ChristianMINISTERIUM Family in Africa – iAn Journthe Faceal ooff CovidContextual-19 Pandemic: Theology Challenges Vol. 6 (Dec. to Family 2020 )Communion 1-13 … CHRISTIAN FAMILY IN AFRICA IN THE FACE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CHALLENGES TO FAMILY COMMUNION AND WITNESS IN SOCIETY Michael Muonwe, Ph.D.1 E-mail: [email protected] Abstract One of the measures taken worldwide by governments against the spread of COVID- 19, and advocated for by the World Health Organization (WHO), was lockdown of cities, by which people were advised, and in most cases, made to stay, and possibly work from home. This represents a significant shift from the normal busy life of offices, shopping malls, schools, work places, churches, mosques, and synagogues, to the restricted space of home; from social, political, and religious gatherings to the seclusion of home; from physical proximity and relationship to social distancing, virtual relationship, and sometimes isolation. This made many families that hitherto had no time for one another stay and most probably work and share experiences together under one roof for long. This meant much for Africans who value family togetherness a lot. In this kind of situation, the family provided ample opportunity for more bonding and greater closeness. But it could also be a nightmare for some trouble-laden families who would ordinarily not wish to be together for too long, and those for whom going out for work provided some relief from tensions. Within this period too, many families experienced the hardship and pain from death of their loved ones, loss of jobs and sources of livelihood. This paper seeks to answer the question of how, in Africa, Christian family, understood theologically as domestic Church, could promote the human dignity, love, friendship, consolation, and ideals of togetherness of members at such a critical period. In fact, it seeks to reflect on the implications and challenges of COVID-19 pandemic to Christian family in Africa, how it was able, or should have been able, to live up to its obligations and expectations as domestic Church. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, Africa, family, domestic Church. Introduction One of the videos that made rounds in the social media in Nigeria at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, and which touched many deeply and kept them talking, was that of a father who refused to travel home with his son who returned from one of the worst-hit States in Nigeria. Despite pressures from people around, he blatantly declined, asking his son to isolate himself elsewhere 1 Michael Muonwe is an expert in Pastoral Theology and Religious Studies. He lectures in the Department of Religion and Human Relations, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. He is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Ekwulobia, Nigeria. 1 | P a g e MINISTERIUM – A Journal of Contextual Theology Vol. 6 (Dec. 2020) 1-13 for about two weeks before he could have anything to do with him. The father cited what he referred to as an expert advice to the effect that the virus had about two weeks of incubation before symptoms could begin to manifest. As the son followed him to join him in his car, he hurriedly started the engine and drove off. Here, we see paternal/filial bond in tension with the struggle for survival. The son wanted to go home with the father to stay with him, and possibly with other members of the family and enjoy their company. He may have missed them a lot, but the father did not allow whatever relationship he had with his son to interfere with his safety concerns and that of his entire family. He was worried that his son could be a carrier of the disease, and his coming home might put the life of his entire household in mortal danger. What seemed not to have been considered by the father was his son’s safety, especially with regard to where he could go for the two-week isolation experience. It is therefore clear that COVID-19 left in its trail a significant shift, and in some cases, subversion in our consanguineal relationships and the way we live it out in the modern African society. It disrupted the regular rhythm of life and activities across nations and regions. Family members, even couples, were sometimes afraid of one another and were being extra careful with the way they interacted to avoid contagion. Physical proximity was replaced by social distance. But the flipside of it was that it also made many who were distant from one another due to work-related engagements to be together. This paper examines the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Christian family in Africa, especially in the light of the theological understanding of Christian family as domestic Church. It reflects on the implications of this understanding and how it could help the family to bear effective witness to her calling amidst the dangers and challenges posed by the pandemic. It also investigates the strengths and weaknesses of Christian families as they faced this challenge, and how they could have possibly been of help to each other in cushioning its effects. Family as link between Church and Society Christian family, Church, and society are interrelated. The Church is often referred to as the family of God and Christian family as domestic Church. The Church comprises men, women, and children, whose longing for intimate relationship and union with the Lord brought them together from different families to worship as one large family of God – the family of families.2 The family is therefore constitutively and organically significant to the Church, 2 J. Trokan, “The Challenge of Ministry with a Family Perspective,” New Theology Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (1992): 27. 2 | P a g e Christian Family in Africa in the Face of Covid-19 Pandemic: Challenges to Family Communion… representing the Church’s foundational, germinal, or smallest cell,3 just as it is also the most basic and foundational institution of the human society.4 The different families that make up the Church have their distinctive features, charisms, and configurations that are galvanized together to enrich the Church. While some families have couples who are properly wedded, some remain unwedded with or without children; some are simply divorced; others are divorced and remarried; some are single parents with adopted children; others are widows and widowers; there are also families constituted by only orphaned children; etc. These differences are unified in the family of God, the Church, where they are expected to see themselves as one, sharing in the same faith in the risen Lord. Seen as one big family, members of the Church feel obliged by their distinctive calling to eschew all forms of racism, ethnocentrism, undue particularism, sexism, and segregations, in order to conform to the demands of their new identity in Christ. Christian family provides a link between Church and society, both of which are saddled with the responsibility over the spiritual and temporal aspects of the human person, respectively. According to Pope John Paul II, just as marriage, by its nature, transcends couples, so also does the family transcend individual households and is oriented towards the society.5 It is usually through the family that new life is born and introduced into the human society, thereby supplying society with human life that contributes to the society’s progress. The family helps to keep society together being “the first school of social virtues that every society needs.”6 It is also from the family that the human person approaches the Church to be reborn in the waters of baptism, and is thus cleansed of sin and prepared to be sent into the larger society for effective witness to his or her faith. The family is thus the fount of both Church and society. It is a gateway through which the Church enters the human society and through which the human society in turn enters the Church.7 3 Paul VI, Address to the Notre-Dame Teams, 4 May 1970, no. 8, cited in L. Alessio and H. Munos, Marriage and Family (Staten Island, NY: The Society of St. Paul, 1982), 29. 4 C. Onyeka Nwanunobi, African Social Institutions (Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press, 1992), 41. 5 John Paul II, Post-Synodal Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa, 14 September 1995, no. 85. 6 Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, no. 3. Hereafter, GS. 7 John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, 22 November 1981, no. 15. 3 | P a g e MINISTERIUM – A Journal of Contextual Theology Vol. 6 (Dec. 2020) 1-13 Collaboration between Church and Family Once baptised, the Church nurtures the faith of her members through the Word, the Sacraments, works of charity, and other practical forms of Christian witness within and without the community of faith. The family, on her part, helps to nourish and deepen this faith with her own charisms and specific mission. It is in the family that this faith, as Onwubiko states, becomes “rooted because it has become ‘home-made’.”8 Christian family can therefore be properly said to be domestic Church having realized in itself, the demands of its baptismal commitments and vocation,9 thus, allowing the Lord to accomplish his mission through her.10 Its mission as domestic Church is not to domesticate the Church, but to live the reality of the Church within its own context in such a way that both become, so to speak, extensions of each other. The Church should therefore be at the service of the family as much as the family is at the service of the Church.