Rite and Reason: As 100 Irish missionaries who died over the past century, 49 of them violently, are remembered, Fr Pádraig Ó Máille explains what they were doing abroad.
In the early days of the work of the Church Mission Society in Africa, an Anglican bishop set out what he considered to be the objective of his church's foreign mission: to establish in the mission territory a self-ministering, self-propagating, self-supporting church.
This was the mission task, the work of the missionary in those far- off days. There was a reassuring clarity about what it meant then to be a missionary. There was another less happy reality about the nature of Christian missions in recent centuries - they were marked by the often bitter denominational differences found in the post-Reformation Christian churches. There were struggles for territorial advantage.
There was the demonisation of other groups. Villages and communities were divided in the name of Christ. It is little wonder that many of those who grew up in a mission milieu have come to see themselves, in the words of the Nigerian poet and dramatist John Peper Clark, as "early sequestered from their tribe" and resent this.
Modern literature from Africa offers an interesting critique of Christian mission and of the work of the Christian missionary. The picture it presents is not always flattering. Nevertheless, it challenges the traditional missionary in many of his/her assumptions.
Mongo Beti, a French language novelist from the Cameroon, has Fr Drumont, the central character in his fine novel The Poor Christ of Bomba, in dialogue with the colonial administrator, reflect on his own experience as a missionary.
"I left France with the ardour of an apostle. I had only one ambition in my heart: to extend the Kingdom of Christ. Rationalist Europe filled me with dismay. I chose the disinherited, or those I chose to regard as such. How naive I was for are not we ourselves the disinherited . . . I never stopped to think . . . I played the aristocrat . . . I built schools, churches, almost a whole town in Bomba . . . I didn't ever ask myself what all this had to do with Christ. In a word, I became an administrator, like you."
When Vidal, the administrator, suggests that Drumont should change his mind about leaving, that he should stay for the sake of civilisation, Drumont replies angrily: "No, Vidal! You are not here to implant civilisation, you are here to protect a certain precise category of people, that's all . . .
"There are only two things I can do now . . . "I can assist you to colonise, softening up the country ahead of you and protecting your rear. Or I can truly Christianise this country; in which case I'd better stay out of your way."
A greater attention by missionaries today, whether in their formation or in their daily lives, to subversive voices like that of Mongo Beti might help us to see ourselves as others see us. It might encourage in us the humility which should mark all authentic Christian mission.
This traditional notion of mission, whether as expressed by Drumont or in the idea of a self-ministering, self-supporting, self-propagating church, is very much changing. For one thing, the new Christian communities, in what we once called mission lands, see this as their own task.
This threefold task was set out with great clarity in 1972 by Bishop Patrick Kalilombe and his local Christian communities as their pastoral priority in the years ahead in the Catholic diocese of Lilongwe in Malawi. The missionary task has become the Christian task. The success story of Christian foreign missions has been a major factor in the emergence of a new and broader understanding of the term mission.
"Mission" is no longer limited in focus or meaning to either the foreign missions or to the traditional parish mission. The definition by the World Mission Council of the Church of Scotland is useful: "Mission is the task of the Church, wherever it is found around the world. It is the joyous and loving response of the Church in God's name which crosses all human boundaries."
Until the good news of salvation has crossed all human boundaries, Christ's command to go and preach to the unevangelised remains a challenge. Today, it is clear that the traditional mission-sending countries can no longer respond effectively to that challenge. The vocations crisis in traditional Catholic countries like Ireland means that for the foreseeable future, the great missionary adventure of these countries is severely limited.
The task remains, however: it is now in the hands of the new, vibrant Christian communities. Traditional missionary groups are taking root in mission lands.
Members of the Christian laity are playing a much more central role in the task of mission. New missionary congregations of sisters, brothers and priests springing up in Africa and Asia are sending evangelists to the end of today's world.
Some of them are re-evangelising what were once Christian lands. These creative initiatives need and deserve the continuing financial support of the home churches; they also deserve our prayers.
Fr Pádraig Ó Máille is from Louisburgh, Co Mayo. He is a member of St Patrick's Missionaries, Kiltegan, and has spent more than 30 years in Nigeria and Malawi. He has written extensively on the missions in Irish and English.