Contemporary African Catholic spirituality recognizes the ongoing malignant role of evil spirits.

Spiritually bankrupt "Modernist" gray haired Catholic missionaries in Africa may or may not!



Adapted likewise from The Catholic World Report, August / September 2009.


Could what follows be based on a peculiarly Nigerian perspective?


"Father Hebert who spent 20 years in Nigeria as a missionary...."

Hence in places like Nigeria:

"The proper approach is to begin with this evil spirit..."

We treat the problem as a real one...

"AFRICA

"The number of Catholics in Africa grew from two million in 1900 to 165 million at the end of 2007.

""[S]ays Florida - based Father Joseph Hebert, M. Afr., who spent 20 years in Nigeria as a missionary and has observed a change of leadership taking place as Africans take charge of missionary activities, God bless those missionaries who spent themselves transmitting the faith to Africans..."

We now get to hear what Father Herbert has to tell The Catholic World Report (CWR) about the glaring difference between the attitudes of aging modernist European - American missionaries and real - deal native African (or here most likely Nigerian) Catholic priests regarding the everyday reality of demonic spirits.

In Father Herbert's own words:

"In some cases, the [African] faithful placed more confidence in those foreign missionaries than in their own indigenous priests an dreligious.

"As a whole, however, Africans are like all other people.

"They more at ease with their own kind.

"Their own (priests and religious) are in a much better position to understand them, their problems, their mentalities, their needs, their weaknesses and strengths.

"A small example:

"At a meeting of priests -- both foreign missionaries and indigenous priests -- one of the local {most likely Nigerian] priests stood up to explain that when an elderly woman comes to the priest [and says] she is tormented by an evil spirit, the proper approach is to begin with this evil spirit and then proceed with the suffering of this woman.

"We do not begin by preaching to her about imaginative dreams, hallucinations, superstitions, etc.

"We treat the problem as a real one..."