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Document Details : Title: ‘Specialiseren en samenwerken om te overleven’ Subtitle: Omer Degrijse en zijn apologie voor missieinstituten tijdens het Tweede Vaticaans Concilie Author(s): VANYSACKER, Dries Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 56 Issue: 1 Date: 2016 Pages: 34-50 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.56.1.3194510 Abstract : De afkondiging door Paulus VI van Ad gentes, het decreet van het Tweede Vaticaans Concilie over de missieactiviteit van de kerk, op 7 december 1965, bracht een nieuwe manier van denken met zich over het hele missiegebeuren en de missiologie, over de band tussen missionering en oecumene, alsook over de houding tot niet-christelijke godsdiensten en culturen. Het missiedecreet was een allesbehalve gemakkelijke uitdaging. De traditionele missies waren in hun kern geraakt door de gevolgen van een wereldwijde dekolonisatie. Een interne organisatorische verandering, waarbij de rol van de jonge kerken met een eigen hiërarchie voorop stond, drong zich op. Bovendien mag men niet uit het oog verliezen dat de sfeer ten overstaan van de missionarissen, zowel in het Westen als in de missiegebieden, niet erg positief was. Integendeel, de traditionele westerse missionarissen werden vanwege hun band met de koloniserende machten in een slecht licht geplaatst en velen werden niet enkel het slachtoffer van afrekeningen in de media, maar ook fysiek het slachtoffer van opstanden, met voorop het drama van de Simba-rebellie in voormalig Belgisch Congo. Deze donkere schaduw bleef over het concilie hangen omdat vele missiebisschoppen ofwel geen nieuws hadden van hun bezette diocesen, ofwel niet tot in Rome geraakten voor de derde sessie in het najaar van 1964. Paul IV’s proclamation on 7 December 1965 of Ad gentes, the decree of the Second Vatican Council on the missionary activities of the Church, introduced a whole new way of thinking about the practice of mission and about missiology, about the link between mission and ecumenism and about the attitude towards non-Christian religions and cultures. The decree on the mission posed anything but an easy challenge. Traditional missions had been deeply affected by the consequences of a worldwide decolonization. An internal reform was needed that would emphasize the role of the young churches with their own hierarchies. Moreover, we need to bear in mind that the attitude towards the missionaries was rather less than positive, both in the West and in the countries where the missions operated. On the contrary, traditional missionaries were put in a bad light because of their ties to the colonizers, and many were not just targeted in the media, some also suffered during the revolts that erupted, particularly during the dramatic Simba rebellion in former Belgian Congo. In this article, we focus on the general response and the interventions of Omer Degrijse (1913-2002) with regard to the editing of the decree Ad gentes. Degrijse was the father superior of the Congretation of Scheut, a pre-eminently missionary congregation. From the various sources he has left behind, spread out over his personal archives, which can be found both at the KADOC and the Archief Vaticanum II of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies in Leuven, we can reconstruct his contribution to what would eventually become the decree Ad gentes. The leitmotiv in the Degrijse’s texts and interventions is an apologetic of the mission institutes, which he believed not only had to be open to changes in the field and new ideas about mission, but should also be prepared to cooperate with the young churches and the local hierarchy. In that respect, Degrijse pushed ahead, even though on other occasions, he tended to be rather obstructionist. His main themes are a clear description of the essential (territorial) concept of mission ad extra, the importance of specialized mission institutes, the missionary duty of foreign and native clergy and lay people, ecumenism in the missions, the active involvement of lay people and the dialogue with the ever-growing number of non-Christians. His earlier, positive attitude towards the Propaganda Fide, still a guiding factor in the organization of the missions, remained a constant during the editing process of the scheme on mission activity. |
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