should add to the

213 Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 275. 214 Eugene Hillman, Toward An African Christianity. Inculturation Applied, 15.

76 name given by the parents the name of some saint.”215 A child who takes the name of a saint is dedicated to the protection and intercession of the patron saint and is entrusted with the church’s mission received from Christ to “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19-20). The Church fulfills its evangelizing mission through the ministry of the baptized. Also, the newly baptized is expected to ultimately become a saint in heaven by emulating the heroic virtues of his/her patron saint.

The legalistic restraints embedded in the 1917 code justified missionary imposition of foreign saints’ names (mostly Jewish or European)216 on Cameroonians at baptism while dismissing names from the repertoire of ancestors. Bujo regrets that, “it never occurred to the missionaries that they could give to their African converts names taken from their own African tradition.”217 By rejecting ancestors’ names at baptism in favor of Christian names the missionaries gave the impression that the Holy Spirit that was present at the time of creation later abandoned Cameroon/Africa to sanctify only the people of the western world. The colonial practice of prohibiting ancestors’ names at baptism was even more disturbing when theophoric (God-meaning) ancestors’ names were rejected. In 1983, Pope John Paul II issued a revised Code of Canon Law stating that, “parents, sponsors and pastors should ensure that a child is not given a name, which is foreign to Christian sentiment.218

Some over zealous pastors and missionaries in Cameroon have continued to turn away from the baptismal font people who bear indigenous/ancestors’ names and yet

215 Code of Canon Law, Can. 604 (1917). 216 Eugene Hillman, Toward An African Christianity. Inculturation Applied, 12. 217 Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 45. 218 Code of Canon Law, Can. 855. (1983).

77 accept Christian saints’ names that sometimes have strange meanings in the Cameroonian context. Cameroonians with names of western ancestors like Eugene, Anthony, Pius,

Canisia and so on, feel alienated because they do not know the patron saint and some saint’s names have a weird meaning when interpreted in the local context. For example:

Canis-dog, Amadi-Azuogu asked, what is theophoric about such a name?219 On the contrary Cameroonian theophoric names that our ancestors bore such as, Afubom (God’s gift) in Kom language, Miyanui (Thank God) in the Bambui language, are embedded with the concept of the divine and are drenched with a profound theological and spiritual density that express the African’s faith, gratitude and dependence on God. This researcher is therefore advocating that the church should encourage the use of ancestors’ names as baptismal names including ancestors’ names that are theophoric as once it did not.

4.5 A Critique Of Ancestor Veneration In Cameroon

In making propositions for the integration of ancestors in Christian liturgy, this researcher is not unaware of the theological critiques levied against this proposal. I cannot naively romanticize on the spiritual density of ancestor veneration as if it was a flawless practice. Like Ela I recognise that “the cult of ancestors in Africa is not a perfect and so it needs the Good News of salvation in Jesus; but it is precisely by accepting the cult that the church can purify it, transfigure it and preserve it.”220 The first critique is that ancestors’ are mediators tied to a particular family or tribe whereas Christian saints have a universal mediatory dimension and are venerated globally. As Kabasele observes, “the

219 Chinedu Amadi-Azuogu, Biblical Exegesis And Inculturation in Africa in the Third Millennium,281. 220 Ela, My Faith as an African, 26.

78 mediation of the ancestors is limited to their descendants and does not achieve the plenitude of the kingdom of God.”221

Also, the native Cameroonian attributes family and tribal crisis to the wrath of the ancestors and consults the village soothsayer who divinizes the reasons for the wrath and prescribes expiatory sacrifices to appease them. The sacrifice may involve the slaughtering of a spotless white fowl [sign of the purity of God] or a bigger animal like a goat.222 Besides the huge psychological and financial burdens of this practice on the people who can barely afford their daily bread, “the Christian liturgy cannot accept magic rites, superstition, spiritism.”223

Ancestral veneration is further critiqued for its lack of historical-hagiographical data to authenticate the heroic virtues of ancestors as if there was only one way to tell the story of holy people. There are different ways of being attentive to the data of what constitutes holiness. Christianity since the Middle Ages possesses the necessary literary tools for collecting, preserving and transmitting the sacred stories of the saints. Whereas indigenous Cameroonians have been able to conserve and tell the religious experiences and heroic virtues of their forebears through oral tradition, stories, religious arts and traditional religious ceremonies. Orobator makes a pertinent reminder that Christianity,

221 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus Christ in Africa, 47. 222 Tatah, The Impact of Catholic Christianity on the Cameroonian society, 4. 223 Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, The Roman Liturgy and Inculturation, IVth Instruction For the Right Application of the Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy, (nn.37-40), (Bombay, St Paul Publications, 1994), 48.

