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Catholic Theology in Bénin, Africa (Gaston Ogui)

Gaston Ogui
Association des Théologiens Catholiques du Bénin

To speak of God and to live in God in all the fibers of ones being has never been easy in any epoch. Our own time, paradoxically, characterized by unheard-of progress (such as, exceptional development of the means of communication, free circulation of persons and goods between countries, an ever-increasing effort to unify ontologically irreconcilable antagonisms, refinement of thought, globalization) and by wounds of every sort (for example, relativism, lack of security, violence, poverty, misery, sickness), needs more than any other time to define and to make precise its relationship to God and to humanity.

One of the major challenges facing theology in a small country like Bénin is the reconciliation of urgent needs of the moment with the cathartic ascesis, which frees the mind for theological thought that is culturally pertinent and universally credible.

Challenges to Theological Formation

Our first observation is that there exists a gap between pastoral reality and theological work in our country. In order to delimit better this observation and to propose paths for possible solutions, we intend to address this question in three steps: the bare facts, an analysis of them, then their consequences.

As to the bare facts, one observes that theological reflection appears reserved to a privileged minority class. The great mass of the faithful does not seem interested in theological discourse and products. In addition, theological formation remains confined within major seminaries, universities, or at best within associations of theologians. All of this only serves to confirm the perceived gap between pastoral reality and theology.

An analysis of these facts confronts one with a line of questioning. First, why does this state of affairs exist? It appears obvious that the loci theologici pose a problem. It is hard to delimit exactly the theological starting points for the theologians of our country, Bénin, in particular, and of Africa in general. In theological work, the place for the believing and praying community seems vacant.

Another question remains unsolved: who is the audience for theological work in Africa? Our theology does not seem to spring from the concrete experience of our believing and praying communities as this was the case for the first Christian communities. The African theologian seems to give himself or herself over to a reflexive exercise that remains outside the authentic expectations of the holy people.

This way of approaching and managing theological work makes equally obvious the fundamental problem of the identity of the theologian in relation to his or her communities of reference. One could even affirm that this state of affairs creates a sort of schizophrenia between theologians and the believing community from which they come. Their excessive conceptual and existential dependence on theologies of other cultures will not naturally favor a more autonomous and pertinent expression. In such an atmosphere, the system of theological education could only logically suffer. Amateur theologians often engage in this exercise only to fulfill relevant academic requirements and not always to foster a better understanding of their faith and of faith life.

As a consequence, it is important to redefine the objectives of theological reflection in order that there be a circularity between faith life and cognition. In this sense, it is the very methods of theological work that we will have to redefine. In this adventure, a theological asceticism must be, in our opinion, recommended. What we mean by a theological asceticism is nothing less than an effort to theologize that is stripped of all extraneous ambitions and pretensions. This is the best way for theological work to become the service of a concrete people a diakonia of a concrete community. In this case alone can theological work become a leaven in the dough of faith and of the expression of faith. This is also the best way for theological reflection to become a leaven similarly for the society in which the theologian lives. In the final instance, it is a matter of a theological conversion in which theological work will be rich in its cultural immersion and pertinence, all the while remaining open on to the universal.

Such a theological discourse converted into a language accessible to the Christian people will certainly be able to generate more enthusiasm for theological work. In order for it to become really fertile and existential, faith seeking its own intelligibility must demonstrate a spirit of initiative and of creativity. Why could one not reinforce the ambitions of the Association des des Théologiens Catholiques du Bénin (ATCB) by putting in each diocese study and research centers that could function as crucibles of theological thinking within each particular church? This supposes that the bishops themselves be more open and more committed to the theological work that must be grasped as a barometer of the faith within a given Christian people.

Social Challenges

The challenges in society extend to those met on the level of the educational system in matters of theological work. Indeed, it is a truism to affirm that today Africa is shot through with a difficult and pressing quest for meaning. While the profound historical trauma with which it is marked awaits to be scarred over, Africa is looking for itself in the midst of an identity crisis that is translated often into varied forms of small- and large-scale violence. Clan, tribal, and interethnic conflicts remain the most murderous of these forms of violence. The most painful thing is that the critical situation of misery, of political morass, of all sorts of dependence, etc. is unfortunately manipulated for ignoble ends by self-destructive powers that are either homegrown or projected from the outside.

