The Eucharistic Church: Practicing the Impracticable

Executive development and education have proceeded on the basis of two developments as a result of shifts in government policy over the past two decades. The first is marketisation, the belief that marketplace ideology is best, and the belief that the private sector functions better and more rationally than the public sector. The second is performance, the belief that performance can be controlled. It is argued that these trends are myths that have developed into the performance cult. This paper argues that even knowing you cannot be in control doesn't stop you trying to be in control, but understanding what is happening enables us to stay active in negotiating our daily lives moment by moment.

2019

What does it mean to be Church?2 The question is, prima facie, easy to answer. Yet, many indices of monstrous misconceptions abound, indices of a crisis of ecclesiology in an era of strange religiosity. Is the Church a building, an arena or auditorium where magic and miracle do not appear to be different? Is the Church just any group of people who call themselves Christians praying? Is it an NGO run along ideological lines? Are her ministers prophets in the sense of fortune-tellers of diviners in African traditional religions? In the proliferation of "healing" and "deliverance" ministries, have we not become a Church where sacramentals have replaced sacraments, where water and oil manufactured and blessed by this particular priest are believed to be more efficacious than the water and oil of baptism? In the fashionable and extravagant religiosity of our time, is the Church not a "fellowship" without breaking of bread, parishes where attendance at prayer meetings is larger than Mass attendance? What, in the consciousness of contemporary Catholics in Nigeria, is the value of the sacrifice of thanksgiving that the eucharist is when, in our liturgies, right after communion, the priest and the assembly are invited to go to the back of the Church and dance to the altar for "special thanksgiving"? Does this "special thanksgiving-a practice which saw the light of day during the structural adjustment programme of the Babangida era-not suggest that there is a contradiction between what is taught in eucharistic doctrine and what is practiced in the liturgy? Is there any "special thanksgiving" greater than the eucharistic sacrifice, what Catholic theology calls the Church's greatest act of thanksgiving? Are we a healthy Church because of multiplication of religious communities whose members are dressed in exotic habits of many colours? Is our Church rightly described as vibrant simply because of enthusiastic but disfigured liturgies, liturgies disfigured by fundraising and entertainment, where dance and donation appear to be the two things that matter? The questions raised here underscore the compelling need for a renewed understanding of what it means to be Church. Attending to that need is the modest objective of this essay. In our quest for answers, it is right to assume that it is no longer news that the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council is described as an ecclesiology of communion. Despite divisions in the Church, and despite interpretations of the Council that are sometimes contradictory, at other times acrimonious, there is, at least, a wide consensus, if not unanimity 1 1

This paper explores the theme of human agency in the mission of God (Missio Dei), and the role of redeemed human agents (apostles, disciples, missionaries, pastors, evangelists) in that mission. The paper will pay particular attention to the quality of the lives of those who bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It will develop the argument that there is a necessary connection between the credibility and believability of the gospel being preached, and the credibility and believability of the life of the missionary/evangelist. A key element of my argument is that sanctity and saintliness are a necessary precondition in the life of the messenger. The life of the missioner – like Jesus their Master before them – has a threefold function in terms of being at one and the same moment messenger-message-working model of righteousness. The paper will engage with two contributions to this theme from the literature of mission and spirituality. The final section of the paper engages with a book I recently published on the topic. I will conclude by offering several implications for future action if we are to properly equip Christians for effective witness into the future. Argument and Definition of Key Terms In this paper, I want to propose that there is a direct correlation between the quality of the life of the gospel communicator, and the effectiveness of Christian witness. The messenger becomes a kind of living impresario (publicist, demonstrator, director, agent, maestro) for the Christian life, whose exemplary character acts as a kind of hermeneutical key to the gospel. The message they communicate to their audience, is interpreted in living technicolor by the words, actions, character and values which resides in their persons and

Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies, 2020

In the Republic Plato views the city as the human soul writ large, and by exploring the visible nature of the city he seeks to unravel the invisible mystery of the soul. Likewise, but in the inverse, this paper begins from a theological notion of personhood in order to provide a broad framework or an imaginative construct to conceive of Church unity. This framework will be formed in light of a relational notion of personhood inspired by Joseph Ratzinger. It will be argued that an ecclesial dimension is necessary for the fulfilment of what it means to be a human person, a being in relation; the Church manifests persons. As human persons exist in the midst of history it means that an important aspect of personhood also concerns how one interacts within the present. To interact, to participate, rightly requires right perception. Following Romano Guardini’s conception of personhood formed in tension, it will be contended that right perception, a proper harmony in this life, requires tension, a tension that only the Church can provide. Analogously, this paper suggests that the Church, East and West, will most flourish in a united tension, a coming together of difference rather than a complete dissolving of our respective distinctions.

Ecclesia semper reformanda'. Renewal and Reform beyond Polemics, 2019

Edited Proceedings

2005

Dialogue, 2003

In this article, I consider how recent work on the philosophy of group-agency and shared-agency can help us to understand what it is for a church to act in worship. I argue that to assess a model’s suitability for providing such an account, we must consider how well it handles cases of non-paradigm participants, such as those with autism spectrum disorder and young infants. I suggest that whilst a shared-agency model helps to clarify how individuals coordinate actions in cases of reading or singing liturgy, it does not handle non-paradigm cases well and so cannot be considered a suitable model of group liturgical action. Instead, I suggest that a model of groupagency, in which a plurality of action types can contribute to the actions of a group as a whole, is better suited to explaining a church’s actions in worship.

Modern Theology, 2000