Islam and Judaism have their roots in orality. Each religious account was a collection of narratives carefully selected, collated, edited, and subsequently canonized.224

In addition, ancestral veneration is replete with overtones of patriarchal dominance, which relegates women to a second-class position. For instance, in the Mada ritual of ancestor veneration seen above, the presider is the father of the family (family head) who exercises a priestly function offering sacrifices to the ancestors. In the Beti child naming ceremony, one also notices that it is the singular privilege of the father to summon the village notables and reveal to them the name he has chosen for the child from the repertoire of ancestors’ names. He says, “voici le bébé que ma reine (mkpëg) a mis au monde. Je le nomme ‘Zë Mendouga.’ Notice that, he does not say, “nous” (we) which will imply, his wife and himself. Rather he says, “je” (I), I name him Zë

Mendouga. In this male dominated culture the opinion of the mother does not count. Her singular role is to bear children and raise them. Ecclesia in Africa in its recognition of women's dignity and of their specific role in the Church and in society at large affirmed the fundamental equality and enriching complementarity that exist between man and woman. The synod deplored and condemned, to the extent that they are still found in some African societies, all "the customs and practices which deprive women of their rights and the respect due to them."225

Another argument against the inculturation of ancestor veneration is rooted in the theological verbiage that ancestors were never baptized, they never professed Christ as lord and savour, were never sacramentally connected to the church and so it will be

224 Orobator Emmanuel, Theology Brewed in an African Pot, 112. 225 Ecclesia in Africa, 121.

80 inaccurate to attempt a rehabilitation of ancestral veneration in Christianity. This is unfortunate because the theology of ancestors seeks to establish that the experience of

God as revealed in the gospels had been anticipated in the lives of ancestors from pre- historic times as seen in their inherent desire to connect with transcendental Being.

According to Kabasele, “the present attempts to ‘rehabilitate’ the ancestors seems to accord with the classic catholic response that there are other ways to blessedness when the ordinary way is not available.”226 Kabasele further insists that their ignorance of

Christ “does not exclude them from being objects of divine solicitude. It is not their fault that they did not encounter Christ.”227

None of the ancestors being venerated lived their lives disconnected from God.

They might not have known the God of Jesus Christ but they worshipped Fiyini, God the creator in the Kom tribe. I argue that the ancestors are related to the people of God in another way and so constitute an integral part of the church. Ela buttresses this point in the form of a rhetoric, “of all those whom we Africans consider as our ancestors, who among them died alienated from God? For an African to be clothed with the dignity of an ancestor implies that one has constantly excelled in the practice of virtue.”228 They led virtuous lives, offered prayers and sacrifices to God. The “ancestors do not need the designation ‘saints’ to merit our veneration. They are venerable as they are, that is to say, as founders of our societies, peacemakers among human beings, intermediaries between the Supreme Being and us, as forces present in our everyday life.”229 This has

226 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation 45. 227 Kabasele, Celebrating Jesus in Africa: Liturgy and Inculturation 45. 228 Ela, My Faith as an African, 29. 229 Ela, My Faith as an African, 47.

81 implications for our understanding of the mission of the Holy Spirit and the invisible mission of the Word.

4.6 Conclusion

In this chapter I have demonstrated that the saintly ancestors can be enrolled in the canon of the saints and invoked in the Litaniae Sanctorum that is used at baptism,

Christian initiation of adults, at the Easter vigil, at ordinations and so on. I have also called for the incorporation and invocation of ancestors into the Eucharistic liturgy alongside Christian saints so as to facilitate the integration and understanding of worship among Cameroonian Christians. I have also agued for the use of indigenous/ancestors’ names at baptism. Christian saints’ names were imposed on Cameroonians in the colonial period. Also, I have made a critique of the cult of ancestors, which is an imperfect traditional practice that needs to be cleansed and purified with the Gospel. I have concluded that the integration and invocation of ancestors will definitely enhance understanding and active participation of Christians in the liturgy. If the aforementioned propositions are thoroughly applied then the purpose of inculturation in Cameroon, which consists in ensuring that the followers of Christ will ever more fully assimilate the Gospel message while remaining faithful to all authentic African values shall be accomplished.230

