On The Condition of Catholic Theology Today: Proposing Professor Hans Kuhn as the National Catholic Reporter’s Man Of The Year For 2012.

(Meditations on the implications of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception for the Church and the World)

By a special design of God our loving father, and through the practical commitment of Grand Pa Joachim and Grand Ma Ann to eternal goodness which their Judaistic faith professed, the Blessed Virgin Mary emerged blameless, flawless, sinless and spotless into the world in total willingness and readiness for the difficult but happy task that awaited her as a Co-redemptorist.

 Today, if for the fact of being the U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton could wield such powerful influence in the affairs of the nations of the world, then at this moment of the global crisis of identity and faith in the world, and as Nigeria battles with the twin evils of terrorism and corruption, this opportunity of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8, 2012) reminds  us all again of Fatima and invites us all to accord the Our Lady of Fatima and the  Queen / Patroness of Nigeria her proper place in the history of salvation.

And what is history save the manifest ideas, events and actions of creation placed under the leadership of man as it responds to God’s loving invitation to salvation. This is salvation history.

But then secular history is not anything different. Simply put, secular history is nothing more than when this response is expressed, positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously, in political, economic, social and philosophico-scientific categories of thought and actions. In all these, humanity is just saying “Yes” or “NO” to God.

And if today, history has got a lot to do with Records/Documentation, it behooves on us all, both Muslims and Christians, to cherish , appreciate and guard the place this woman occupies in the Church’s Liturgical Calendar in reference to today’s feast and others that pertain to her in the Roman Calendar.

Since God by-passed every protocol to accord her this honor in human history, it is equally important, to the point of martyrdom, to by-pass every protocol in other to appreciate this honor to her which, in itself, is also a gift to the Church, and an unmerited favor which every Catholic family shares in. At the same time, is a miracle of an extra-ordinary kind.

If the missionary compass of the Church has once again come to rest on re-evangelization of Europe and America, I strongly believe also, before now, it rested, perhaps not immediately perceived, on the superficiality of faith in the Northern African sub-region.

Thanks to God Blessed John Paul II started earlier to respond, even if tangentially, to the battle-cry in the battle field of faith warning specifically about the errors and murderous instincts of communist Russia.

For those of us from Africa, the experience and condition of North Africa are increasingly becoming worrisome, and must be incorporated into the larger question of re-evangelization.

Today, more than ever, the Fatima Message is, therefore – in the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary to me during our discussion at the grotto of the Queen of the Holy Rosary in front of the Chaplaincy, Catholic Institute of West Africa (CIWA), Rumuibekwe, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria precisely on May 13, 2012 at 2.30 a.m. – “an inescapable pain on the neck of the Holy Father and a very disturbing question on the conscience of the Roman Curia.”

At such historic moments in the journey through faith to God our loving father when Peter, the Sons of Zebedee and the doubting Thomas come to cross-roads like as it is happening now in respect of the clergy sex-abuse, Vatileaks, e.t.c, it would be ridiculous to accuse ecclesiastical office holders of Pharisaism, or, in the words of Mathew Fox, “ecclesiolatry”, or to assume that “the Vatican has become a vast museum”.

But then the rebuke of Peter by Our Lord and Master, the basic re-orientation programme which the Sons of Zebedee were compelled to undertake during their days at the Apostolic College and the shock received by the doubting Thomas when confronted with naked truth can never be lost to a heart and a mind that are eternally committed to fruitful contemplation of Divine love in the world.

 The finite cannot encompass the finite. This is simply the fact. And St Augustine was convinced that to venture beyond this point was merely foolish and incurably fundamentalistic. Unfortunately, he ended up being a victim of this arrangement.

Every attempt to disable and eclipse reason is pretentious and a crime against progress as well as an attack on revelation. But the requisite management of rationality and the prudent application of the products of reason are a gift which many do not possess and which they are not in a hurry to acquire even if it is given away without any price-tag.

The solemn truth about God is never captured by, but rather escapes the attention of the most intelligent of men and women who deride the faith whether these people are self-confessed Satanists or whether they choose to hide behind a cover – whatever cover that might be.

The Economic Trinity signifies the hub of and the outlay for practical Christianity, that is, the experiential aspect of Christianity.

The Economic Trinity is God as He gave Himself to us in the form of “uncreated grace” for the purpose of sharing in His “Being” (Divinity) in a manner that is radically experiential or decisively practical. And that this offer or gift of Godself referred to as “uncreated grace” in theological terms came after the fall underscores its character and the urgency attached to it as something intensely practical or experiential. The fatalism of Adam’s disobedience is that man lost “being” and thus became “non-being,” that is, a “non-entity or a nonentity or a “no-thing”, if you like. And by implication, the entire creation had lost its anchorage (man) because “Homousious” and “Ousia” had gone berserk, and adrift, just being blown about like a big balloon in the faculty of human understanding.

Apart from the brief Adam enjoyed while still in the Garden, and  without prejudice to the need and, of course, the challenge of appreciating the roles played by the messianic figures in Judaistic faith, the only real practical experience of God starts and ends with Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The whole of creation, including Judaistic faith, looked forward to him as its sole confirming factor. And every experience, idea, event and history that could be said to be authentic is fueled and sustained by him, consciously or consciously.

No one has seen God. No one knows God. The only God we have seen and known is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is a human being, and he holds all the superlatives of human existence yet “it is not like we have a high priest who has not passed through all we have passed through…” (Hebrews). But if we cannot be Jesus Christ because he is God, then the life and experience of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a model of the response which the call of God to salvation requires of us and the Church.

In other words, the incarnation is a “mini-Trinity,” or the “micro-chip of Divinity” or, simply put, a divine microchip into which the totality of Godhead is fully and exhaustively downloaded and given to man as a gift to be experienced. In this experience specially designed and packaged to be real and practical, man finds the compass, the road map and the navigational aids for his journey back to the garden of Eden, back to the circle of illumination, back to Being and finds re-immersion into the circle of illumination and into the Divine Absolute Mystery. This is the beatific vision.

God is these three: Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. A Trinity.

To be fully acquainted with the Father, one has got to know Jesus Christ in an event or atmosphere of freedom that is intensely experiential. Christianity is an experience, not just an ideology or a dogma which a handful of officially conscripted churchmen pass on from an older generation to a new age. And when we say Christianity, what is implied is not about colorful performance of ancient drama or faithful servicing of ancient monuments but rather somebody named “Jesus Christ”. And not just any Jesus Christ, as there are many who go by the name Jesus Christ and yet many more to come who will prefer to go by this name.

 The personality in question and the only one who constitutes  an issue for Catholic Theology is no one but Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of Mary; the Galilean who died in Jerusalem.

Galilee is a place where hearts and minds poured themselves out unreservedly in love for the Son of the Carpenter, eliciting faith and leading to the performance of mighty works. It is the home to the eleven apostles. This other person, Judas came from outside Galilee.

 But Jerusalem is the home of dogma and conservatism, eliciting and fuelling pharasaism and leading to the crucifixion.

Here in Jerusalem also - the Jerusalem of our time - those who are really drawn to Jesus in love and in faithful obedience to the Eternal Word which he is must wait for the resurrection which is the only real victory for every believer. And without the announcement and added experience of the Ressurrection, Penticost - the partaking of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil is not possible.

A prophet does not die outside of Jerusalem. In this case, every theology that is not confirmed in Jerusalem is just a smoke arising out of the chimney of disobedience because power is with Peter. And he holds the Keys.

Adam’s negligence and the travesty of this order achieved in the manner of God’s existence, is consciously or unconsciously, a fatal output of unbelief caused by an over-arching pretentious ambition that is captured in the term “disobedience” and one which has been created into a code in the dogma of the “Original Sin”.

There cannot be an authentic knowledge of God without Jesus Christ. And every authentic knowledge of Jesus Christ must begin by the appreciation of the person and role played by the Blessed Virgin. And for it to be complete, it must lead to a discovery of the role played by a “new Eve “and the position she occupies in the history of a new humanity. But the responsibility and credit is and solely goes to the new Adam, not to the new Eve.

And if there happens to be authentic knowledge of God somewhere, or that this knowledge is perceived to have occurred elsewhere, at least to a certain degree, and is different from our former assumption about the necessity of Christ in conceiving God, then that place should be positively bracketed off and approached with aggressive dialogue. This is an urgent function for Ecumenical Theology, and the only real content and focus of the Church’s missions in a world that is ruled by overlapping statements about freedom and democracy, justice and right, sovereignty and globalization, individuality and community, body and spirit, particularity and universality.

There may be Galilean Churches (vibrant Christian faith community), the Jerusalem Church (the Vatican), the Samaritan Churches (Europe and America) and the Pauline Communities (Asia); but in all, even though Jesus Christ did never set out to look for demons to cast out, He never permitted that the demons of sodomy, abortion, unbelief, hemorrhage, infertility, stubbornness, e.t.c constitute incapacitating clauses in the course of accomplishing his mission. He cast them out.

Every statement of theology must be derived from and lead back to the incarnation or the Economic Trinity, and must look up to the incarnation for its explanation and application.

The importation of theological statements and their constituent explanations from a sphere that is absolutely or infinitely a mystery is an event that translates to a lunatic excitement and an overburdening insult on human reason, and every suspicion raised against this is in order. This attitude has created absolute oligarchies in the Church; draconian impositions that have the trappings of the inquisition even after Vatican II Council has come and gone; fossilized and dry rubrics mistaken to be at the service of orthodoxy and a license permitting man to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil without first first of all partaking of the Tree of Life. This last factor has led to the admission and elevation of such men who have become deceived or possessed by and thus have been turned into instruments, accessories and agents of Lucifer to sensitive positions in the Church. Within the ranks and files of the Roman Curia, this statement holds huge concerns for the re-evangelization of Europe, America and North Africa.