Under this rubric, mondialisation or globalization, having been greeted in themselves as positive advantages for harmoniously bringing together individuals and institutions in a way that favors their flourishing, is today rather absorbed into totalitarian ideologies. These latter proceed by totalization and by the fragmentation of the weakest and most vulnerable groups. This fragmentation works by an active relativization of values and by a programmed erasure of reference points. The method here is known to all: institutions that still dare today to exalt these values are derided, made fragile, and destabilized. The example of the family remains, under this rubric, the most eloquent. As a consequence, people know that Africa overflows today with mistreated children, youths without futures, devour by the lure of easy gain.

In parallel to this situation, the fear inherited from cultural traditions of ancestral Africa, as in the persistent phenomenon of sorcery imaginary or real, continues to extend its ravages. The magic mentality that fosters and maintains it is favorable, in our day, to the flowering of all the forms of messianism of which contemporary Africa is the theater.[1] There even exist in our cultural traditions phenomena rightly or wrongly placed under the protection of religion and which would profit undeniably from being clarified. This is the case for all of these occult powers that sometimes serve for good, sometimes serve for ill. It is even affirmed, and this merits verification, that the Africans are capable of acting at will on atmospheric phenomena; they can, for example, provoke rain or drought. It is in this unexplored universe that sorcery seems to enjoy the most extensive powers. People attribute to it powers that transcend our creaturely state, like, for example, crossing thousands of kilometers in a fraction of a second, provoking at will a metamorphosis of human beings, acting at a distance on a determinate individual and on him or her alone.

The eternal question here is that of access to this power that, until now, has been more mysterious than knowledge. Arriving at the discovery of its functioning from the inside in order to open into the act of believing does not seem to be a superfluous exercise for an African in search of a more existential and more incarnate act of faith. There exist also multiple faces of the divine fashioned by a collective consciousness, and it would be hazardous to do without them if one wants to grasp reality as a whole.

The investigations of the complex universe of the vodun or the orisha (these entities are only particularized expressions of a religious fact that is itself common to all African peoples) have still born little fruit because they are confined to the epiphenomenon of realities dominated essentially by the arcane. This universe is the most apparent because it is precisely the most structured. These phenomena are structured according to facts that transcend their phenomenal dimension. It seems to us possible to orient our reflections here toward a realm beyond the vodun or orisha. What we name here a domain beyond the vodun is the reality sown in people by the Creator, who transcends the vodun itself and its adept. The domain beyond the vodun is the transcendental openness (K. Rahner) of the human being to his or her Creator. There is indeed in people something that transcends people. This something is the infinite space of a possibility for actions. When well managed, it opens us onto the Transcendant and makes us commune with its life. When ill managed, it closes us in on ourselves and cuts us off from real vertical and horizontal communion. When well managed, this something can be the place of personal, communal, and so ecclesial flourishing. When ill managed, it is the place of all forms of alienation and depersonalization.[2]

To this socio-religious challenge is added another that is much more social: the question of poverty, of misery, and of diverse endemic illnesses. It is true that our country, Bénin, is not very rich in mineral resources. It is, however, rich in its land and in its human resources. Unfortunately, these riches are badly used and managed. This backs us up against a poverty that is not only material but especially anthropological, to adopt here the words of Engelbert Mveng. This poverty is situated well beyond underdevelopment; it is rather what one would call the negation of the human element in human beings by the forces of oppression. As people know, there is not greater impoverishment than the one that strips human beings of their being. This process is extended to all spheres of life: culture, society, institutions, and politics. Strangers in their own land, without personality, the Beninois in particular and Africans in general inhabit one of the riches continents, but they remain the poorest and the most destitute of people.

This anthropological poverty becomes then a negation of the human being, created in the image of God and a brother of Jesus. An African reading of the Scriptures, in light of our concrete situation, will allow the establishment of a program of the restoration of the human person following Christ, in view of a theology of development oriented, for example, by the Beatitudes and liable to make of Africathis land of the poor, of the contempt for the human being, of oppression beyond measurea land of life and of hope. No one could contest the fact that health is an eloquent sign of the happiness that the Beninois seeks. And when people speak of illness, some think only of HIV/AIDS, which unfortunately is propagating at an alarming rate. But it is far from being the sole cause of mortality in Africa. It is not even the illness that wrecks the most havoc, at least among us in Bénin. The rate of mortality stemming from malaria, for example, is incommensurable with that stemming from HIV/AIDS.

