The ‘Peasant Priesthood’

Extract

Once again the expatriate pundits are out in force penning their solutions to the African Church’s problems. Having successfully surveyed the catechists and being shortly to publish the results of marriage enquiries, they are now turning their not inconsiderable, if at times inconsiderate, powers of persuasion to propagating alternative forms of ministry. Few would question the statistical evidence: the shortage of professional priests in Africa, both indigenous and expatriate, is becoming increasingly critical. Less evident, however, is the long-termed suitability and theological soundness of the proposed panacea, the ‘peasant priesthood’. ‘A priest in every village’ as there used to be until recently in parts of Spain and Italy, is the experts’ cry. Prima facie they have a case. Africa not only has been, is and will be for the foreseeable future, a pre-eminently rural society, but it is also government policy in many countries to create and centre development at the level of small-scale communities. For the moment these villages are merely mass-centres. There can be up to thirty or more of these outstations—the real parishes in sociological and theological terms—dependent upon one canonical parish. They are the occasional object of spasmodic, sacramental sorties, organized by an understaffed, overworked central mission. It seems to make sense then, pastorally speaking, that each community have a resident priest and consequently Sunday Mass. Most of these villages already have a catechist, more often than not a local man with much good will but little formal training. Their traditional role as teachers of religion, part-time sacristans and full-time watchdogs of faith and morals is changing.