In theological terms, “MAN” is seen, firstly, as a generic concept through which the real meaning of “Adam” and “Eve” came to evolve.

Adam and Eve are two equal necessary fingers willed and posited in creation by God himself as a condition for the possibility of his self-communication. That is, these terms together constitute a kind of podium or a platform upon which God can stand to interact with creation. This interaction is, in its right, a necessity and a condition for the sustainability and actualization of creation. These two fingers are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually inclusive factors in the definition of the term “man”. Their identity and roles are fully distinct and inescapably complimentary as well as interwoven but not in any way confusing and usurping. The application of the term “man” to the male mould is not a misnomer or usurpation but, secondarily, an effort at distinguishing these two from one another.

Analogically, we are in a better position to understand this generic concept in relation with the two natures in Christ. As the new Adam, Christ is fully and completely a man without reference to the New Eve. But a productive and functional humanity practically requires and cannot be what it is without a new Eve. If it is otherwise, then the historical Jesus Christ and the issue of his humanity are a ruse.

Adam, before the Fall, is the real shape and character of man without Original Sin.

Even without the Fall, the Incarnation was inevitable.

By the loving invitation extended to Adam to eat of the Tree of Life, and had that invitation not been honored in breach, man was consequently destined to become the Enfleshed Wisdom, or Enfleshed Word – the Logos-  breaking fully into humanity.

Man had been created into the image and likeness of God, and into the Beatific Vision as well as given the authority over the whole of creation. But without the Tree of Life, the full conscious awareness of what man is in his very depths, even though real, was beyond man who is made of finite intelligence.

The Tree of Life is God’s offer of himself, in freedom, to man to own and possess forever. It is given in freedom and must be received in freedom. But, in freedom, Man decided to choose differently and in opposition to this free offer of grace.

The “WORD” alone, offered as the Tree of Life, and no other, was the only thing capable of accomplishing this total awareness about the radical presence of God present to him and spell out his status as “Imago Dei” as well as help him to understand and accomplish the real contents of the Mastery to which he has been called over the entire creation.

The possession of this WORD or Enfleshed Wisdom is a condition for the possession and application of knowledge signified by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It is not true that God did not want Adam to be like unto him but that it was not yet time. There can be no true and authentic knowledge, before or after the Fall, without or outside of the Eternal Word. And “nature” is made and conditioned alone by this WORD and no other.  

God is not a God of method, yet he is a God of due process, a loving Father who has outlined the Ten Commandments as an instrument of order and discipline in the world. The Christian life may not have been outlined methodically, but at least, it is the will of God that order and discipline prevail.

 The Tree of Life forms a unity with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But in the order of experience, the former precedes the latter.

Simply put, a personal experience of Jesus Christ is a necessary condition for authentic knowledge of the divine Reality as imparted by the Holy Spirit. Without acquiescing to this fact about the Divine Wisdom, knowledge becomes threatening and satanic.

 The word of Satan, if taken, will surely and surely did corrupt “nature” irremediably, and opened man to a kind of knowledge that is in total opposition to God. By listening to the Devil and allowing himself to be ruled by the selfish instincts which were fed into and stirred in him by the Devil over and above a pre-existing divine order, in love, to the contrary, and for the basic reason that he could do this of his own freewill having been endowed with freedom – even if he did not know, was not told or that he remained in total ignorance about the existence of the Devil- Adam was responsible for the Fall.

 Permitting man to eat of the Tree of Life will amount to God giving himself – HIS WORD – over to be messed up and to be manipulated at unimaginable proportions by Satan who had now usurped the podium – nature – originally reserved for divine inhabitation. Thereat, on the podium provided by nature, evil would not only have multiplied and corrupted the entire edifice and structures of creation, it would have also – had man been allowed to go back to partake of the Tree of Life – usurped the entire abode of divinity using man as a point of contact. The expulsion was therefore necessary so as to forestall further damage.

Incarnation and Pentecost are two decisive moments in the revelation, manifestation and practical experience of God. They are realities that are not altered, not even conditioned nor affected by the Fall.

What the Fall accomplished was that man allowed himself to be deceived and be denied the opportunity for full divinization and for the Beatific Vision which realistically and practically stared him on the face at the Garden, and watched helplessly by virtue of his equivocative and subversive answer to God’s loving concern about his whereabouts as this denial was exacerbated and prolonged ad infinitum.

God created once and for all. And so, the idea of a second creation different from and opposed to the first is not sustainable. A remedied creation where, not just the hope, but the concrete possibility of that divinization is set in motion aggressively pursuant to actualization is the meaning of a new creation. And for creation to be what it is, the Incarnation and the Pentecost are very inescapable decisive moments – great moments of divine love at work in the world.

In the new creation, the Eucharist is the final condition of this Divine Love perpetually at work in the world through the other sacraments and the liturgical year. God is thus really and decisively present in the Eucharist specie revealing and offering himself to us as Word -the Eternal Word of Life. And we can only appreciate the real presence of God when we take a step further by a partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil but we must wait for it – at the Upper Room.

From here, I have come to understand the real meaning of Miracle. Miracle is the appreciation, in its totality, of the Word of God by the Holy Spirit who rules in the life of the beneficiary of the miracle itself. From Genesis to Revelation, scriptures have given vivid descriptions of the different miracles that have been performed having as their only source and sponsorship, the Eternal Word of Life. When this Word decided to venture into human history for the purpose of redemption, Jesus Christ is the face and shape this Word took. And to be and perpetually remain for us that which He is, that is, Immanuel, he took another important step further – the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is indeed a miracle of an unbroken continuity with the past, the present and the future. It started with the incarnation, rose to its peak at the events of the Paschal Mystery and was crowned at Pentecost. It is consummated at the beatific vision. Practically, it is nourishment for pilgrim humanity entrusted to the Church. Yet no one knows what it is and no one will be able to say what it is except we come to know it at the beatific vision – as it really is.

But here and now, the Eucharist is the reenactment of all the miracles that have ever happened, that are happening and that will ever happen so long as these miracles are effects of the word of God.

The Eucharist is the final shape and form Jesus Christ took as the perpetual presence of divine love at work in the world in a total and irrevocable donation of God-self to humanity through the Church. This is correct if it is true that the powerfully sustainable old Eucharistic theology is not a futile venture in philosophical naturalism. The Eucharist is the visible shape and form of Jesus Christ who is God as he remains and works with us by the power of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of transformation.

It is the decisively efficacious, irrevocable and comprehensive statement of facts by God himself about the perpetual presence of Jesus Christ as Divine Love at work in the world. The Church, through the Celibate Priesthood, even in its grossly incapacitated appearance, constitutes the mouth, hands, eyes, noses and ears of the Jesus Christ of our time on the one hand. On the other hand, the marriage institution in its most authentic form, symbolizes the power which holds the Church together as a family in an indissoluble union of mystical communion with God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Thus while national governments hold the will of the people on trust for them and exercise this power on their behalf, the Church holds the perpetual presence of Jesus Christ on trust for God and exercises this power in the world in total humility and unceasing repentance for the salvation of all peoples, races, gender and color.

It is therefore ridiculous for anybody, especially the professedly sons and daughters of the Church including those occupying the seats of national governments, to draw parallels between national governments/institutions and the Church, what more of forcing the Church to bow and surrender her divinely instituted resources, despite their scandalous but merely ephemeral flaws, to serve the interests of Satanism, executive rascality, international gangsterism, insipid plutocracy and terrorism.

 If the person of Jesus Christ is a final infallible statement of fact about the Divine Absolute Mystery which God is, and if something infallible and tangible can be said and in fact has been said about God by the very historical personality of Jesus Christ, then equally, an infallible statement of fact by the Magisterium is possible and necessary, and of course has been made and will always be made if it is at once proved and therefore established that the Church is the sacrament of Jesus Christ in the world.

With the Eucharist at the center of the Church’s life and mission, it becomes all the more illuminated why some ecumenical preponderances and liberal attitudes are still shut out from the borders of traditional (not conservatist) Catholicism.

The Church speaks fluently a divine language with a deeply grave human accent. In this way, some words that have been clearly pronounced by her have constantly become a subject of review by an expertly disguised subversive and equivocal voice of satanic predators. It is unfortunate that many believers have been helplessly caught up by such antics and held in bondage. This is the predicament that the LCWR has got to deal with in their quest for meaningful witnessing to the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Beyond the sex abuse scandals, the Celibate Priesthood stands. What Adam forfeited was restored in the Eucharist. At the last Supper, Jesus Christ got the table set and sat at the Eucharistic table as the Chief Celebrant (the Priest). Then he laid himself (symbolically) on the Eucharistic table and went to the Cross (Victim) to cause to happen that which is the will of the Father.

 It is embarrassing and unnecessary to spread raw blood and human flesh on the Altar table and invite people to cannibalism. But so long as blood was shed and body broken at the appropriate place – and since this was perfectly and irrevocably accomplished once and for all, and that there is the need to recall and make present (without subjecting the son of God again to excruciating agony and treachery in connivance with Satanists); and if the inexhaustible values and treasures merited for us by Jesus Christ at Calvary are readily but symbolically abundant under the specie of bread and wine, all to the delight and praise of God, then the law of Remembrance is a forceful legitimizing factor of the Real Presence.

 Between sincerely dedicated bishops and priests together with the powerful institutions of the Church, even in their weaknesses, God takes evil upon himself at the numerous Calvaries of our time symbolized by the Holy Masses validly offered at the different parts of the globe and burns it to nothing and reduces it to non entity – to total annihilation.

In encountering Jesus Christ of Nazareth, man discovers, embraces and lives in constant tangible communion with that God who has always presented himself initially in man’s experience as inescapable – the absolutely defining, unifying and underlying factor of all that exists and as that which is the answer to the question about man himself as well as an answer to all other questions of life.

