THE ECUMENICAL IMPERATIVE AND FORMATION OF ECUMENICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG PASTORAL WORKERS

RESEARCH STATEMENT It is the will of God the Father to have an undivided humanity. To realize this will, “He chose us and destined all in Christ…” (Eph. 1:3-5). St. Paul argued that this was part of the foundational plan in divine creation, such that in the incarnation of Jesus, God the Father gathers His scattered children. (Eph. 1:10). Jesus prayed for the unity of the Christian family (Jn. 17:21) so that through her the human family might be reunited. Thus constituted as an instrument of unity for the human race, the Christian family assumes the mission of witnessing effectively to reconciliation and not to division. This is the theological understanding upon which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council teach that the Church is the “sacrament of that unity” (Lumen Gentium, 1). The Council Fathers called the Church a ‘sacrament’ in the sense that the Church which takes its light from Christ now shines to the nations as a ‘sign’ of Christ, who, through the Church speaks to the nations. Although the idea of the Church as the instrument of unity had existed before Vatican II, it was at the Council that the search for unity explicitly became an imperative. A more emphatic vision of the mission of the Church to the world emerged in which ecumenism is no longer an option but an imperative. From the time of the Council through the Pontificate of John Paul II, down to the statement of the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), the emphasis is the same: that every Christian should positively respond to God’s question to Cain: “Where is your brother?” (Gen. 4: 9). This ecumenical imperative of concern for one’s brother and unity of the Christians, although it is for every Christian, is primarily the responsibility of pastoral workers, according to the Code of Canon Law and the Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES On the basis of the new ecumenical emphasis from Vatican II, it is the particular concern of this work to first show, that the teaching of Vatican II on the Catholic principles and practice of ecumenism have been very poorly received among the pastoral workers in the Onitsha Ecclesiastical Province of Nigeria. The reasons, as the research exposes, are a combination of factors theological, social, cultural, and political but primarily because of a lack of proper information and formation among the pastoral workers. The second aim is to re-capture the ecumenical Spirit of Vatican II, emphatically re-reading the recommendations of the Council Fathers in Unitatis Redintegratio, especially 4 to 10, with a view to promoting their acceptance as practical norms for social, political and religious cooperation among Christians in the Provinces of Onitsha, Owerri and Calabar. Third, it aims at providing fundamental ecumenical information that hopefully will generate a new ecumenical consciousness among the clergy and the pastoral workers within the selected area so that the present attitudes of intolerance and fighting may minimize among Christians.