Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - Bishop Hubert Bucher of the diocese of Bethlehem, South Africa, intervened on the second day of the Congress, 10 May with a paper on “Elements to reshape the identity of Fidei Donum priests” and “paths of formation”. The Bishop began by reflecting on the value of the Fidei Donum experience and whether this form of mission could eventually become e “the norm for the Church's missio ad gentes ”. “Religious orders and congregations and missionary institutes are recruiting new members en masse in the young Churches,- said Bishop Bucher -. With regard to missionary institutes, the latter feel certainly obliged to continue to pursue the goal for which they were founded. So Church leaders will continue to rely on them to direct missio ad gentes… Although I share the hope of seeing a new missionary era…I think we cannot close our eyes to the terrible fall in vocations to the priesthood and religious life which has struck the Church in the northern hemisphere in the fifty years since the promulgation of the encyclical Fidei Donum… of course there is a consoling reality: a rapid increase of vocations in most of the southern hemisphere, where the Church is most present with truly surprising figures in certain countries, especially on the continent of Africa. However it is not yet certain that this new flourishing of vocations will really lead a great number of diocesan priests in those countries to become enthusiastic Fidei Donum missionaries ad gentes…we can hope that with continual encouragement from the magisterium there will rise up in the younger Churches a new wave of enthusiastic Fidei Donum missionaries”, although this form will never become the norm for missio ad gentes in the future.”
After recalling certain points of the doctrine of Vatican II and Papal teaching on the Church's missionary activity, the Bishop of Bethlehem identified elements for restructuring formation programmes of future Fidei Donum priests. Since under many aspects the great expectations of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council have not yet been met, the Bishop spoke about the quality of formation in seminaries and centre of religious formation where, due to social and cultural changes in the past 40 years, we not the disappearance of a 'serious theology of the cross and sacrifice, not to mention ascetics. And the same has happened also in many religious congregations, leading in many cases to their almost total extinction. In this situation it is difficult to expect the Church to produce a great number of well formed missionaries". Our goal today should be “preserve whatever positive produced since the Council, in the Church in theology, eliminating those elements which were introduced by a distorted understanding of the “spirit of the Council”, and at the same time restore everything which was suppressed in the name of the same ‘spirit’.”
Bishop Bucher then considered three terms to be subjected to careful examination, “to give rise in the Church that missionary impulse which is one of its essential traits, but which, as Pope John Paul II admitted, is seriously weakened”. The three terms are: ecumenism, dialogue and inculturation. Among many observations in this regard the Bishop of Bethlehem mentioned “large numbers of ecclesial groups - to put it kindly, because many of them have barely a spark of Christian elements - proliferating in the countries of the young Churches, and which cannot be included among the “ principal churches”. In South Africa alone there are 6,000!” which demand adequate preparation on the part of future priests; “For the Church to rediscover her missionary zeal it will be absolutely necessary for our future missionaries -Fidei Donum or members of religious congregations and missionary institutes - while they make an effort in interreligious dialogue, they believe that the Church, a sacrament universal salvation has in God's plan an indispensable connection with the salvation of every human person”; “It will be necessary to introduce courses in social anthropology in our seminary programmes. This will help to analyse systems of native religious beliefs and compare the principal elements for example witchcraft. Ancestral cult - with the kerygma, as it has been handed down from the times of the Apostles. At least in Africa, social anthropology would in this was act as a sort of ancilla Theologiae”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 11/5/2007; righe 54, parole 762)