Thus, while Jesus Christ is the shape, form or size – that is, the real identity and the only one - which God can take and which He has already taken, and therefore, no other identity or concrete manifestation of God is possible except in Jesus Christ of Nazareth even though one can admit some rays of the being of God in other places or persons, the Eucharist is the final irrevocable condition of God who is Jesus Christ and the logical conclusion of God’s gift of himself to man in the person and actions of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

St Augustine had forcefully asserted that where the Bishop is, there is the Church. But his inability to give an incarnational explanation to this statement and other statements of his in terms of (for instance, the celibate priesthood, the humanity of the Bishop, e.t.c.) has created gods out of men, saints out of unrepentant sinners, nationalists out of criminals, and has gone along to equally close and seal the door of knowledge with the seal of the 1^st Adam.

St. Augustine’s little friend actually pointed out the weight of the miracle achieved in the Eucharist – the whole ocean waters was emptied into a 10 liter gallon already filled with ordinary water, yet not a drop of the ocean waters nor that of the initial water that was already contained in the gallon was lost. Rather, there was a perfect blending of two types of water in one mold.

At the River, St Augustine met an angel in the form of a little boy who told him of the Immanent Trinity -God as he is in himself cannot be known because He is an unbounded bottomless ocean of Absolute Mystery.

But then the angel beckoned on Augustine to contemplate the Economic Trinity which, as the small hole signifies, is like an open window on the arcane walls of Absolute Mystery.

In that frustration hidden away in a naive and pardonable over-excitement about sin and guilt on the one hand, and about divine omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience on the other hand, St Augustine neglected to raise questions about the “hole” dug by the little boy, dismissing it as “something crazy”.

It was impossible for Augustine to attempt to grasp the whole truth about the Divine Absolute Mystery which God is. It was equally foolish for the little boy to attempt to empty the entire contents of the river into a small hole he had dug by the river bank. The little boy was a small fool as signified by his fruitless venture. But his foolishness was the foolishness of God about the Mystery of the Incarnation - an insult to the Jews and a folly for Greeks.

Like James Hardly Chase would say, when the gods close the door, they open the window for those who are witty enough to discover it. That open window was what the angel who took the form of the little foolish boy was showing to St Augustine, former Catholic Archbishop of Hippo. But as far as St Augustine was concerned, the Door of divinity was considered closed with total finality. And rightly so.

The Cross is really a scandal with a remediable nullity, and that is, if the rationalists and modernists are able to establish that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was not the Son of God but an imposter. That’s the way of all imposters, after all, and there is nothing surprising about it. But if he is – and, of course, he is – then the Incarnation, not the Cross - is at once, the greatest scandal or foolishness and the greatest miracle. It is most unfortunate that, perhaps unconsciously, Augustine overlooked the need to engage the foolishness of God. This is also the story of Fatima.

But the foolishness of God is greater than the highest gem of human wisdom..

 And unless you become like this little child, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

What was very impossible for man to achieve and possess through his intelligence– conceiving and grasping the whole reality of Godself- God gave to him in a very miraculous way as “GIFT”.

Man, at his best, is incapable of knowing God.

However, right there at the circle of divine illumination of the Divine Absolute Mystery where a little boy was lost and relaxed in the full embrace of the father’s love, Augustine was also led to, by hand, the fullest encounter with God and is as well tasked to receive and make concrete the being of God and the practical implications of the manner of God’s existence for the church and for the human family.

From here, and by virtue of his righteous contemplation and involvement with the Immanent Trinity at the risk of the total neglect of the Economic Trinity, Augustine returned to the entire creation with the disappointing news that God is Absolute Mystery.

The infinite absolute mystery was fully accommodated, without a remainder, and without any confusion, in the human person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. That Miracle started at the Garden by virtue of the invitation given to Adam to partake of the Tree of Life. And Eve, going by the name of the Tree of Life, knew exactly the very content of that tree but she allowed herself to be deceived simply because she, out her own volition, chose to say “NO” to God. But with the “FIAT” uttered by Mary, the Miracle of the Tree of Life was re-enacted. This is the story of the incarnation.

It was this miracle – this special divine innovation, that is, the Economic Trinity, not the Immanent Trinity – that beckoned on St Augustine. Unfortunately, Augustine refused to have anything to do with foolishness - the foolishness of God. Instead, by inductive and deductive reasoning sustained by a faith that inclined more on fundamentalism, than by a strong faith sustained by critical reason, St Augustine fashioned out and managed to extract from  his experience about the Immanent Trinity, albeit with great obscurities, the bricks and  structures of traditional theology. God was depicted as a King, an Emperor, and a Mighty Warrior – an Autocracy rather than as a Father in the Trinitarian family.

From the opposing side, the story is not anything edifying.

 Kant dismissed the concept of God as defined by Nicea and which was sustained by the Capadocean innovation about the Dogma of the Holy Trinity  and by St Thomas Aquinas as ‘mere figment of imagination’ thus compelling Martin Heideggar to inaugurate a search for whatever Philosophy called “BEING”. And with a method that got him perpetually entrenched in the preliminary questions about “Dasein” as a condition for a general statement about “BEING/GOD”, Martin Heideggar helped to bury finally the whole corpus of Ontology alive. Describing this burial of Ontology, Marechal accused Martin Heideggar of the ‘forgetfulness of Being”. And with this burial also, Christian Ontology was reduced to mere existentialist humanism and Psychology.

Attempts to remedy this dualism in Catholic theology by going back to the Capadocean innovation about Substance (Homoousious and Ousia) have not been successful. The world detests Mystery or the Abstract but, consciously or unconsciously, continues to immerse itself every day into the depth of absolute mystery

Today, as technological breakthroughs impact some measure of authority, power and responsibility on people, and as contemporary man battles to close the gap between faith and praxis, a number of questions and issues as varied as these are, have managed to put an abrasive strain on historical objectivism. And as time runs its course, thus bringing about a new understanding of and awareness about history, freedom and responsibility, these questions and issues legitimately acquire some urgency with regard to praxis.

The political, economic and social situation of Africa as well as the security situation of the international community come under review and thus chart a new course of action for Theology.

And if a politician or scientist or a psychologist e.t.c. can speak about this situation and expect to be heard, then a theologian must speak the word to the situation with power and authority. And concerning the word, what is written is written. And it is finished. 

If Jesus Christ is God’s final and irrevocable word which he has spoken to fallen humanity, and if by faith we understand that this word alone is the answer to the question which man is unto himself and, indeed the answer to every problem of and question about life itself, then the Church must have this word ready for every situation of fallen humanity and must speak the word authoritatively and cannot fail to speak authentically and responsibly despite the risks, shame, the scandals, the embarrassments and rejection that stare  her directly at the face, unless she has failed to appreciate the real value of the cross.

 Responsibility for the word is first of all a function of the Magisterium. The Scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Code of Canon Law exonerate the Church, specifically the Magisterium from any blame in the event of an unconscious neglect of this function. Nevertheless a conscious abuse of the power of the Magisterium or a deployment of this power to selfish ends or to uses that violate the nature of the Church and the deposit of faith by any member of the Magisterium is also a conscious fatal stab directly on the heart of freedom.

Today, principles of diplomacy are acquiring new modes with simple statements as “it is better to quarrel with the enemy in his own bedroom than to exchange a cup of beer with him in your own sitting room’. In practical working terms, this implies that defense depends much on the wealth of information one is able to deny the enemy about the facts of one’s own security and the much information one is able to force out of the enemy albeit by any means, not excluding some form of arms twisting.

Such statements like the one referred to above provide the under-pinning and defining issues in diplomatic involvements and thus guide the major thrusts of foreign policies of many independent nations and institutions. And with the members of the World Union sitting on the seats of national governments, world institutions and multi-national co-operations, and having managed to find a comfortable accommodation and acceptance among some cardinals, bishops, priests and, monumentally in the pious organizations like Opus Dei and the Knighthood, one is no longer keen to doubt or ignore the force of the speculations and fears of Zionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Christian sects, even in their own eccentricity, bias, frustrations and grossly deformed insinuations, that the Papacy is the Anti – Christ.

Even as one is entirely convinced on the veracity of the opposite, the need to search the different corners of the edifice which houses the fundamental deposits of our faith is a strangulating one. In the presence of this need, on the one hand, and the seductively subtle but very powerful weapons employed by Satan hiding behind the World Union on the other hand, such insinuations which have acquired wings and legs today do raise critical, urgent and inescapable questions for Vatican even in connection with the sex abuse scandals.

For obvious reasons, these questions confront, first and foremost, the person of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, and mercilessly place an irrepressible task on his sincerity and commitment to the person and mission of Jesus Christ in the Universal Church generally and in the local Churches in particular.

Or are we to rest on the presumption or calm assumption that the concept of the Universal Church has been long overtaken and replaced by that of Universal Brotherhood – a kind of functional religious socialism. In this case, rather than throwing pebbles against sincerely dedicated but unguarded theologians like Professor Hans Kuhn (President and founder of Global Ethic Foundation) and the liberation theologians of Latin America, the Holy Office should be re-engaged.

That the person of Jesus Christ is the decisive, radical and irrevocable self – communication of the Divine Absolute Mystery which God is in himself, and that Jesus Christ is a historically tangible human personality, seen, touched and heard, as it were, by many people of his time means that universal statements of fact which can be considered decisive, irrevocable, final and universally binding about God can be, and in fact, have been made. The scriptures especially the gospels hold a bundle of these complementary, though oftentimes, seemingly contradictory statements. That the original Christian community was founded on the Rock which Jesus Christ is as its visible Head; and that this community is one that is open to growth and development; and that in truth, growth and development have occurred in leaps and bounds, evolving over the centuries, of course not without the attendant problems associated with these, give room for a resilient articulation of the reality of God and the community’s objective experience of him into a functional, protective and preservative mould which has a significance for future generations.

