(Bishop of Kumbo, Cameroon)
The evangelisation of Africa up till now has been to a large extent based on and oriented by the catechism. Unlike in the Protestant Churches where the Bible has been the official text book both for evangelisation and for the liturgy, the Catholic Christian had, and continues to have in some places, no direct access to the Bible except through select Bible stories. Bibles were not considered necessary except as reference books reserved only to the clergy and theologians. Consequently many early ordinary Catholic Christians died without having seen or touched the Bible. Tribute must, however, be paid to many a heroic early missionary who did a lot in the field of the translation of the Bible or portions of it, or of liturgical texts and catechisms into the local African languages.
Nevertheless, the so-called "penny catechism" is no longer sufficient for the evangelisation of Africa. Among the new methods to be adopted should be a "biblical" or "Bible oriented evangelisation". The Bible should be given its rightful and preferential place in evangelisation. This is because, as the Fathers of Vatican II rightly state, "all the preaching of the Church, as indeed the entire Christian religion, should be nourished and ruled by Sacred Scripture" (Dei Verbum 21). The Council emphasises the fact that "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful" (DV 22). Chapter 6 of DV gives directives on how this is to be done. The Biblical Apostolate is certainly one of the means, if not the most adequate means, or meeting a number of pastoral challenges facing the Church in Africa today, namely, the formation of the laity to become true agents of evangelisation, inculturation, ecumenism as well as dialogue with Islam and African Traditional Religion, and the proliferation of Fundamentalist Sects and New Religious Movements.
In the new evangelisation of Africa and Madagascar we must avoid at all cost a catechism without the Bible and vice versa. Our national and diocesan catechisms, following the example of the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, must be biblically oriented and rich. We must develop a pastoral praxis in which the Bible is at the basis of every thing and in which comes into dialogue with the life of the Church in all its dimensions. The Biblical Apostolate, or better, the Bible Pastoral Ministry is not an isolated ministry or apostolate like the others. It is putting the Bible at the basis of all our pastoral work and of our endeavours of evangelisation, because the Bible should be at the source of the life and activity of the Church as well as of the individual Christian. It is not so much the question of a "new evangelisation" as of an evangelisation in a "new way", a new method with new instruments based on the Bible as the preferential handbook. The Bible should be seized from the hands of experts and theologians and given back to the People of God for whom it was intended as the Word of life. It should become the vademecum of every pastor and of each and every one of Christ's faithful.
Original
text: English