230 Ecclesia in Africa, 78.

Chapter 5 Implications Of This Study

5.1 Introduction

The previous chapter has demonstrated that, for Christianity to become meaningful and credible to the native Cameroonian it must recognize and incorporate the highly cherished cult of the venerable ancestors in its liturgical practice especially in the domain of the litany of the saints, in the Eucharist and in the use of ancestors’ names at baptism. The chapter has affirmed that the integration and innovation of ancestors in the liturgy is indispensable for the realization of a church that is truly Cameroonian, truly

Christian and authentically Catholic. It facilitates the reception of the Christian message among Cameroonians who continue to perceive Christianity as a foreign importation and an extension of colonial domination.

In this final chapter I shall focus on the implications of the conclusions of this study on the Cameroonian church and society. I shall show that the practical implementation of the cult of ancestors in Christian liturgy shall have far reaching ramifications at the theological, pastoral, ecclesiological and liturgical spheres of the

Cameroonian church and society. I shall also articulate the limits and challenges to the praxis of inculturation in the Cameroonian church and highlight some prospective cultural aspects that are begging to be studied, purified with the light of the Gospel and integrated into Christian worship in order to enhance evangelization. In conclusion, I shall show how the practice of inculturation can bring about a Cameroonian Christian discipleship that is truly African and fully Christian. The general evaluation and conclusion of this research shall focus on the objectives and process, which informed my

82 83 research and I shall conclude that inculturation is vital for effective evangelization in

Cameroon.

5.2 Theological Implications

The research reinforces knowledge of the similarities and differences between the ancestral cult and the Christian theology of the communion of saints as well as the important role ancestors and Christian saints have as mediators between the living and

God. Furthermore, the study has demonstrated that holiness is not an unattainable illusion or an elitist’s monopoly reserved for some men. The roster of canonized saints and the liturgical calendar of the saints is indicative of a patriarchal worldview that is overwhelmingly favourable toward men who are priests or bishops.231 The majority of the ‘official saints’ are single, religious, priests and then women-virgins.

Another implication is that all God’s people whether celibate or married, consecrated or lay, baptized or not baptized can become saints because sainthood is a grace available to all irrespective of status. All peoples are called to holiness by emulating the life witness of the saints/ancestors who did ordinary things in an extraordinary manner. Following in the footsteps of the saints/ancestors is the central response expected from those who aspire to join the communion of saints in heaven. As

Orobator affirms, “the lives of these saints and ancestors challenge us to become living saints, that is, men and women whose lives are an example for others to imitate. We are called to be saints.”232 In addition, the study bridges the past and present, the pre-colonial

231 Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 102. 232 Orobator, Theology Brewed in An African Pot, 118.

84 and post-colonial and moves the church and society toward the healing of community and communion.

The research promotes the respect for human life from conception to its natural end in Cameroon because the dead are not dead but form an integral part of the family of the living over which they have enormous influence. This imposes great reverence for human life, which is a gift from God. As Pope John Paul II stated in Ecclesia in Africa,

The sons and daughters of Africa love life. It is precisely this love for life that leads them to give such great importance to the veneration of their ancestors. They believe intuitively that the dead continue to live and remain in communion with them. Is this not in some way a preparation for belief in the Communion of the Saints? The peoples of Africa respect the life, which is conceived and born. They rejoice in this life. They reject the idea that it can be destroyed.233

Furthermore, the study serves as a theology manual for students, educated laypersons in parishes, seminarians, religious, clergy and those who embark on the theory and practice of inculturation especially now that the church is in the hands of indigenous

Cameroonians. It is also a relevant research tool for readers outside Cameroon and the

African continent who are interested in the theology of ancestors and the riches that the

African church brings to the universal church especially in the domain of the liturgy.