To deny the statements which solemnly hold, protect and preserve the originality of the events of God as set forth in Jesus Christ the character of infallibility is to leave them at the mercy of theorizers and predators that often times are constituted at their subconscious depths by atheism and Satanism. Does this not present us with an insight into the origin and development of dogmatic statements?

It must be reasoned that the event of the incarnation is a divine invitation to a sincere and necessary appreciation, appropriation, contemplation and articulation of the Being of God in an authentic human language, and to apply this concretely to the human condition while at the sametime protecting, preserving for and transmitting it to future generations. This is a necessary function for tradition as signified by the Magisterium – one which involves a discerning observation of the interactive actions of permanence and change, objective experience and subjective one, form and matter, substance and accidents as well as the tensions that brew up in the course of these interactions.

The priesthood is about absolute and irrevocable service to the final condition of the Divine Ucadia (Economic Trinity) in the flesh under the species of bread and wine while the religious life is about absolute and irrevocable companionship to this Divine Ucadia. No authentic charity, no matter its magnitude or the measure of miracle attributable to it, can contradict God - at least, the much that has been revealed to us in the Economic Trinity. It serves the LCWR better if her members can condescend to and take  this truth to heart.

There are many beautiful/handsome, lovely, respectful and responsible girls or boys out there, struggling it out for themselves and on behalf of others. They are the best that can happen to anyone who meets them in one’s search for a marriage partner. But there is no way a man destined to the priesthood can make a marriage commitment. The journey ahead is risky and demands every other thing else so much so that there is nothing to spare, nothing to leave behind and no other promise to leave with any person save the gift of salvation. Emotions and sentiments may be there, and high - wild and very tempting passions that refuse to go away but once the deed – the Sacred Deed is done, it is finished.

Nevertheless, the symbol of Mary Magdalene turned out to be a re-occurring decimal in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. From one angle, it is God at total condensation and altruistic conviviality with regard to man’s categorical situation of depravity, that is, man in the fullest condition of total estrangement or alienation – the final condition or the worst of place where no man was expected to visit but yet, the real place where man actually visited and got stuck, and was eventually decreed to die. But all of a sudden, Jesus came, and offered love – purest, perfect, uncontaminated, irrevocable, productive love - with a guarantee and without any price tag attached. It was exactly what Mary Magdalene had been searching for, perhaps unconsciously, in her dealings with men, and one which, having been severally defrauded by fellow humans and having proved so illusive, she had tried to quantify and collect in cash in exchange for herself.

But this man, unlike every other person, offered it to her free of charge and with a guarantee. Unbelievable! Really! But that was it. And she jumped upon the opportunity. Martha actually had what Mary wanted but Martha never ever knew what her sister ever wanted. Or, would it be the manner of approach? Whichever way, Martha failed to explain the meaning of Divine Love to her younger sister, and Mary never understood it from her either.  And when Martha saw the sister trying to grasp this love in its entirety- that which she had ever wanted, with the accompanying embarrassment, Martha approached her again with that original disapproving disposition so as to stop Mary from disgracing and bringing shame to the family by the very act of seduction and harlotry for which she is well known. As far as Martha was concerned, Mary was free to source her customers from anywhere but surely not the man of God. And to distract Mary from placing such a despicable act in harlotry and save Jesus himself from falling into sin, Martha became a diplomat.

Martha went to look for her sister in the world of harlotry. But Mary was somewhere else – in a brief visit to the home of the man whom she hopes to spend the rest of her life with in eternity. She was willing to let go off everything. Equally, she was open and ready to accept everything from her lover so much so that, had Jesus not been a perfect man, the love of Mary Magdalene could have put him into trouble, yet it did not stop the gossips coming torrentially and crystallizing into a book – The Da Vinci Code.

But there are levels of consciousness. Jesus is the “Absolute Divine Consciousness in Eternal Communion of Irrevocable Love” – the Economic Trinity. And having discovered this, Mary allowed herself –her will, her actions and her expectations - be lost entirely and enveloped in that of her lover.

Mary was never distracted by these petty-gossips. She had dined and wined with the rich and mighty. She had spent the many years of her life studying the ceilings of sordid hotel bedrooms while any man with money grunted away in debauchery on top of her. And she had struggled to cover up the rottenness that oozed out of her life by going for the best of perfumes until this man came. She let go off worldly beauty – her blond hair and figure, so as to make room for the eternal beauty and goodness, as well as the unity it promises for the broken pieces of her life. She had been in hell and was about to be laid to the grave, never to wake up to life again. But here she had found life.

When he met the real Man – Jesus Christ- she saw and identified the gold, the dove, the eagle, the diamonds and the roses she had searched and yearned for all her life and for which she had sold herself without getting an inch near to clinching it. I am not told anywhere that Mary Magdalene, for the purpose of convenience in getting herself attuned to the import of her commitment to her lover - undertook to redefine the concept of harlotry and demonism to the point of seeking for ways and means of getting these grafted into the corpus of the ministry of Jesus Christ, her closeness to Jesus notwithstanding. In this regard, it is safer to assume that the LCWR is setting the wrong precedents.

The effort or struggle to occupy a space or be accommodated within the schemes or platforms provided for the appreciation and management of multitudes of interests, even as this general framework constitutes the defining factor and overriding input of organized and progressive society, may not locally exhaust the very contents of politics, but surely, it does allay the anxiety associated with the attempt to discern the real meaning of political action.

At it is always the case in every struggle, tensions are generated, re-alignments become inevitable, violent eruptions tend to usurp the place of dialogue and issues formerly considered as settled become once more targets of rash reviews, leading, as it were, to the evolution of a new kind of identify that is at once volatile and amorphous. And except when it is expertly managed, a volatile and an amorphous identity typifies, I am persuaded to believe, a very sore spot in evolutionary history and tragic moment in the course of human development.

All possible explanations for the seeming change in the behavior whether of contracts, agreements or treaties necessarily become all of a sudden, confiscating, and characteristically irredentist when they imperil human development and when they attempt to disable the organic factors that make this development possible - factors like human rights, freedom, justice and democracy.

Asymmetric religious contracts, especially ones in which the name of God is evoked, must always necessarily permit that their terms, behaviors and destination pass through the prisms of religious freedom and be accommodated in a referential framework of faith and justice. The neglect by religious bodies and secular institutions to come to terms with this antidote of institutional organization (or behavior) has created a crisis of indentify too volatile and amorphous that has taken the Catholic Church away from the path of growth and development and pushed her to the border line of fascism where the dogmas are now depicted as fossilized granules of irredentism and globalized artworks of antique monadism. This is the fatalism that has been allowed to eclipse the catholic identity, not by those considered to be enemies of the hierarchy but by, perhaps, an unconscious ambitious expedition into malignant clericalism and pretentious collaboration.

The Church cannot shy away from the necessary re-alignments and needful alignments that consistently make genuine demands upon her experience as one culture in the midst of others.

However, whether in terms of spirituality or social action, a theologian must learn to relate to the Holy See and to the security of our common patrimony as one family of Abraham with orthodox lenses.

The U.S.A. is already on the fast lane to anathema. And the significance of this prodigality is not lost to the Church on a mission of liberation. But does the church have the capacity to catch-up with the U.S. and impress on her the need to make a u-turn?

While the huge resources of the Church could be deployed to this end with greater ease, skeptics muse on the possibility of human elements – exactly the type that are holding the Vatican hostage now- turning this exercise into a ruse, then to a compromise, then finally to an alliance leading to the formation of a super-movement, or at best, a super- NGO when some crispy dollar bills exchange ownership via the tithe box, thereby re-designing the focus of the new movement and moving it away from real Christ-work. In this way, the road to anathema can also be decorated with signposts that can only describe the way to heaven but cannot urge anyone to risk a step-forward, and cogent reasons proposed on why the original debate about a necessary u-turn from anathema can no longer be sustained.

The Church can still have her way with Barack Obama who is a black man. Of course, John Paul II’s pontificate talked about the hope of the Church being in Africa and in the 3^rd World Countries.

Barack Obama is the grandson of a peasant Kenyan farmer, or something very close to this. The understanding and support of every member of the Catholic Church, both active and passive members as well as the offended and offending ones, is very crucial in winning the war which global Satanism has waged against God and humanity.

Also the forgiveness of those who have been shortchanged by some vulgar ecclesiastics and institutional idiosyncrasies is considered highly resourceful in dealing with the problem at hand with reference to the Vatileaks.

Surely, some agents and agencies from the Axis of Evil are closing down on the inviolate truth and freedom that define our humanity. In collaboration with other major religions especially moderate Islam, other Christian denominations must lend their voice to Vatican in order to adequately confront this upsurge of global Satanism.  It is this serious.

And it compels Barrack Obama to rethink his Africanness in a way that cannot afford to ignore the inescapability of the human need for God and the attendant factor of responsibility.

The Vatican has always lived at the far end of suspicion. But events have proved to be different and probing within the past decades. Presently, these events look up expectantly to and exhaustively task Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State on what the Church’s definition of transparency means in practical terms.

Giving the intensity of the damage already done by the event of sex abuse by the clergy and against the imploding scandal that is designed to be the outcome of the Vatileaks, the Heavens are strongly convinced that somebody inside the Vatican is being compelled to honor an agreement. If the person yields to the demands upon him, then the real victim is Benedict XVI. And the beneficiary of the encoded tragedy is the Holy See with untold damage done to the credibility of the Universal Church and the faith of the commoners.

I am strongly persuaded to believe and I am convinced that the resignation of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone will effect a major disconnection between the traducers of the Vatican heritage and the sauntering goals they have set out to accomplish.

