African Catholicism and Hermeneutics of Culture

The study of Christianity in the non-Western world reveals a demographic shift in the center of Christianity from the Northern Hemisphere to the South. But the contradictory aspect of the massive African conversion to Christian faith is the grinding poverty level in Africa. This condition raises important theological and ecclesiological questions that demand urgent answers. Therefore, the research objectives of this book are to examine African Catholicism's involvement in human promotion and to seek a new way of theologizing Christianity that moves sub-Saharan African peoples to action against the massive injustices that keep them poor.
Drawing on Africae Munus, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Second African Synod (2011), and Bernard Lonergan's notion of culture, African Catholicism and Hermeneutics of Culture argues that to truly be ""the spiritual 'lung' of humanity,"" African Catholicism must appropriate the Christian message to transform African attitudes and personhood and so foster a self-reliant commitment to integral African development.


""Professor Ogbonnaya offers us a rich, provocative, and unsparingly candid assessment of African Catholicism in light of the Second African Synod. He urgently summons the church in Africa to take its rightful place as an agent of moral transformation and social reconciliation. His prescriptions for a genuinely liberative African social spirituality give me great hope that Africa can breathe new life into global Christianity, as he points the way to healing the psychic wounds that afflict believers not only in Africa, but in the African diaspora as well. This is a book not only for Africa, but the entire Catholic church.""
--Bryan N. Massingale, Professor of Theological Ethics, Department of Theology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

""This is a book that every person in Africa and beyond should read, digest, meditate upon, and allow the ideas contained therein to challenge us for a change that is necessary and urgent. If we allow these thoughts to influence our actions and conduct, there will be salvation for the clergy and for the church, otherwise the revolution that will take place will be worse than that of the French Revolution and we, the clergy, will be in for it.""
--The Most Rev. John I. Okoye, Bishop, Catholic Diocese, Awgu, Nigeria


Joseph Ogbonnaya is Assistant Professor of Theology at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI. He is the author of Lonergan, Social Transformation and Sustainable Human Development (2013) and a co-editor of The Church as Salt and Light (2011).