Being and Building up the Church in My Father’s Home

About the Book

The rehabilitation, by St. Pope Paul VI, of African traditional religions and cultures has made them more objective for philosophical, theological and anthropological investigation and reflection. And the investigating and reflecting subject is a native African himself. The repatriation of missiology into ecclesiology in the Catholic Church towards the end of the 20th Century was a new development; and the result of it is what we have before us in this book. Here personal native anthropological, philosophical and theological studies and experience have combined with in-depth reading of some African novelists’ necessarily Afrocentric distillation of African culture has nourished thinking and reflection at a new level in terms of ecclesial implications of living Christianity authentically and of being and building the Church in my father’s home beyond deference as defect.

About the Author

Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Oliver Alozie Onwubiko, an anthropologist and theologian is a priest of the Catholic diocese of Ahiara. He was born in Umudim-Akpodim Ezinihitte Mbaise where he grew up. After his Seminary training in Nigeria he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood on August 23, 1980. Before going for further Studies he was a Students’ Dean at the St. Joseph’s Major Seminary Ikot Ekpene. At the Pontifical Comillas University, Canto Blanco, Madrid, he got a doctorate degree in theology specializing in ecclesiology. He earned a diploma on Study Techniques and Intellectual Apprenticeship from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters -Education Sciences Department. He taught ecclesiology, missiology, theology of ecumenism and African Thought, Religion and Culture at the Bigard Memorial Seminary Enugu, his alma mater, where he rose to be Vice Rector II and Director of Sports and Culture. He has attended many International Conferences on African Studies. He delivered a Paper On Igbo Studies Conference at Cornell University Ithaca, New York, April 2003. He was a member of the organizing committee of the Pan-African congress on Missiology, celebrating Fifty years of Ad Gentes Divinitus in October 2016 and presented a Paper. A member of the International Catholic Association of Missiologists, he is also a founding member of the Catholic Missiologists Association of Nigeria. He has served as a member of the National Committee on Inculturation (CBCN Commission), and CBCN Inter Religious dialogue Commission. He is the chairman of Ahiara Diocesan Interreligious commission. His publications include: African thought, Religion and Culture, 1991; Theory and Practice of Inculturation (1992) Facing the Osu Issue in the African Synod (1993), Echoes from the African Synod (1994), Missionary Ecclesiology: An Introduction (1999), The Church as the Family of God [Ujamaa] (1999), Building Unity Together in the Mission of the Church [A Theology of Ecumeniism,] (1999), The Church in Mission (2001)