Through some pioneering contrivances and conundrumic extrusions provided deliriously on volatile diplomatic platform, Africa is made to supply not only the resources that facilitate the growth, development and stability of Europe/America, but also the raw blood upon which global Masonic beasts feed on. While the IMF, World Bank, multinationals, etc are compulsorily saddled with the responsibility of satirically translating these demands into concrete terms and legitimizing them, the subtly sponsored violent ethnic, political and religious wars/clashes serve as arcane pipelines that supply raw blood used to oil the discredited wheels of fascist movements that parade in the guise of political parties in Africa and to quench the insatiable appetites of political marauders for power and blood.

 As it stands now, Europe/America, acting individually or through the agency of the U.N., lacks the navigational tools and diplomatic will that are necessary to bring Africa out of her tripartite incarceration which boarders mainly on security, politics and economics. It was this kind of diplomatic prodding especially in their eccentricity that Mahatma Gandhi was proactively attending to when he decided to remold the prisms of foreign policy in India before he was gruesomely murdered by some of his bestial countrymen. Today in Nigeria and across the continent, every effort must be made to place this kind of betrayal where it properly belongs to -an abysmally intolerable perversion.

Yet, this does not settle the question of Nigerian nay, African growth and development vis-a-vis the hostility of global actors and the towering insincerity that governs the attitude of her leaders. This concern has become a topical issue given the place Nigeria occupies in Africa and significantly, as 2015 approaches.

Mohammed Haruna, a back cover columnist in one of the Nigerian dailies THE NATION, Wed. September 8, 2010 re-examined the significance of two surveys done about the inevitable war between the West and Islam and published by the Economist with the titles “in the name of God” and “The next war, they say…” respectively.

Significantly, Haruna noted that the second survey was published after 9/11. According to him, Dr. Rewan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Head of the Church of England said in effect that the way the West has tried to corner the world’s resources and to impose its ways on on the rest of the world is to blame for the rise of radical Islam.

 It is possible, the Archbishop was quoted, to eliminate the one, two or even 1000 terrorists, but if you don't go to the cause of terrorism you will never eradicate the phenomenon. And the causes are political, economic and cultural... Not only the United States but the entire West should make an examination of its conscience of how they oppress the rest of the world.

Then Haruna, like the Archbishop, stumbled on the most significant fact that inescapably relate to the two sides of the debate when he introduced Samuel Huntington into the picture. A world of clashing civilizations, writes Huntington, is inevitably a world of double standard: people apply one standard to their kin-countries, and a different standard to others."

The entire review by Haruna also reminds one of a novelist's indictments of the Vatican on the death of John Paul I in 1978 in a novel titled "In God's Name". That novel, I strongly believe, lacks facts and evidences, and seems to hold some unappealing agenda underneath its dirty armpit but then - the truth must be told- it raises questions for the Vatican conscience.

The soul of a nation is the conscience of her own people. I am convinced that the undying will of the people is the soul of democracy. And that democracy acquires an additional force and significance far above and beyond politics when that will belongs to a poor and oppressed people. Whether expressed through votes, or through strikes, or through a revolutionary action, the undying will of the people is the underlining, defining and legitimizing factor of the machinery of government. A focused and determined leadership which is surrendered unreservedly to the service of the people's will is the nucleus of every political activity. Nevertheless, I am forced to admit that the people's will can only be validated on the basis of it being a branded product of living consciences, and not of beasts under the cover of human skin.

The religious and ethnic sentiments introduced by PDP into the mainstream of Nigerian politics are not intended to reflect in any way nor advance the interests of the Church and the Vatican. It is rather a perfectly designed but disguised commitment, expressed equivocally in religious and ethnic sentiments, to Freemason through P2 (a secret satanic cult in the Vatican) and Ogboni Fraternity (the faceless Cabal in Nigeria) in an effort to subvert the people’s will and the Church’s mission pursuant to the Masonic project to install an anti-Christ as the next Pope in the event of the next conclave.

For the Igbo race, it is a consciously induced flight into obduracy and Satanism.

For a Church that can boast of courageous men like John Cardinal Onaikan, resolutely focused minds like Benedict XVI and late John Paul II, a rich tradition of total commitment to Social Justice and singularly, a custodian of a Eucharistic faith and Marian sanctity, the effort fuelled by greed and selfish ambition among the members of the Knighthood of St. Mulumba to recycle  terrorists and expired old tyrants for the presidency and for political offices in the country raises a strong suspicion about the Church’s honest commitment to global security, national integration and the dignity of the human person. To this point, why has the CBCN been tight-lipped about the monumental, conscious and influential involvement of the Knighthood in occultism, terrorism and Satanism?

Could this be an introduction of a fifth gospel on the Nigerian ecclesiastical horizon? And what, may I ask, is the content of this Fifth Gospel?

The great concordance which runs like an antiphon through the pages of the gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke, and reaching a crescendo in the theological treatises of John before finally dissolving into the book of the Acts of the Apostles and the early Epistles do not leave anyone in doubt about the congenial disposition of these inspired authors regarding the mission and unity of purpose which governed the Apostolic College about the person and mission of Jesus Christ, and the methods he employed in this regard. The Church as it is today with a population of about 1.2 billion people, had already existed as a microcosm in the pages of these books. The late but symbolic vocation of Paul in the gentile territory may have introduced a hiatus into the entire process, but it is evidently clear that it could boast of no ulterior motive other than a heuristic denouement of Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and man. That John Paul II wrote and dedicated his encyclical “Dominus Iesus” to this subject is an indication that the Church has not departed from this position. Within the time bracket which these inspired authors functioned is found the greatest repository of facts about the person and mission of Jesus Christ. And, of course, outside of the person and mission of Jesus Christ, no authentic knowledge and experience of God is possible. Whatever came before or after is just a mere co-efficient. In this regard, the faith of the Church is historical. This faith is the force that pierces the womb of time, impregnates every event, tests the fertility of ideas and achieves the resolution and harmonization of necessary contradictions. Against this loud drumbeat of the Church’s faith, no contrary position can be advanced save perhaps the bias, frustrations and commandeered sentimentalism that might arise at the back yard of a traitor like Judas Iscariot who, spurred by un-audited applause and propelled by a reprobate ambition, remained adamant to the loving invitation unto true discipleship even after Jesus Christ offered him, free of charge and with a guarantee, the power and love of God through the Eucharist.

In total repudiation of a renegade’s assumption of a Fifth Gospel purportedly written by Judas which is held by Freemason to be the most balanced account of Jesus’ life and ministry, and which provides the foundations for Masonic creed, code and conduct as well as the rites and rituals of Satanic worship developed by Albert Pike, it is very important to authoritatively assert that Judas hung himself out of frustrations, and died with a strong rebuke against betrayal and treason which divine wrath placed on his accursed personality. A Judas, whether this wear the regalia of a cardinal, a bishop, a General Overseer or a Knight, has nothing to offer except wild rumours and petty gossips – checcorroci – which are of course “spread by idiots, accepted by the ignorant and believed by fools”. And so I dare to raise the question and with a corner of my eyes fixed on the “Da Vinci Code”, where does one find a copy of a Fifth Gospel?

One of the greatest discoveries I have come to make is that, despite their wealth, connections, degree of exposition, level of education, intelligence and knowledge, most people live their lives on rumors and build their so-called tested convictions on total self-deception in their bid to run away from the inescapable demands of love and freedom.

Freemason tasks the world to unreservedly subscribe to freedom while it means and offers only slavery; to surrender to a democracy, while it means and offers dictatorship; to defend the faith while it means and offers Satanism; and to erect structures of security, while it means and offers terrorism. By the disguise, equivocation and subversion employed to execute its agenda in the world, many good people, races, ethnicities, churches, Islamic communities, institutions, etc, are sleeping comfortably on “mattresses of maggots” and are covered with “blankets of worms”.

While a Constitution Review Conference, independent of government interference will evolve effective combatant instruments of conferment of nationhood and an extinction of terrorism on the one hand, a Buhari presidency presents a determined practical expediency in the match to a prosperous and united Nigeria. Pursuant of this idea, a Fifth Gospel that is rescued from the poisonous claws of Masonic subversion and deception can only be an honest commitment to faith, hope and love which form the soul of the life and ministry of our Lord and master Jesus Christ.

In the face of the glaring betrayals against the Church from the hands of her own children, even from those who, like Judas she has unreservedly favored and empowered, and coupled with the fact that she is being compelled to atone for these sins committed against her and heal the infested wounds there from, it will be very strange and a confession of criminal collaboration for the Vatican to remain silent about the abysmal sacrilegious disrepute which the Knighthood, especially the Knighthood of St. Mulumba has dragged the Church - the spotless Bride of Christ into in Nigeria.

With the indiscreet endorsement, flamboyant involvement and euphoric commitment of the Catholic Bishop of Aba to the sarcastically ominous ambition of Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu subtly tucked away behind the struggle for Igbo Liberation, the entire life and mission of the Catholic Church in Aba was re-designed and re-packaged to accommodate witch-craft, wizardry, traditional/student’s cultism, thuggery, Satanism, gangsterism and executive rascality.

The whole arrangement depicts a synergy of the good, the bad and the ugly which resulted in, and donated wings and legs to a symbiotic symbolism and despotic mal-administration where opposition was at the risk of public humiliation, irremediable bankruptcy, ostracization, banishment and miserable death. In view of its expansionist strategy, the Aba Cabal was inaugurated in 1996 and then re-incarnated under the very tutelage of the Knights of St Mulumba, who subversively pursuant of the Masonic agenda dressed themselves up as vanguards and soldiers of the faith and Igbo liberation.

To adjust to this eerie novelty, even with reference to ecclesiastical laws and pastoral ministry,

By this, it is evidently clear that, with such ugly packs of despots of the like of Bishop Ezeonyia sitting on ecclesiastical thrones and with the criminal connivance of the Knighthood of St. Mulumba, the anti-Christ has invaded the Church in disguise and walk with shoulders high on the streets of Nigeria and in the Vatican on a terrorist mission. Its ultimate target in the Church is the Key and Throne of St. Peter.

