Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | April/2021 |
Spalte: | 357-359 |
Kategorie: | Praktische Theologie |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Ozioko, Edwin Ikechukwu |
Titel/Untertitel: | Compassion – A Pastoral Paradigm for Integral Salvation and the Growth of the Church. |
Verlag: | Münster u. a.: LIT Verlag 2019. 312 S. = Theologie und Praxis, 39. Kart. EUR 39,90. ISBN 9783643911018. |
Rezensent: | Oliver Davies |
The author of this stimulating book, Edwin Ikechukwu Ozioko, is right to underline the fact that the potential meanings of the term ›compassion‹ are generally significantly undervalued in the documents of the contemporary Catholic Church. In Church statements there is a preference for the language of ›solidarity, justice, peace and love‹. These may imply the concrete actuality of compassion as a decisive ›option for the other‹ in the face of the other’s need, and as the natural culmination of the formation of conscience and personal development which promote solidarity, but they do not name it as such. O. also points to the centrality of ›compassion‹ in the Church’s own conception of ›charity‹, and particularly the role of charity in the pastoral life of the Church. But here, too, there is a tendency to confine ›compassion‹ to individual moments of concrete response to those in need. Compassion appears to be ›localiz-ed‹ in this way, even in documents such as Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est, and even when compassionate actions and disposition play such a fundamental role in the pastoral dimensions of the Church.
From another point of view however, we could say that the concrete and particular nature of compassion, points to the fact that what is at stake here is our compassionate acts. In terms of compassion, it is what we do that counts. This potentially creates a tension therefore between the life lived and teachings or even narratives which are associated with that life. We can describe or narrate a compassionate practice, and that is uplifting, but we are trans-formed through witnessing or being present when someone concretely reacts compassionately to another. The actuality here is key, and we are changed when we witness – or share the space and time of – the compassionate acts of others. The power of the narrative of such acts is also likely to depend critically upon the extent to which we have ourselves personally witnessed such acts.
O. has certainly put his finger on a deep-seated problem: while ›solidarity, justice, peace and love‹ may all reasonably claim to contain the concept of compassion, we cannot say that any of these embody it in the ways in which it is embodied in life, through concrete acts. Moreover, he also draws our attention to the fact that compassion is one of the least contested terms in inter-religious dialogue. We can all recognize the simple goodness of compassion-ate acts which occur in, or belong to, very different cultures or civilisations from our own. Again we can see a certain tension around this difficult term ›compassion‹ since something which appears to be foundational to the life of the Church – our compassionate act s– also turns out to be celebrated in other world religions.
The idea which O. puts forward that compassion should become central to a new pastoral theology is an interesting one. Drawing upon the work of Thomas Oden, he sets out a detailed account of ›shepherding‹, including the themes of knowing and naming the flock, speaking with a distinctive voice, leading the flock and dis-covering new pastures, as well as being prepared to lay down his life for the sheep. While this is familiar territory for the Westerner, it is likely to be so today only in terms of its literary or metaphorical resonances. Few Westerners will have direct experience of she-pherding or even of agricultural societies. But in a Nigerian context of small scale farming, this may be a much more powerful image. The linking of shepherding with Motherhood, in the second chapter, also serves to embed a pastoral theory of shepherding in an African context and could indeed provide ›a credible and superior alternative to the traditional religious approaches‹.
We Western theologians have long been used to reading African theology with a certain distance. This is grounded in the fact that modernity is younger in Africa than it is in Europe and so it has been easy to suppose that the future holds a certain convergence between Africa and the West with the consequence that Africa will become ever more like the West than it is today. As I read O.’s text, however, it is less clear to me that this is the case. The power of the image of shepherding, as the basis of a new pastoral theology, has a particular force in this book. It may well point to the human re-newal – very necessary today – of a more direct contact with nature. It is arguable that in the near future the West will move towards a much more de-industrialized concept of agriculture. But it is also the case that we live in a contracting world and relations between religions on the one hand and nations on the other are becoming subject to stress. A stronger Africanization of Catholic Christianity through an emphasis on shepherding may indeed make it easier to establish common ground with other world religions in Nigeria, for instance. Even urban Nigerian populations will be much closer to their farming forebears than equivalent populations in the West.
What is perhaps most interesting here is the fact that ›shepherd-ing‹ can indeed be viewed as a form of environmentalism: shepherd-ing occurs in a landscape which has been intimately understood and internalized by the human populations who manage it. Again, Western environmentalism suffers from the disadvantage that such human belonging in land, through the internalization of land, has to be recreated, which takes time. In such long term (though also in their own way urgent) projects, the West will need to draw upon the resources of other societies. The mediation of such re-sources through the Catholic Church would appear to both natural and right.
›Shepherding‹ as an image of universal compassion which is embodied in a ›pastoral theology‹ also has the potential to resonate across social and cultural boundaries. As O. suggests, acts of radical compassion are fundamentally human (according to the humanity of Christ) and so can communicate across the globe. To make compassion a central theme in the training of priests could be a stabil-izing force in a conflicted world.
And in fact, there is strong biblical support for this position. The Greek term splanghna, which originally means ›entrails‹ or ›bowels‹ or indeed ›heart‹, was used in the New Testament specifically of the compassion of Christ and, by association, the compassion for Chris-tians who participate in the life of Christ. This term scarcely occurs in early writings outside a Christological, New Testament context. But its use specifically combines intensely visceral images of em-bodiment with specific referencing of the authority of the Hebrew God. In other words, the early Christian community chose to combine splanghna (›innards‹) and splanghnizomai (›to feel compassion for‹) in ways which allowed them to separate the compassion of Christ from all other forms of divinity, by virtue of the fact that these are fundamentally divine terms which remain grounded in the physicality and so also particularity of every single human body. In Christ then, divine compassion transforms our humanity, across each and every form of division.
This is an interesting and challenging book: it points to a pastoral theology which can potentially bring priests and laity closer together, by this thematization of compassion, while also helping to reconcile religions on the one hand and, perhaps most important of all, natural environment and society on the other.