Joseph Ateh Concrete Experience of Ongoing Formation Bamenda

The beauty of being disciples today: a singular, integral, communitarian, and missionary formation (cfr. RFIS, Intro., 3).

Concrete Experience of Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province, Cameroon

 This concrete experience of Ongoing Formation has been developing for over 40 years in the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, Cameroon. The areas of focus are personal communion and evaluation, fruits, and some difficulties involved. 

There is an African Proverb from Kom: “One cannot see the back of his head”.[1] This implies that one cannot know all about oneself but needs the help of others for an evaluation.  

Awareness, growth, and practice of Priestly Fraternity for ongoing formation begin very early in candidates' lives. The journey through the seminary formation enables them to form bonds of friendship and fraternity that continue in the ministry.

 There are official channels for ongoing formation organised by the various dioceses. This experience recounted is not one of those prescribed.

We are talking about groupings of classmates who meet yearly, on ordination anniversaries to relive the seminary experience of prayers, “Faith sharing”, eating, playing, joking, storytelling, academic presentation, and finally personal communion and collective evaluation is the climax.  

1.     Personal Communion and Collective Evaluation

This takes the methodology of “Faith Sharing” where a relevant Gospel passage is read and meditated upon as a springboard to each one evaluating his personal life and pastoral performance over the year, following the four pillars of formation, spiritual, intellectual, pastoral and human. Others listen with empathy. The focus firstly, is more directly on spiritual aspects. Then they go on to highlight other dimensions that are fundamental to a gospel-oriented life such as:

Relationship with God, material and spiritual goods.

Witnessing the faith, the experiences in which his faith radiates and pastoral initiatives.

The Spiritual life; prayer, difficulties encountered, and efforts to overcome them.

Health, food, exercise, house and the environment.

Life in the presbytery, and immediate collaborators like Priests, Domestic Staff, Catechists, and Religious.

Efforts at continuous studies, expectations, disappointments, aspirations.

Involvement with communication and social media, difficulties, aspirations, hopes.

They make Individual and collective resolutions at the end of the communion to guide them for the year.  

2.     Some Fruits of the Communion

Our seminaries are inter-diocesan and inter-congregational, so diversity enriches all.

There is no cohesive or coercive force but the will to grow together. [2] No superior figure, all are brothers.

It is as a “Trinitarian dance” that fills all with the joy of Christ’s disciples.

There is empathy, confrontation, challenge and fraternal correction.

At times, emotions run high, but eventually, there is calm and reconciliation.

There is mutual assistance and a healthy relationship encouraged with their natural families in times of joy, and sorrow.

There is closeness to classmates who did not make it to ordination, or, are under ecclesiastical censure, or have left the priesthood. Some give a first-hand evaluation of the Priesthood from the lay point of view.

3.     Some difficulties

Reluctance to collaborate due to individualism, personal grudges and unhealed hurts.

Some meetings end up in a fiasco, due to disagreement. However, they reconvene and the issues are settled.

The danger is that some Priests appreciate the “Fraternity for Classmates” meetings more than ongoing formation sessions organised by the Diocesan Authorities.

The legalistic mentality is reluctant to cooperate because they say such meetings have no legal standing in Canon Law and no authoritative assentation from the bishops.

Those who stay away from these fraternal reunions soon isolate themselves. No one notices immediately, or gives a helping hand when they are in a vocational crisis.

There is the problem of how to deal with the brethren who fail to see the importance of such meetings. The following is an experience of how the class ordained in 2016 handled the issue.

“In my class, we have gone a long way to pull along our classmates who since we left the seminary have never attended any class meeting. At the end of each meeting, we always make sure, we send a delegation of two to visit our brother wherever he is and even spend a day with him. And that way, and somehow, they get to share the feedback of the meeting with them.”[3]

Conclusion

The methodology of this experience comes from our Ancestral practice of community sharing known as the Palaver, the art of handling issues collectively in the community.[4] The palaver process is “Synodality” in the African context. Then the Ubuntu spirituality: "I can only affirm my humanity through others and/or community".[5] Finally, the initiation rituals which tend to create a lifelong bond of unity and friendship between age groups.

The Bishops sanction these Classmate's experiences, and they frequent their Classmate's meetings too.[6] This meeting takes two days and the numbers in class is relatively small. Years ago the average was 7 to 15. Now classes are becoming bigger.

This practice of “Fraternity for Classmates”, further critically examined and perfected for use in the Ongoing Formation, shall be found to be very valuable.

Fr. Joseph Mbzinu Ateh[7]

[1] Kom is a tribe in the North Western Region of the Republic of Cameroon in the Central African Region.

[2] Seeing the value of this “Fraternity for Classmates”, some Priests who do not have Classmates make the effort to join the class before or after them in ordination in other to belong since they would have shared quite much in common.

[3] Fr. Gabriel Tokoh, Archdiocese of Bamenda, 2016 Ordination Class, St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary Bambui, Cameroon.

[4] Several African writers depict such scenes of “Palaver” practice in their works, e.g., John S. Mbiti, Elechi Amadi, Chinua Achebe, Camara Laye, Francis N. Ateh, Joseph A. Ngongwikuo, etc.

[5] Gathogo Julius, art., John Mbiti’ Ubuntu Theology: Was it Rooted in his African Heritage? Cf. https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992022000200002 (accessed 16/1/24)

[6]This experience of bonding during school years and continuing with these bonds of friendship and communion is a common feature of all Catholic schools and colleges in the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province of Cameroon. Hence,  there are alumni associations, like St. Joseph’s College Sasse Old Boys Association, Sacred Heat Ex-students Association, Bishop Rogan Ex-students Association, Our Lady of Lourdes Ex-students Association, St. Augustine Ex-students Association, St. Francis Ex-students Association, Queen of the Holy Rosary Ex-students Association, etc.

[7] A note on the author of this article:

Fr. Joseph Mbzinu Ateh, Cameroonian, was ordained in 1992 for the Archdiocese of Bamenda. Priestly Formation at St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary (STAMS), Bambui, Cameroon. Post-ordination studies at Alphonsian Academy in Rome, and “Vinea Mea” Centre of Spirituality, Loppiano, Italy. Formator in St. Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary, Bambui, and Propaedeutic Seminary, Bafut. Parish Priest in the Cathedral Parish Archdiocese of Bamenda.

Vice Director “Vinea Mea” Loppiano, Italy, and now Director of the Centre of Spirituality for Seminarians, Deacons and Priests, Nairobi, Kenya. Co-Responsible for the Centre of Inculturation, Mariapolis Piero, Nairobi, Kenya.