Is Bishop Ezeonyia a forerunner of the gospel according to Judas? And which gospel is the Knighthood preaching in the Church and in the nation today?

Now that it has become very imperative that the Satanic Masonic dictatorship be confronted headlong considering the threats it posits to the people’s will, national security and to the faith (both Christian and Islam) with regards to PDP, one cannot but be abjectly bemused at the complacency or rather impotent resolve of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria (CBCN).

To be straightforward, it is a matter of stating the obvious to say that the CBCN as presently constituted has woefully failed the Church consciously or unconsciously by pandering either to a subtly seductive satanic distraction or by a helpless subscription to insipid plutocracy and jaundiced survivalism. The Episcopal body has failed to live up to the challenges which the Nigeria Church presents to it.

What actually are we afraid of? Definitely, a Knighthood that has lost direction and focus of her mission in the Church and in the nation, in exchange for unbridled appetite for power and blood must be afraid of something, and of somebody.

At the political front, the personality that translates the expectations of Benedict XVI and our dream for the would be Nelson Mandela of Nigeria is neither Bola Tinubu nor Alex Ekwueme. It is General Muhammadu Burhari in collaboration with Pastor Tunde Bakare.

Concerning North Africa, while the person and theology of St Augustine is imperatively recuperative, contextualization is a need for theological Africa.

Contextualization is basically considered to be the right approach to the problems and questions raised by the many asymmetrical ecclesial situations that virtually bestride the global consciousness of modern society. Contextualization is an effort of dialogue between the Christian culture and other cultures which seeks to know and understand in a holistic manner, the very contents of the cultures in dialogue with a view to identifying their appeals, the positive elements therein, the necessity of adaptation as well as the imperative of action in respect of conclusions arrived at.

The contextual theologian, in the final analysis, seeks to download the divine presence and action present in the different cultures of the world. In this way, the roots of the Christian faith can be traced and the level of growth and development already achieved or achievable in those cultures correctly measured.

A universal theology does not and cannot duplicate a contextual one, neither can a contextual theology duplicate a universal one.
While a universal theology defines the meaning of unity and serves as a reference point for a contextual one, a contextual theology takes care of theological issues that are peculiar and as well supplies the raw data which a universal one may need to work with. A contextual theology without universal one breeds an unnecessary duplication of Christian faith leading to syncretism and theological pluralism. The other way round hangs faith on the air, above the reach and practice of ordinary persons as this relates to their individual history and experience. This latter position draws only a programme for a missiom that has no sincere and spiritual content as its remainder if the definition of the term “world diplomacy” is applied to it.
 Contextualization, therefore, is not something on the fringes of the theological enterprise, writes S.B Bevans. It is at very center of what it means to do theology in today’s world. The contextual theologian faces a number of issues and questions that were seldom dealt with in classical theology. With the turn to the objective and the new attention to culture that is involved in the contextual enterprise, the equilibrium established in more traditional ways of doing theology has been shaken, and new ways of theologizing and being a theologian are being discovered, along with new questions and new problems.
 S.B Bevans has equally identified and classified issues surrounding contextual theology into four basic groups: issues of theological method; issues of basic theological orientation, of criteria for orthodoxy; issues of cultural identity as compared to theologies already in place in a culture (e.g. popular religiosity); and social change. As Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice rightly pointed out, contextual theology is concerned with the question of “what the universal dimension of Christianity means in concrete terms”.

Without prejudice to the sources of theology, but in reference to the shift from logic to method, the ground is set for a change in the frame of African theology. With Karl Rahner, for instance,  one is forced to acknowledge the fact that, while the veracity of historical objectivism is never in the least diminished, but still retains its relevance in the programme of Christianity as the highest and most radical accentuation of man’s relationship with God, the beginnings of this relationship must have to be discovered in the very interiority of the African himself - in his history and experience, fears and anxieties, joys and sorrows, etc. These are then seen to evolve along the line of faith in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This foundational issue has an implication for theological Africa.

The point of departure for African Theology is no longer in the astute analysis of the seven sacraments of the church, the doctrine of the trinity nor that of the two natures in Christ - these are equally, however, non-negligible ingredients in any would be theological engagement - but in the unbiased but powerful appreciation of the realities of African views, history and experience and the challenges these pose for the African believer, as well as the inescapable problems they raise for the universal church in relation to doctrines and orthodoxy.

Theology today must have to wrestle with that which is authentic and real in human history and experience. An African theologian is an accredited theologian of the universal church who has a critical reflective sympathy for Africa and her experience, not just for the sake of an interest  in a study, but for the fact that that history and experience are his own and as such pose a challenge to his Christian faith.

In an effort to pay adequate attention to the real African problematic, the African theologian may risk standing astride the limits set by orthodoxy, and yet sympathetically discover that there is a yawning gap between this boundary and the problems that confront him to the extent that the required attention may not get at them even if he has to over-stretch his own theological muscles. But can any true theology comfortably neglect or ignore those authentic issues of African history and experience even though these lie outside the boundaries of orthodoxy? Or can orthodoxy toy with the difficult but rewarding task of closing boundaries with emerging theological issues in Africa that are contextual? Or put in a universal language, what are the implications of orthodoxy for theology in Africa today?

In Africa traditional religion, one cannot help but concur to the fact that primitive forms of syntax and semantics have led the African into complex problems of conceptualizations about the nature of divinity, thus giving the impression that the African practices idolatry. Conversely, the African is a real believer in one God. This is true despite the fact that conceptual variables opened a dangerous door for some satanic encroachments and the formation of truncated psychological images in the very pavilion of African consciousness otherwise reserved for divine inhabitation. Now, before the advent of Christianity, the totality of the subjective religious experience of the African in its coordinated and objectivated form has the shape of the African Traditional Religion especially in community worship, finding expressions in traditional language, rituals, artifacts, etc. Unfortunately, Christian missionaries did not first of all recognize this experience as real at the point of contact between Christianity and Africa.

The level of global consciousness at this point in time may serve to acquit the missionaries from any blame at this resurgent caricature of the African experience of God. However, a faithful adherence to a pardonable missionary misnomer is very detrimental  to progress, and as well, lacks the power to restore and rebuild the only road which holds an unpretentious promise for a deeply rooted Christianization. The claim that the missionaries planted the original seeds of faith in Africa is true, only when seen from the point of view of the development of faith. Otherwise, it is contestable, for the seed of faith is the totality of those structures which make a person a human being. This is the work of God achieved in creation. The faith of those great founders of our traditional religion, rescued from its primitivity and paganistic encroachments, is the faith - the only one - which can make us Christians.

Our forefathers attempted to express in signs and symbols, paintings and artworks, myths and stones, the very truth about their inner experience of God. Bujo is correct. African Christology must relate to the idea of proto-ancestor. This is where the truth about the person of Jesus Christ can be made relevant. The existential divine status of the Ancestor and experience of a powerful divine force which is immediately distributed into multiplicity in the deities constitute issues for Christology and Pneumatology in theological Africa. Beyond this, the foundations of the prayer life of the African must compel the church to a new task in Liturgy and concrete Christian life. Evangelization must be aimed at illuminating and transforming men and women as they are, “what matters is to evangelize human culture and cultures…., always taking the person as one’s stating point and always coming back to the relationships of people among themselves and with God”.

Doctrinal issues on prayer, liturgy and sacraments necessarily carry with them a contextual dimension. Conversely contextual issues also necessarily carry doctrinal dimension.

 At issue is the critical question of dynamic prayer experience which is not a victim to liturgical enslavement in the guise fidelity to orthodoxy, or one that is highly contaminated by an exuberant romantic experimentation. Prayer manuals and fixed liturgical formulas are not bad. They are even important, and that is if the identity and purity of faith have to be preserved. But any claim to exhaust the content of prayer experience that is at once mystical and ontological is farce. To do so is to create a hallucinated meaning of human language because certain of such experiences have no conceptual equivalents but nevertheless must be expressed. Prayer formulas can only ignite man’s drive to divine encounter; sustain and direct, but cannot claim to exhaust this experience. The drive for greater encounter with God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit and through this, to a better appreciation of and commitment to love, even if this is productive of miracles, signs, wonders, speaking in tongues, popularity, etc, should not be stifled at the door of orthodoxy but must be encouraged. However the purity of intention must summit and cannot refuse to submit to the need for evaluation.

 Fruitful evangelical ministry would first of all make man appreciative of what he is in the depth of his existence as a condition for the possibility of acceptance and appreciation of Jesus Christ in the sacraments. This subjective disposition is normative for effective community faith which in turn comes to govern it. Is it not likely the case that a tradition of orthodoxy can be perpetuated but Jesus’ presence is not perpetuated, and lives are not touched, not in the least, transformed? Can the Church in Africa afford the luxury of a tradition in which her children do not have a personal experience of Jesus, and their lives are not transformed?

God is a transcendent being. Even though he has revealed himself in Christ, he is still a mystery. All that is known about him is the much faith, in cooperation with human reason, has put at our disposal. This calls for a sincere reverent disposition in our approach to God.

Generally speaking, while God is beyond the content which any rites and rubrics can encompass, the objective consciousness of the reality of divine mystery is most superior and more real than its most purest from in subjective experience, even though this cannot be ignored. In the presence of these facts, one thing stands out clearly: all there is to the journey from disease to health, from hunger to satisfaction, from suffering to happiness, from sorrow to joy, from ignorance to knowledge, from human to divine, from earth to heaven - all these are not wholly discernible to individual human eyes alone;  not exhaustively defined by doctrines nor controlled by orthodoxy and hierarchy. Here is the theological utility of identifying the strong connection as well as the difference between Immanent Trinity and Economic Trinity, between what God does

The African is deeply a religious person. This deep-seated religiosity is born out of the awareness of the presence of a Supreme Being pervading every sphere of existence, and permeating every objective reality.

