tisdag 14 oktober 2008

En röst från biskopssynoden

En av många läsvärda röster från den pågående biskopssynoden, Bishop Louis Portella Mbuyu of Kinkala, Congo:

In Congo-Brazzaville, a country that has been scarred by a series of internal conflicts, we are seeing an abundance of religious movements that can be classified into two categories. On the one hand, there are movements which practice a liberating reading [of the Bible], even while drawing on elements of traditional religion. These put themselves forward as a counter-reaction to a Christianity, which is seen as a negation of African identity. On the other hand, there are movements deriving from the Pentecostal movement of American origin, characterized by a fundamentalist or even magical reading of the Bible. These tend to draw people's consciences away from the concrete problems of life in society. There are also movements that tend towards the esoteric or gnostic, characterized by a symbolic and ideological reading of the Bible. All of this has to be placed in a context of underdevelopment with its baggage of poverty and resignation. Faced with this complex situation, what emerges is the urgent need to help and stimulate Christ's faithful in the Congo to read the Word of God, to meditate on it, to pray it inasmuch as it can 'recreate' an African man who still carries within the consequences of the past.

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