The Renewal of the Parish in terms of Ecclesial Communion and Mission: Road to Proper Catechesis, Authentic Pastoral Care and Evangelization in Nigeria

Abstract

The consciousness of the Church as a communion of the people of God on mission as we have it today belongs to the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. From this ecclesiology, we learn that the Church exists to evangelize; a sensibility that was not rife until after the Council. However, to realize herself truly as an evangelizing entity, the Church has to be well-positioned by renewing herself in terms of the new ecclesiology. The idea of communion implies that the entire people of God has to precede the hierarchy in the order of ecclesiological importance and that benefits should no longer be disproportionately slanted in favor of the latter. That is why the renewal has to commence in the parish since it is therein that the people of God are concretely found. If the parish is the place where the people of God are concretely found, it means that efforts should be made within the context of the renewal to remove all the structures that promote diocese-centered mentality in order to allow parishes to function well as the preferred place for catechesis and other pastoral actions. The parish ought to become a community of praxis so that Christians can learn in practice and develop their charisms for the purpose of evangelization. Too much concentration of evangelical projects in the diocese at the expense of the parish can lead to “economy of exclusion” and exploitation. The idea of laboratory ecclesiology has to be developed so that it will be easy to provide employment opportunity for the youth, financially run the Church and reach out to the marginal persons.