 In his Fundamental Theology, Karl Rahner offers, not only the explanation for this deep-seated awareness of God but also provides a firm ground for it, especially against those who trivialize the importance of traditional religion.

The knowledge of God is completely and decisively mediated by an encounter with the Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But if the African person had had a true though inadequate knowledge of or encounter with God before the advent of Christianity, it means that there is an experience of God that is not mediated by a direct encounter with the Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But this encounter or experience of God does not and cannot, in anyway, contradict the life and person of Jesus Christ but rather must necessarily discover its most authentic and fullest expression in Jesus Christ and in him alone. This experience must therefore necessarily lead this believer – the anonymous Christian - if you like, into the Church.

During the recently First Aba Diocesan Synod on “True Christian Identity”, for instance,  the whole structure of subjective experience was provocatively dismantled and some untidy lumps of frenzied legislations were hurriedly put in place to serve as strong deterrents to any further accretion of the subject. Undeniably, the hierarchy of the diocese of Aba may have cogent reasons for adopting such a frigid position, but when the dormant forces at work are slightly stirred, it would not be surprising to observe that this position has deep trappings of malignant clericalism and pretentious collaboration. If eventually a profuse leakage occurs in the patch-up exercise achieved during that Synod, the most obvious place to check is the pantry where whatever remained of subjective experience was officially locked up after having been frustrated and paraded as a residue of psychomosomatic disorder and the worst threat to the purity of Christian faith. I was personally present at the Diocesan Synod as a student of Systematic Theology then at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt. The Synod showcased the worst scandal on the politicization and subversion of the Catholic Faith in the Diocese of Aba. The seed of subversion of the faith sown in Aba during that Synod holds the explanation, in the most shameful way, for the inability of the Church in Nigeria to come to terms with the social-justice challenges that confront her today in reference to the ravaging menace of poverty, disease, corruption and terrorism.

The veracity of the saying in different theological circles today that the church has not lived half the riches of Vatican II cannot be correctly evaluated in isolation of the enormous influences which Yves Congar , Edward Schillebeekx, Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner wielded during that historic council on the one hand, and the level of awareness and understanding on the other which Christian faithfuls have achieved as regards the thoughts of these great and influential theologians.

Beyond this, there exists the challenge to achieve a courageous conviction that effective pastoral ministry and the entire church life demand that these riches be consciously integrated into our already established traditions. To cast doubt over this position is to doubt also the sincerity that went into the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, for instance “the Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (Gadium et Spes) which is believed to have a dominant influence of Karl Rahner. The Church in Africa must learn to appreciate the practical implications of the Second Vatican Council, not only for effective ministry of prayer, but for the multiple theological issues that are struggling for attention.

In Africa today, among the bishops, liturgists, canonists, dogmaticians, sacramentologists, and other ecclesiastical experts, the number that has balanced access to and correct evaluation of these theologians is very minimal. And there seems to be a disposition of inexcusable aggression against theological experts, on the part of Church leadership in Africa, who seek to download, even with strictly orthodox lenses, the necessary implications of the Second Vatican Council for the Church in Africa. A manifest record of intimidation, guerrilla harassments, blackmail and betrayal - not excluding murder, have been the stock in trade of those who sit as judges for innocent but courageous theological researchers.

Vatican II represents a bridge between the new and old, a meeting point between traditional cultures and ecclesial culture, between subjective experience and objective experience, between those on the extreme right (who regard everything except the incantation of past formulae as heresy) and those on extreme left (who  evoke not diversity and variety, but hostility and division).

Having therefore been acquainted with Karl Rahner, and from whose theological podium I have carried out a critical survey of the theological environment of the 21^st century, I am constrained to propose a Post-Vatican II Theology and to embark on a Funfare for the entertainment of Benedict XVI- this towering creative intellectual mind and highly respectable figure whose footprints in the sands of history, no one, no matter one’s affiliations, can ignore without risking the total collapse of one’s own mental equilibrium in a manner that is at once anachronistic and despicable.

Karl Rahner has indicated the way forward - a reconstruction of Fundamental Theology in such a way that faith must be able to give account of itself and its claim on man and not become so much dependent on, say for instance, historical objectivism in the case of Christian faith. This does not in anyway detract from the lofty significance which the person of Jesus Christ holds for the faith. Historical objectivism is decisively final in the definition and application of the faith and this exhaustively constitute a valid and an incontestable proof of the faith.

God is not, in the words of Karl Rahner, the Deus Absconditus or the Undiscovered Unknown as presumed by many skeptics and agnostics, but the Discovered Unknown. God is Immanuel.  The Immanent Trinity is one and at the same time the Economic Trinity, and the Economic Trinity is one and at the same time, the Immanent trinity.

Unfortunately, for non-Christian religions and some pseudo-Christian sects, the person of Jesus Christ is not synonymous with God. These issues raise some serious questions in sympathy with human relationships and the application of faith in a world that has been reduced to size of a village due to considerable breakthroughs in technology and in other fields of knowledge.

Thus, in as much as historical objectivism holds the ultimate truth about God and his relationship with man in the world, a significant lump of  humanity has not come to terms with this as a common ground for objectivity and as a point of departure of the search for truth. For Karl Rahner, theology must not rest on its oars because of the universal salvific will of God. It must have to be seen to have the power to speak authoritatively and convincingly to the situation of contemporary man, whether he/she is a Christian or not.

In his theological investigations, Rahner has discovered that faith is, first of all, a given in the very being of man himself before it can be regarded as a gift that is made manifest by historical objectivism. Faith is a gift. Therefore, the faith of the Church is the greatest gift – the highest treasure that is approximately 2000 years. In its antiquity is the confirmation of its originality and authenticity, and in its originality does humanity one hope to find authentic answers to the question which man is unto himself.

 Faith constitutes the very structures of the being of man. Every man is a believer, whether he is a Christian or not except if there is a conscious resolve to refuse to objectively distinguish between good and evil.  But the existence of  a manifest embrace of and total commitment to the good whether man has ever heard of the name of God or  not, is a  mark scored in favor of this thesis. Thus even though a pagan, such a person is also a Christian - if by this we understand the Antioch experience. He is however, a “Pagan Christian” or “an anonymous Christian” whether such a person is aware of this or not, whether he accepts this or not.

On the other hand, supposing one confesses Jesus Christ and comes to appreciate the lofty significance this holds for existential decision and action, and despite this goes to and consistently embraces evil to the point of manifest Satanism, such a one can be said to be a Christian also but in this case, one is a “Christian Pagan” or “an anonymous pagan.” Karl Rahner has remarked that a Christian of the future must not only be a theologian but also, a mystic in order to make authentic progress in the practice of faith.

The African reader of Karl Rahner today may be lost on the real connection between the perplexities of a transcendental theology and the experiential vitality of African communitarianism.  Caught up in this intellectual web, withdrawal could always be considered a timely escape from the trenches of a dull ontology.

For an ordinary African Christian whose ambition does not exceed a pious desire for the appreciation of the basic tenets of our traditional doctrines, the practice of virtues and Christian piety, an escape is highly commendable. But not so with an African theologian whose chief concern for the systematization of faith elicits a wide interest in the unfolding drama of the African Church. Instead, it is under such an intense frustration that one tries to discover a kind of theological penumbra beyond which the great foundations of the African faith can be perspicaciously grasped. Going by the earliest assessment of pedantic theologizing, Rahner’s   theology seems to be pendulous - oscillating between orthodox depreciation and total neglect of the African situation on the one hand, and a treatment of the totality of human existence on the other. This pendulous situation has been actually found to be unreal - a silhouette cast by the asymmetrical structures of Rahner’s influential thought against the background of theological imperialism and aridity.

In fact, the attraction of Rahner’s thought lies in its inner capacity for total condensation for altruistic conviviality with regard to Africa’s categorical situation. A critical but honest appreciation of Rahner’s theology would try do design a souvenir of gratitude which would serve as an eternal remembrance for Rahner in the theological world. It is possible Karl Rahner has come to assume the status of St Thomas Aquinas for today’s Church. To say the least, the sublime inspiration which incubated and subsequently hatched the great artifacts of Rahner’s theology can best be understood as a gift appreciated in the light of theological faith and immediately put at the disposal of critical reason. To say anything else beyond this is to venture into a creation of a god out of a human being. But even at that, forgiveness for such a high assessment would not be considered a costly item going by the treasures which his theology has deposited at the doorsteps of the contemporary man, the Church, history and different cultures of the world.

One  advantage of Rahner’s theology is that it is a practical analysis of the modern lay person in his/her confrontation with and immersion into the techno-scientific world and the prevailing situations of poverty, suffering, death and utter hopeless that impinge on the structure of human existence, especially in African today. There is always present in human existence a ceaselessly nagging sense of utter loneliness and of helpless conviction about the futility and emptiness of the world. An escapist attitude towards this does not resolve the ambiguity neither can a total helpless surrender to despair. A sincere acknowledgement of the futility which faces one and a true realization of one’s worthlessness, whether this is ignited  by economic depression, political incongruence, erosion of social and cultural values, other prevailing issues of demonic extraction, or a conscious intellectual assent, is always a fruitful and positive development and an informal admission of the need for God.

The sheer immensity of God urges one to realize one’s being to it fullest through transcending the limitations imposed by choosing to remain the center of one’s own being. When the human person has opened himself to admit the being of God, every word and act become a lived prayer, because the presence of God suffuses the whole pattern of living. In prayer, man boldly confronts his own worthlessness and despairs. He adopts a positively conscious and reflexive disposition towards that reality that invades and permeates every aspect of his existence. This pervading reality is made objective in Christ. This implies that any human person who has a positive reflexive acceptance of his transcendence in prayer has a necessary ordering towards Jesus Christ. Such a one discovers the normative character of Jesus Christ for that which he is in the very depths of his existence.  

