Membership In Catholic Faith Community
An ontological equipoise.
Fr. Inaku Egere
Roma Italia
Do you know what? Am sure you wouldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t, for sure, even in my wildest imagination, give a thought either, but it did happen. The hustling and bustling of summer has just faded away with the cool breeze of Fumicino International Airport Rome. My cell phone that had gone to limbo during the summer months just suddenly vibrated when it was witched on a while ago. Who was calling? A philosophically- mind-ed young seminarian in our one and only major seminary in the Province - St. Joseph Major Seminary Ikot Ekpene. He had just had a heated argument or discussion focused on Religion with some opinion leaders in the environs. Many of them, who identified themselves as Catholics, had said that their Christianity was rather easily bracketed when they put on their hats as public servants. ‘Does ontology mean nothing to these people? My friend asked. ‘Do they even know what it is?’
I think they don’t, if actually they do not, then it is an issue. Am pretty sure you might be tempted to say there’s nothing surprising about “people who want a designer Christianity tailored to their own predilections.” It’s a free world I would strongly believe, you may be right in a sense since civilized reality tries to fix the flux of both nature and religion for all time as scientists and artists pile up the models and masterpieces, the plans and products, the monuments and the machinery, the property and the profits... Codifying, standardizing, controlling, powertripping, monoculturing, ego-rigidifying, routinizing, over-rationalizing and alienating our lives, thus keeping a relentless attack on our diversity of religious possibilities, but for some, which I think am privileged to be among them, the cord might mean something different.
If I may risk a brief synopsis, by ‘ontology,’ the seminarian was using the ancient vocabulary of philosophy to re-play an image once familiar to generations of Catholics from the Baltimore Catechism, the image of an ‘indelible mark’ imprinted on the soul by certain sacraments. This image of the indelible mark was intended to carry with it a basic truth of Catholic faith: that the reception of certain sacraments changed the recipient forever, by conferring on him or her a new identity- not in the psychological sense of that overused term, but substantively. Or, if you will pardon me the word, ontologically.
Baptism is a sacrament with what we might call ontological heft. To become a Christian through baptism is qualitatively different from becoming a citizen, a member of the Nigerian Bar Association NBA, Nigerian Union of Journalists NUJ, Nigeria Union of Teachers NUT or even a member of the Political Destructive Party sorry I mean, People Democratic Party PDP. When one becomes a Christian through baptism and the out pouring of the Holy Spirit, one is changed in a fundamental way: St. Paul taught those rowdy Corinthians, one becomes a ‘new creation’ (2 Cor 5.17). The Catholic church re-enforcing this point in the Second Vatican Council, in her Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), states that those who are baptized and then confirmed obtain the “special strength of the Holy Spirit” and become “more perfectly bound to the Church,” thereby meaning that “they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed” (#11).
As a dogma of faith, the ontological change in baptism ( Oh my God, I pray that should be the last time I use the ‘onto’ word) incorporates a catholic into the Church. The Church is not incidental to our identity as new creations in Christ; we don’t ‘join’ the Church the way we join the Catholic Women Organisation, Christian Family Movement, Legion of Mary, Mary League, Knight Of St. John, Knight of St Mulumba, etc. Being a Catholic Christian engages who-I-am in a substantively different way than any other aspect of my "identity" -- not because I think that's the case, or because I feel that's the case, but because that is the case: I mean it is an objective reality, not subjectivity in absurdity of any form, shape and size.
Baptism has real effects; it changes us forever. Like other sacraments, God's sanctifying grace is conferred to his holy people. They do, however have other functions that serve to benefit us as well: They pass on Church values, duties, and responsibilities. They serve as rites of passage and initiation. They change our relationship with others and within the community. So when a Christian for or in public office avers, on the one hand, that his or her "membership in the faith community" is deeply personal, or a matter of "my relationship with Jesus," and then suggests that being a Catholic Christian is a compartment of life that can be hermetically sealed off from first principles of justice for example, I might be tempted to join the cream of scholars to say we're dealing with confused campers -- one might even say, they are campers with severe identity-crisis (George W).
Perhaps most of them may have forgotten that the indelible seal “marks out total belonging to Christ, our enrollment in His service forever, as well as the promise of divine protection in the great eschatological trial” (CCC,1296). The imparting of the indelible character, which also implies that this Sacrament—like Confirmation and Holy Orders—cannot be repeated, is signified by the use of the Sacred Chrism, which must be consecrated by the Bishop during the celebration of the annual Chrism Mass.
Empirically, as a matter of fact you will agree with me that the Politicos aren’t alone. Most of our Catholic Christians do not understand this all important truth of our faith. Some who would have been reminded of this in homilies and sermons preached at least on Sundays are too busy to be physically part of the worshipping assembly. Majority may have been baptized as Children perhaps without enough catechesis and of course some others the night to or even on their wedding day. Almost always stemming from this weakness of their understanding is the erroneous imagination of their Christianity to be the religious variant of their membership in other voluntary organizations. Poor catechesis and pedagogical approach bridle with lack of an ongoing religious instructions either in schools, parishes and even the media may have also contributed to the poor understanding of Catholicism.
This dwindling pendulum whose suspension alone has wrecked so many people, its collapse might be toxic not just to our faith but also to our religion. Thus the challenge posed not only to the official teachers of the Catholic faith but to all of us --- a massive challenge for a proper catechesis so that most of us will not send God on ‘compulsory sabbatical leave’ whenever the world is on our feet. Remember, we have an identity not only as Christians, but as Catholics! Let’s preserve it!
