My dear Brothers and Sisters in the Marshallan fraternity,
I have chosen to address you this month, as we celebrate our Founders, in some of the words that Pope John XXIII used to open the Second Vatican Council. In his opening speech the Pope made the now famous statement about “Opening the windows of the Church to allow in fresh air”. By that statement, the Pope called for a renewal of the Church, its structures, liturgy and her view of the world as it relates to international economic order and relations among nations. And true to that wish the Second Vatican council ended with such sweeping reforms as had never been seen before in the history of the Catholic Church. One significant outcome of Vatican II was the elevation of the laity to new heights, recognising its full integration into the priestly, kingly and prophetic role of the Church. This recognition brought along with it certain expectations, including expectations of the laity to respond to ‘the signs of the times’.
81 years ago, 13 young men in Sekondi, Ghana, “read and responded to the signs of their time” by bringing into being our Noble Order to save, as it were, young Catholic men who were getting attracted to some protestant lodges objected to by the Catholic Church. By that action, today, the Catholic Church in Ghana, Togo, Benin, Liberia and to some extent, London can boast of a strong lay organisation, the Noble Order of Knights and Ladies of Marshall that is contributing to the building and growth of the Church. Our members occupy very important positions in the Church. We have in our fold, more Papal Knights and Dames than any lay society in the Church. Most Parochial Councils in the Church are dominated by Marshallans. Our monetary contributions to Church activities such as harvests are unparalleled. We even pride ourselves with the number of intellectuals, well to do and famous men who are members of our Order. We have grown in numbers such that today we can count 91 Councils, some 86 Courts and over 50 junior Councils and Courts. We have indeed been blessed.
Today, 81 years on, we, the successors of the Founders are also being called to a new renewal, to “open our windows and allow fresh air into our Order” by “reading and responding to the signs of our times”. Pope John Paul II, in pursuit of this idea from Vatican II, called upon the International Alliance of Catholic Knights of which we are members to be “Witnesses of Christ to the World”. By this, the Pope was simply exhorting us to intensify our evangelisation which is what we have always prided ourselves to be doing. But Pope Paul VI had in an earlier apostolic exhortation issued in 1975, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelisation Today) stated that “the man whom we claim to want to evangelise is not an abstract being but is subject to social and economic questions” Pope Paul’s statement perhaps explains better what St Augustine also said that “a certain modicum of material comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue”.
The signs that we must respond to today, is not to start new church societies but rather how to use the existing structures to impact positively on issues like poverty, joblessness of our youth, streetism parental irresponsibility, crime, moral decadence, ethnicity, political intolerance and many others that are negatively affecting the people we claim to want to evangelise. As a people who occupy an elitist position in our Church, we must explore ways to bring new life, talents and energies to every segment of the Church. No longer can we be associated with ignorance of our faith and of the traditions of our Church. Similarly we cannot be associated with the failure to see” the signs of our time” associated with poverty, moral decadence of the youth, high crime rates, political intolerance, etc.
Indeed we cannot continue to withdraw into the confines of our own structure. We need to open our “windows to allow fresh air to flow into the way we think and do things”. We need fresh air to invigorate our formation programmes and strengthen us for our evangelisation mission; we need fresh air to re-energise our structures, our rituals, our criteria for promotions, our understanding of the relationship between our religiosity and the realities of the world, our relationship with each other within the Order and the effective practice of our motto Unity, Fraternity, Charity and Service.
My challenge and charge to you as we remember our Founders and commemorate the good work they did is for every individual in our Noble Order to make that personal resolve “to breathe in some fresh air” so we can collectively become effective witnesses of Christ to the world.
Remember, YOU ARE THE KEY!
This month of November is also the month in which we remember our brothers and sisters who have joined the Noble Order above. While we pray for their souls that the Lord will have mercy on those who are still not with him, my prayers and sympathies go to Councils and Courts who lost members this year and to families who lost their dear ones.
I wish you happy anniversary.
Yours fraternally
SIR KT. EDDIE PRAH
(SUPREME KNIGHT)