   

And since the Church is the sacrament of Christ in the world, the human person now surrenders himself in trust and hope to the authority and competence of the Church to bring to its full actualization that which he is in the inner recesses of his life. This fundamentally, is the subjective reason why one becomes a member not only of the Church but also of the liturgical/praying community. Prayer is conscious man in the presence of the Absolute Mystery with heart and mind lifted up in communion, and through him, the entire creation. This is man at real prayer.

Today, as technological breakthroughs impact some measure of authority, power and responsibility on people, and as contemporary man battles to close the gap between faith and praxis, a number of questions and issues as varied as these are, have managed to put an abrasive strain on historical objectivism. And as time runs its course, thus bringing about a new understanding of and awareness about history, freedom and responsibility, these questions and issues legitimately acquire some urgency with regard to praxis. The political, economic and social situation of Africa as well as the security situation of the international community come under review and thus chart a new course of action for Theology. And if a politician or scientist or a psychologist e.t.c. can speak about this situation and expect to be heard, then a theologian must speak the word to the situation with power and authority. And concerning the word, what is written is written. And it is finished. 

If Jesus Christ is God’s final and irrevocable word which he has spoken to fallen humanity, and if by faith we understand that this word alone is the answer to the question which man is unto himself and, indeed the answer to every problem of and question about life itself, then the Church must have this word ready for every situation of fallen humanity and must speak the word authoritatively and cannot fail to speak authentically and responsibly despite the risks, shame, the scandals, the embarrassments and rejection that stare  her directly at the face, unless she has failed to appreciate the real value of the cross.

 Responsibility for the word is first of all a function of the Magisterium. The Scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Code of Canon Law exonerate the Church, specifically the Magisterium from any blame in the event of an unconscious neglect of this function. Nevertheless a conscious abuse of the power of the Magisterium or a deployment of this power to selfish ends or to uses that violate the nature of the Church and the deposit of faith by any member of the Magisterium is also a conscious fatal stab directly on the heart of freedom.

Along this line, some great theological minds do not find it amusing that their commitment to the faith is also, paradoxically, their handicap and their greatest undoing especially in their efforts to assert and confirm that faith.

 But if, in accord with the Epistle of James Vs.3 , the Holy Office is real and has a significance for the Faith of the Universal Church especially the kind of Church which alone confers the kind of Christian identity that is, strictly speaking, “Catholic”, and again, if theology has a method – one which commands a universal acceptance – then the Ratzinger who is, by providence, the die-hard doctrinal enforcer of the Holy Roman Catholic Church does not contradict and need not be confused with the other who today is the greatest theological force in the 21^st Century Church.

This understanding and reconciliation were an inescapable need which Kuhn consistently neglected to pay attention to in his life-long career as a priest and a theologian in the Catholic tradition.

 Imperialism, fascism, irredentism and bigotry cannot be employed as tools to explain what the Bishops are doing at the Synod in Rome and cannot exhaustively describe the activities of the Roman Curia - the highest decision making body of the Holy See. Simply put, Benedict XVI is the greatest doctrinal force in and the most successful theologian of the 21^st Century Church.

However, I am strongly being persuaded to believe - and this belief is laced with conviction - that had Joseph Ratzinger not made an early foray into the episcopacy, he would have had spent the whole of his theological career in the Rahnerian neighborhood and would have been content to remain here.

The Church is the one ark of salvation founded on the rock and envisaged by Jesus Christ to be the custodian and the manifest action of salvation, in an objective manner, for all peoples whether as individuals or as a group. To the extent this vision of Jesus Christ finds its full expression in the life of an individual or a group so much so that it comes to constitute the mission statement and the mandate for action for that individual human person or group, to that extent there is an ecclesial situation, that is, to that extent there is a Church. But if Christianity has a history - a long history of growth and developments which have crystallized into the present form and shape it now wears in doctrine, liturgy and action, it is therefore very clear why pluralism does not present any option for unity and apostolicity. Hence, theological parallels and innovations, despite their appeals, are generally reckoned as merely provisional and tasked to patiently seek confirmation from and an endorsement by the official Church.

On the other hand, it is necessary to assert that corruption, terrorism and mediocrity cannot just be explained away as issues that are in concert in keeping or defending the faith. This way of thinking was the sole fueling ingredient and the sustaining factor of the clergy sex-abuse of minors and, of recent, the Vatileaks.

 There is nothing wrong with the doctrine of Infallibility or with the Pope doing the appointments to the ecclesiastical offices and being the supreme and final authority in the Church. The problem lies in the fact that the enemy has concluded and perfected plans to hijack the most important, powerful and influential resources of the Church in the form of these doctrines and turns around to use them to fight the Church.

Today, the emphasis has shifted from the thinking that outside the Church there is no salvation to the fact that the fullness of the Church is found in the Catholic Church. But in what way then can one understand and appreciate the necessity and indispensability of the Catholic Church for salvation, since, as it has been seen above, the Church is the custodian and the agent of salvation yet 2/3 of the human population are not Christians while 60% of the world Christian population are not Catholics. Is there another way of being, not just Christian, but Catholic? Or put in another way, what value is retained by subjective or private faith in the general framework of God’s universal salvific will.

Multiplicity of questions and problems, even those formerly considered to lie outside the domain of Theology, have turned to it for, at least, a guide to action in the search for meaning and purpose of life to the extent that the huge demand upon theology seem today to constitute an abrasive strain on historical objectivism. Historical objectivism has become, in this regard, a target of weighty sacrilegious, scandalous, despicable, syncretic and mundane action. Yet this does not detract from the fact that wholesome, constructive, innovative, developmental, reviewing and renewing activities are going on in reference to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

For quite awhile, I have battled with the difficulty of reconciling two Ratzingers – the most towering theological figure whose works span two event-laden centuries and still counting, and who, few years back, remarked that he was still in the Church because that’s the only way of being a Christian, and a die-hard but straight forward doctrinal chief enforcer of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

 And to know that Fr. Hans Kuhn was a colleague and a fellow collaborator with Joseph Ratzinger as well as one of the most visible faces during the Second Vatican Council whose works have come under the Ratzinger harmer elicits consternation and at a second thought, an embarrassment to many on what actually the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger evokes as the spirit of and the truth about the Second Vatican Council.

Hans Kuhn is perhaps, one of the most controversial theological figures today. Regarded as “a Catholic Priest in good standing”, yet cut off and fully disengaged officially from the main currents of Catholic Theology, Hans Kuhn had rolled up the scroll of indictment from the Doctrinal Office against his person and bypassed this to inaugurate a tradition of commitment and service to humanity with global peace and security as his main focus. And from the moment I read Kuhn’s autobiography “My Struggle for Freedom”, the Kuhn personality became a question - a recurring question, though not an answer or solution, to me personally.

The imposing Kuhn personality is today a re-occurring decimal in global power equation. If, in fairness and justice, Kuhn can be correctly be regarded as a dissident theologian, then it is equally imperative to review Mathew Fox’s use of the term “ecclesiolatory” in reference to the selfishness of some actors at work in the Roman Curia. This much was also the greatest fear expressed by Karl Rahner and one which hunted the whole length and breadth of his theological career, and eventually followed him to the grave. It is the fear of abuse of authority and privileges in the Church.

The path taken by Hans Kuhn, therefore, is a mechanism of defense taken too far, perhaps unconsciously stretched beyond its breaking point, in an effort to retain two values considered personally as having a universal significance for the Church and for human development – a faith in a good God who alone calls people to the priestly ministry in the Church, and  the evolving freedom of theology which is sponsored on the main, through the instrumentality of the Second Vatican Council,  by a God who , in the words of Karl Rahner, is the  “Discovered (yet)Unknown”.

Paradoxically, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who became Pope Benedict XVI has been the victim as well as the beneficiary of Hans Kuhn’s rarified theological arsenals.

Beyond the despondency which Kuhn has been accused of, this statement finds an echo in the very situation of the Nigerian Church presently and as well calls for immediate intervention of Pope Benedict XVI.

The unfolding scenario must raise deep concerns for a Synod of Bishops especially when one of the issues confronting it is how to map out strategies for the re-evangelization of Europe/America, for inter-faith dialogue, for the progress of ecumenism and for re-union between the West and the East.

I have found out that Hans Kuhn’s dream about a global ethic is a project for and of the Church. And for the Church to ignore this aspect of Hans Kuhn’s works is for her to abdicate a vision and a mission that is relevant and central to her life in the 21^st century in a way that does not reflect any sign of humility and consistency for the real actors on the side of the magisterium.

The reenactment of a friendship with Kuhn leading to a re-negotiation of the objectives of the Global Ethic Foundation which he founded is not a luxury the Church cannot afford.

 I am therefore, personally excited at the prospects of another meeting between Ratzinger and Kuln in view of Kuln’s retirement coming up on March 2012, and the consequent embrace of spiritually united and committed of friendly hearts, and yet the fiercest critic of each other. I see the rebuke of Peter by Paul in Acts of the Apostles that led to the resolution of one of the greatest doctrinal conflicts in the Jerusalem Church playing itself and indeed all Christians would prefer it to the Brutus like sword that is hanging over the papacy, and a Judas’ Kiss that is being re-enacted when our Lord is not willing to die again, having died once and for all and is very busy now preparing for his second coming. The meeting is therefore in the words of John Allen Jnr, about constructive dialogue and not about destructive criticism; it is about structures and not about doctrines. It is a dialogue between the objective experience and a subjective one, between a traditional spirit and a charismatic one.

These are mutually inclusive factors in the renewal of the Church. Resourcement must dialogue with the sincere spirit of Aggiornamento in love and mutual respect. I see the excesses of power being caged by the fire of freedom, and the wild and destructive fire of modernism being counter balanced by the authority of Peter, and the limits of opposition being spelt out by the provisions of divine wisdom.