But what especially makes the question of health inextricable among us in Bénin is its integration into the dimensions of the invisible as well as the visible, of the spiritual as well as the temporal; in sum, health and illness that negates it are referred to God, to the spirits, to the ancestors, and even to the living. Health is therefore not a private or individual affair to the extent that human beings know themselves to be involved in a network of interpersonal relations, as those who act and are acted upon at the same time in their quest for balance and flourishing. To the extent that health is not simply a psycho-somatic balance, but also a moral and spiritual balance, and especially a reestablishment of the covenant with God, with the spirits, and with humanity, health calls for theological reflection enlightened by research into African forms of medicine (in this case, herbal medicine).

The Church in African countries is also invited to reevaluate its subsidiary role with respect to the State. The crisis of the pertinence of our independent status, our increasing marginalization on the international level, the political implosion of our societies, our economic decline, and our intellectual stagnation challenges our Christian faith as it is lived and expressed. The inadequacy of Marxist as well as liberal political systems cause conflicts and famines: it urges us then to invent, on the African political scene, new counter-powers within which the Church can play the role of a vigilant guard as much on the existential as on the reflexive level.

Indeed, with the exception of the national conference in Niger, all the African national conferences have been presided over by churchmen; in fact by Catholic bishops, who have played a decisive role in the transition from totalitarian regimes to democratic ones. Is this not precisely the revenge of religion, tarred as opiate of the people in several African countries? This practice of national conferences shows the indissoluble link between the political and the sacred; then can one always continue to sacralize the airtight quality of the opposition between the spiritual and the temporal?

Ecclesial Challenges

It is important to underline at this point that theological research does not have an honored place among the ecclesial priorities of our country. People are theologians much more by mandate than by vocation. The managing of human resources also leaves something to be desired. Besides, both at the levels of confession and practice, faith is confronted in Africa with the thorny question of syncretism, a question born precisely of the previous patronizing of the cultic divinities mentioned above. There are phenomena that seem to gain power and that constitute points of interest and even of attraction for a good number of Catholic Christians.

In parallel with the socio-religious phenomena mentioned above, there exist in our day more obscure religious movements with a sectarian and/or esoteric character that are more complicated to delimit. And yet, these are precisely the movements that assuredly constitute the Areopagoi for the pastor and the theologian of this century.

The logic here is the same as at the level of the vodun or the orisha. People involved in these esoteric or sectarian movements are still the same creatures of God confronted with a single existential choice: either accept ones creatureliness and submit oneself to God by means of respect for his precepts, or rebel against God and refuse ones created condition. Latter option is the conquest of the position of a superhuman who often flaunts himself or herself as Gods rival. This is the most subtle form of atheism, which is religious in name only. It is thus in these diverse phenomena that the theologian must be interested today. But what is regrettable in these phenomena is that their positive aspects are too stained with ambiguity. Their intent is often too utilitarian. And this is what takes away from them the really teleological dimension that all true religion must include. This dimension is replaced by obscurantist and magical practices that remove from these phenomena all pertinence and credibility.

This is why the mission of the theologian could never limit itself here to separating the vodun from the magico-sorcerer (a task impossible to accomplish) or to purifying the underlying intentions of the neophenomena, but rather to gaining access to this common source from which the African person has drawn and continues to draw in view of an adult faith for a Church that is Family of God in a more authentic Africa that better flourishes. This common source is nothing else but the religious patrimony common to all people placed in the same cultural sphere.

When people are familiar with the active part taken by many religions in the fragmentation of the world and in the dire situations that result from it, it is difficult to prove that the religious phenomenon can be the place and the link of unity among peoples. And yet, religion, at least among us in Africa, far from being considered a perturbing phenomenon, is rather grasped, in its most profound essence, as a principle of cohesion and of unity. It is indeed a fact in our socio-religious traditions that no religion rejects another of any nature whatsoever. The vodun pantheon, for example, is essentially composed of divinities of the Yoruba pantheon. Even the cross of Jesus has its place in the heart of this pantheon.

