Extract

Chapter Four:  The Catholic Church in Nigeria: Connecting What It Should Be with What It Should Do in the Light of the Vatican II Reforms

In the documents of the Second Vatican Council as illustrated in Chapter three above, the Church outlined a new understanding of itself and its mission in the world. The new understanding was reflected in the four principal documents of the council namely: Lumen gentium, Gaudium et Spes, Sacrosanctum concilium and Dei Verbum. In this chapter we will draw extensively from Lumen gentium and Gaudium et Spes which are most often referred to as the two pillars of the documents of the Council. The first, concerns the nature of the Church; the second, concerns her mission in the world. These two documents will help us to navigate our course here in this chapter in making the connection between what the Church should be and what the Church should do in contemporary Nigeria. These two documents complement each other and could be summarized as being concerned with “being” (what the Church is: Lumen Gentium) and ‘doing’, (what the Church should do in the modern world: Gaudium et Spes). The nature of the Church or the image of the Church or what Avery Dulles calls the “models of the Church”1 most often affects what the Church does pastorally. To make the connection between what the Church should be and what the Church should do in Nigeria in union with the universal Church, requires some hermeneutics...