5.2.1 Ecclesiological and Social Implications

Lumen Gentium used various scriptural images to describe the nature and mission of the church. But the most outstanding was the image of the church as “the People of

God.”234 At the 1994 African Synod, the fathers adopted a similar image, that of church-

233 Ecclesia in Africa, 43.

85 as-family of God as their guiding idea for evangelization. The image was intended to highlight and consolidate the importance of the family as a core African value and to introduce into the life of the church, the love “care for others, solidarity, warmth in human relations, dialogue and trust”235 archetypal of the African family. Cameroonians who belong to the same church-family, eat together at the same Eucharistic table and invoke the same family, tribal or national ancestors in the Eucharistic celebration live in solidarity, unity, love, and peace as brothers and sisters of the same church-family. A church-family where there is no Hausa, Bamiléké, Ewondo, Bulu or Kom tribes. All are simply Cameroonians and people of God. Ela is right when he states that, “the profound meaning of the cult of the ancestors becomes clear when it is placed in the context of the

African family, which is the foundation of its culture.”236

5.2.2 Liturgical implications

The research is a guide for the liturgical inculturation of the cult of ancestors. The integration of ancestors in the liturgy resolves the pastoral problem of cultural alienation and passivity among Cameroonian Christians who can now invoke their ancestors in the litany of the saints, in the Eucharistic prayer as well as use their names as baptismal names. Also, liturgical inculturation boosts “a full, conscious and active participation”237 of the faithful in the liturgical celebration as envisaged by Sacrosanctum Concilium. By so doing, Cameroonians feel at home in the liturgy because Christ has become

234 In chapter two of Lumen Gentium, the image of the ‘People of God’ is outstanding because it depicts the church as a community of all the baptized (whether Clergy or laity, we are equal) with Christ as the Head and the kingdom of God as their ultimate destiny. After establishing the equality of all, then it makes various distinctions based one’s state of life, roles and functions. 235 Ecclesia in Africa, 63. 236 Ela, My faith as an African, 17. 237 SC, 14.

Cameroonian and the Cameroonian has become Christian. However, the praxis of inculturation in Cameroon is not devoid of barriers and challenges.

5.3 Challenges To The Praxis Of Inculturation In Cameroon

Although Ecclesia in Africa favoured the inculturation or contextualization of the gospel into African cultures, nevertheless its implementation in the particular church of

Cameroon is being challenged by the fear of syncretism. Robert Schreiter avers that

Christianity has a long history of borrowing elements from the cultures it encounters, which is a form of syncretism. He then defines syncretism as the mixing of elements of two religious systems to the point where at least one, if not both, of the systems lose their basic structure and identity.238 The definition hints on the phobia stifling ecclesial authorities in Cameroon from absorbing into the liturgy those traditional cultural practices that may be different from current Roman Catholic theology and practice. They prefer to stay on the surer and safer side of mere adaptations and accommodations or entirely ignore the process. Uzukwu regrets that “many bishops have placed obstacles to harmless practices, many have refused permission for experimentation and many more have ignored the whole issue.”239 This attitude asphyxiates the passion of parochial, diocesan and inter-diocesan liturgical communions in Cameroon from engaging in contextualization.

Another challenge to inculturation is the excessive clerical control exercised by both local and Roman authorities. Uzukwu contends that ecclesial “control is often done in the name of unity and orthodoxy under the phobia of heresy and schism, with caution

238Ecclesia in Africa, 43. 239 Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 30.

87 of superstition and magic, nationalism and superficiality and allegations of lack of

‘sound’ theology and deviation from ‘healthy’ tradition.”240 Uzukwu goes on to illustrate how excessive ecclesial control led to the miserable failure of the Small Christian

Communities (SCCs) initiated in Eastern Africa in 1976. According to him,

The small Christian Communities in AMECEA241 countries had a tremendous effect when it started in 1976. The communities were set to work on the social implications of the gospel and on inculturation. But the clergy constituted the chief obstacles; they would only tolerate a clerically supervised community.”242

The same excessive clerical control thrives in Cameroon making contextualization a real nightmare. I concur with Shorter that “too rigid control and supervision of ecclesial activities is an obstacle to creativity and makes liturgical acts instruments of standardization and centralisation.”243

Furthermore, liturgical inculturation in Cameroon is strangulated by the mentality of the ‘old is better.’ Many church officials in Cameroon are robustly opposed even to legitimate changes in liturgical practice. They vigorously defend the status quo. Most pastors in Cameroon ignore the whole issue of inculturation, which is symptomatic of

“their suspicion and indifference towards African cultures that seek to re-affirm themselves after the ravages of colonial suppression. Some indigenous Cameroonian pastors trained in western seminaries and universities regard the local cultures as inferior

240 Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 31. 241 The Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA). 242 Uzukwu, Worship as Body Language, 31. 243 Shorter, Evangelization and Culture (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 124.