One would think that there exists here an intuition that doubtlessly transcends the materiality of practices. The intuition here, it seems to us, is the tentative apprehension that everything that is a religious phenomenon must be referred to its true source: God, the principle and end of everything. In this matter, A. Ngindu Mushete asks himself a qustion that merits being recalled here: Could we not enrich our mind a little with this thick juice that circulates in their veins and at the same time bring to them the means to vivify it? And a little further on he suggests, Christianity must address this traditional stock with an open spirit, with the disposition to change it and to be changed by it.[3] 

Therefore, beyond the abusive manipulations of which it is often the object, the religious phenomenon referring back to the Principle of unity becomes itself the place in which people are called to have the experience of a community that becomes communion.[4]

At the moment when Africa is becoming more and more conscious of its religious unitysee, for example, the use of the singular in the expression African Traditional Religionin a time, too, of religious pluralism, it is more than urgent to appropriate for ourselves values that slumber in the religious phenomenon, for a more Christian Africa, an Africa more unified and more vivified (religion is taken here in its etymological meaning [religio] of religare and of relegere expressing at once the idea of a link with the Transcendent and of a rereading of experiences had with It).

Among the values that it is fitting to appropriate, a choice place should be granted to ethics and to the sacred (this word is used here in the double meaning of "Mysterium Tremendum" and of " Mysterium facinans," to take up again here two expressions dear to Rudolph Otto.[5] It is true that elsewhere these two realities are taking a beating today. All that is possible is declared to be permitted. There is no rule but effectiveness. In the name of an alleged liberty, people have lost all points of reference and limits. The sacred and every really religious act are considered by many as suspect. To declare oneself a Christian, for example, is to demonstrate a primitive or obscurantist mentality. This is the reign of individualism that is controlled by a practical or conceptual atheism. Obviously, such ideologies could only secrete disarray, depression, and even death in the short or the long run.

For us, it must not be so. In appropriating ourselves the ethic inherent in the religious phenomenon proper to our culture, we have a chance to take on a good number of challenges. Indeed, as much as all of nature obeys very precise laws, humanity is constrained to submit itself to an ethic worthy of this name. One need only think here of that philosophy that teaches in our religious traditions that the one who maintains true commerce with the divine could never authorize himself or herself to make a pact with the forces of evil, under pain of grave retaliation. The treatment inflicted on the body of experts of a divinity who are alleged to have profaned the sacred because they have disobeyed this ethic is expressed in more than one way. But the practices that disconcert us in these traditions, such as the penalties and sufferings inflicted on certain people within or outside of these groups, obey this ethic.

Alongside of the place granted to ethics and to the sacred, a privileged place must be granted also to marriage among the challenges facing theology in Africa today. It is, among us in Bénin, the least celebrated sacrament. It is that in truth Christian marriage meets with a lot of difficultiesthe end of marriage, the widespread practice of polygamy, and the challenges to the freedom and willingness of spouses. Marriage constitutes, in our ecclesial context, a compact and complex reality. A dynamic reflection on the African family, and a pastoral approach to polygamy, is desirable and can constitute a sure place for possibly defusing the wounds that are sources of gangrene in the sacrament of marriage and in its theology in Bénin.

Another challenge facing theology on the ecclesial plane is the question of financial autonomy. Indeed, the African Churches are today without large financial resources. Our young churches live artificially; they live off of "injections" of money and of personnel. Is this not here also what leads to the "injection" of theological thought, liturgical reforms, and pastoral organization external to the African reality?

The main income of our Churches comes from foreign subsidies and from organisms involved in development projects. Does not this dependence of the Churches of the South with respect to the Churches of the North constitute a danger for theological thought? In the best case, the money is perceived as a help for Churches of mission countries to structure themselves and to become adult; otherwise, it is perceived rather as a means of alienation, of intellectual pressure and even intellectual oppression. What is observed most frequently is that foreign help is grasped by some as the royal way to impose a one-dimensional model such as the North Atlantic model. It remains true that God alone gives without pressing down on the gift that he makes to people; but then, is it thinkable to hope that one day the help the Northern countries give to the Southern countries will be accomplished according to the model of Gods gift to people?

The theological task in Africa and particularly in Bénin is very promising; the boom of our Christian communities, the every-growing number of priestly and religious vocations, the plethora of those in our major seminaries, and especially clerics and lay people coming to an awareness of theological work are so many signs that allow one to hope for a better theological future for our people.

The challenges to be taken up, as we have seen, are immense; the good will of all joined with the advice and support of INSeCT already constitute for us sure places of encouragement of a fertile discourse about God that will help Bénin and Africa flourish. The constant concern of cultural pertinence, which is besides inseparable from the concern for openness to the universal, now finds in INSeCT a place to be effectuated and made concrete. The dream is therefore to be able to construct a theology liable to take on the challenges of the time without closing itself off within them because it is resolutely tending toward the future and toward catholicity.

 

Translation from the French by Joseph G. Mueller, S.J., Marquette University