88 and not at parity with the western culture through which Christianity is presently communicated.”244

In spite of the setbacks and challenges to liturgical inculturation in Cameroon, some progress has been made. The church in Cameroon has actually taken over local symbols, languages and arts and converted them into Christian usage in the liturgy making worship more lively, participatory, credible and meaningful. There is also the rampant use of traditional Cameroonian forms such as drums, rhythmic hand clapping, swaying and dancing to the melodious sound beats of the African drum. This makes worship more lively and participatory than the Francophone, Anglophone or Latin masses.245

5.4 Recommendations For Effective Inculturation In Cameroon

The marriage between the Western Church and Africa is far from being peaceful because of the lack of comprehension between Rome and Africa on inculturation at every level. The tension emerges from the fact that Rome does not listen to the lofty proposals of the African Bishops on how to incarnate Christianity into African cultures. Rahner questioned,

Do not the Roman Congregations still have the mentality of a centralized bureaucracy, which thinks it knows best what serves the kingdom of God and the salvation of souls throughout the world, and in such decisions takes the mentality of Rome or Italy in a frighteningly naive way as a self- evident standard?246

244 Shorter, Evangelization and Culture, 124. 245 Cf., Song Eugene, The Challenges of Inculturating the Good News Within the Church In Cameroon In The Light of Ecclesia In Africa, Fifteen Years After (Bamenda-Cameroon, 2010), 56. 246 Karl, Rahner. Towards A Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II, Theological studies, 40 no. 4 (1979): 716-727.

Rome has to enter into honest dialogue with the church in Africa on the issue of inculturation. And the church should not come to the dialogue table from the position of western cultural superiority but from the vantage point of an institution that sincerely wants the gospel to take flesh in non-western cultures. “Dialogue and collaboration with followers of traditional religions, as mandated by Vatican II, would surely be an obvious starting point.”247 The church should listen to the lofty proposals from African pastors who understand the culture and traditions of their people. Rome must also assume her role as a listening elder brother.

Uzukwu considers listening as the overriding metaphor for constructing a theology of ministry or service in the church and so he proposes the model of “A

Listening Church” thus the title of his monograph copiously cited in this study. In this book he argues that the church in Rome should listen to the conversations going on in communities in Africa on issues like inculturation, polygamy, childless unions, African women and their role in the church. He sees listening as an important methodological component for theological reflection and contextualization.248

The church in Cameroon needs the courage to be daring in the praxis of inculturation. The courage for authentic inculturation requires the engagement of the human faculties, gifts and skills in theological research and reflections on the church’s mission to incarnate the Gospel message into the local traditions and cultures of the people. It is both appropriate and necessary to make use of theological principles as well

247 Hillman, Toward an African Christianity, 74. 248 Cf also, Song Eugene, The Challenges of Inculturating the Good News Within the Church In Cameroon In The Light of Ecclesia In Africa, Fifteen Years After (Bamenda, Cameroon, 2010). 66.

90 as the findings of the secular sciences.249 Therefore, the church in Cameroon should not be paranoid of Rome’s liturgy police and try and inculturate even if she errs. Late archbishop Jean Zoa of Yaoundé once challenged the western ecclesiastical bureaucracy to “allow us (Africans) to err. You yourselves have had 2000 years to err.”250

5.5 Further Questions And Areas For Research

One of the resounding disappointments at the terminus of the first African synod was its failure to tackle the problem of polygamy, which is a hot button pastoral challenge facing the church in Cameroon and Africa. Cameroonians expected the synod fathers to deliberate and provide pastoral guidelines on handling this complex, time- honoured cultural heritage in Africa. The fathers rather affirmed that, “when doctrine is hard to assimilate even after a long period of evangelization, or when its practice poses serious pastoral problems, especially in the sacramental life, fidelity to the Church's teaching must be maintained.”251 This was an unblemished inference to polygamy that has robustly resisted the churches paradoxical teaching that polygamists should get rid of their multiple wives and retain just one. It is therefore urgent to deepen research in the domain of polygamy, which is a culturally acceptable practice in Cameroon though rejected in western Christian morality in favour of monogamy.

5.6 Conclusion

In this chapter I have articulated the implications of the conclusions of this research on the church in Cameroon in the areas of theology, ecclesiology and the liturgy.

249 Hillman, Toward an African Christianity, 75. 250 Uzukwu, A Listening Church, 62. 251 Ecclesia in Africa, 64.

Theologically, this chapter has bolstered the understanding of the ancestral cult and the theology of the communion of saints in Christianity. It has urged Cameroonians to emulate the exemplary life witness of the ancestors/saints in order to become saints themselves. Furthermore, the study has upheld the respect of human life from conception to natural death because life is a divine gift. Also, this chapter has indicated that this study can serve as a theological manual for students and researchers interested in a correlational study of ancestor veneration in Cameroon and the communion of saints in

Christianity.

From an ecclesiological perspective, the chapter has illustrated that inculturating the cult of ancestors in correlation to the communion of saints shall bring to pass the love, care and solidarity rooted in the synodal model of church-as-family of God in Cameroon.

It has also shown that the family ecclesiology of the first African synod is relevant in maintaining kin relations between the living and the living dead as well as in resolving the escalating social and ecclesial problems destabilizing the church and society in

Cameroon.

Liturgically, it has revealed that the enrolment and invocation of ancestors in the litany of the saints, the integration of ancestors in the Eucharist and the use of ancestors’ names at baptism shall bring about an authentic and participatory African Christian worship in which Cameroonians feel at home. Moreover, it has exposed some of the challenges asphyxiating the praxis of inculturation within the Cameroonian church and proffered recommendations for the courageous implementation of the theory and practice of inculturation as envisioned by the Second Vatican Council and Ecclesia in Africa.

In conclusion, I have built on the entire discussion and articulated how the practice of inculturation could bring about a Cameroonian Christianity that is truly

African and fully Christian. The general evaluation and conclusion of this research focused on the objectives and process, which informed the research and I have shown how inculturation is vital for effective evangelization in Cameroon.

General Conclusion

Early missionaries to the Central African nation of Cameroon dismissed fundamental cultural and religious practices of the people especially the cult of ancestors which they described as idolatry, animism, and fetishism and sought to replace it with the

Christian doctrine of the veneration of the saints. However, after over a century of

Christian evangelization, the church in Cameroon still experiences the enduring presence of ancestral veneration in the religious consciousness of Cameroonians who attend Mass on Sundays and still offer ritual sacrifices to their ancestors. This practice is indicative of the people’s deepest spiritual hunger to stay connected with their ancestors and maintain kinship relations beyond death. The church’s failure to either integrate Cameroonian cultural practices, especially the veneration of ancestors into Christian liturgy or allow for the creation of new local rites that incorporate the venerable ancestors triggered my interest in this research.

I set out to examine the cult of ancestors in Cameroon in correlation to the communion of saints and to articulate a pathway toward inculturating ancestral veneration in Christian liturgy. I asked the questions: what does Cameroonian cultural beliefs contribute to a better understanding of the communion of saints and vice versa?

What are the similarities and differences? What can be transposed and corrected with the light of the gospel or out rightly rejected? Using the correlational method of David Tracy,

I critically analysed both the theology and rituals around the communion of saints and the veneration of ancestors and articulated their differences and similarities. This has enabled me to establish that ancestors and Christian saints are both classic role models who led

93 94 heroic virtuous lives on earth, bequeathed a powerful legacy of life witness by the example of their character and are now contemplating the glories of heaven in the communion of saints in heaven from where they exercise the dual functions of protectors and mediators between God and humans.

Considering these compelling parallels and analogies between ancestors and

Christian saints, I argue that the ancestral cult with its deep spiritual density is compatible with the doctrine of the communion of saints and should be progressively recognized by the universal church as a fertile area for inculturation. The Church should favour the enrolment of ancestors in the canon of saints and their invocation in the litany of the saints. She should also integrate ancestors in the Eucharist and validate their invocation side by side the Christian saints in the context of the Eucharist. This will be a response to the recommendation of Ecclesia in Africa that, “in practice, and without any prejudice to the traditions proper to either the Latin or Eastern Church, inculturation of the liturgy, provided it does not change the essential elements, should be carried out so that the faithful can better understand and live liturgical celebrations."252 It will also be a response to the Cameroonian church’s quest for an authentic Cameroonian Christian identity that enables Cameroonians to become Christians and remain Africans.

In addition, the theological rehabilitation of the ancestors in the communion of saints will be significant in that the church will recognise the virtues and holiness of ancestors as well as their intercessory role as members of the triumphant church (in heaven), which is spiritually linked in a bond of unity and communion with the suffering church (in purgatory) and the militant church (on earth).

252 Ecclesia in Africa, 64.

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