INTRODUCTION
May I convey my gratitude and compliments to the Organisers for inviting me to participate in and make a presentation at this Re-Union Conference being held under the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Knights and Ladies of Marshall of the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province? This event is, indeed, a novelty in the annals of the Noble Order and I wish to congratulate you for your visionary aptitude.
Under the 50th Anniversary theme, “The Noble Order of the Knights and Ladies of Marshall, Discipleship and Evangelisation in the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province, I am to speak to the topic The Noble Order of the Knights Ladies of Marshall In Retrospect. I do this not as an expert but a student of Catholic Social Thought. Therefore, my objective is to articulate my opinion on the topic with the hope that it will provoke my audience to come up with brighter ideas to enhance the image of the Noble Order and the Catholic Church in general. I will look at the Church from the standpoint of some scholars and zero in on Christs central message, ask what Marshallans do and ought to do in that respect, examine some impediments and conclude with a couple of recommendations. Since our Order follows the command system, it is proper to focus on the controlling directives.
The Catholic Church as an organization
To enhance the thematic significance of the topic, I wish to have a recourse, though in a limited way, to what some scholars put forward as a basic perspective of the Catholic Church. So, lets look at the Church in its three-fold state, namely, Church Triumphant, Church Penitent and Church Militant. Church Triumphant refers to the living souls in heaven. Church Penitent refers to the temporary abode of all Gods Children who disobey Him and, upon their demise, are offered a chance to rid themselves of the dirt staining their souls, before inheriting the Paradise. Church Militant is the earthly sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ and they have the gracious opportunity, if they desire, to do Christs bidding in order to merit entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is this Church Militant that the Second Vatican Council emphasised as People of God”. All of us here are part of the People of God and every one matters.
Purpose of the Church Militant
Every organisation has a purpose. The Church Militants purpose is to honour, praise and obey God. This purposive nature of the Church Militant manifests itself through three structural pillars, namely, Creed, Cult, and Code (What we believe, what we do praising, honoring and adoring God, and also do to concretely showcase our belief and our obedience to God, and what we do by way of discipline which can lead us to gain favour if we abide by the rules or what we do which can lead us into damnation and punishment, if we prove disobedient . The Ministry of Jesus Christ highlighted these three structural pillars in several ways and a careful assessment of it reveals three critical duty-calls to Christians.
THE FIRST DUTY-CALL
Upholding and abiding by the Creed is our first duty-call. The Creed is never meant for memorisation or recitation. The Creed rather impels Christians to announce the Good News to all the people of the earth. Jesus first command, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature… is directed at all of us and no-one can recluse himself or herself. At the end of time, no-one can say “my parish priest or my Bishop did not call me to follow him to announce the Good news. As St. Paul VI succinctly put it in the Evangelii Nuntiandi of 1975, a follower of Christ exists to fulfil their duty of being messenger of the Good News of Jesus Christ”. In the Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Council Fathers state that any lay person who does not make a contribution towards the spreading of the Kingdom of God is useful neither to himself or the Church. In Praedicate Evangelium, Pope Francis states categorically that Each Christian, by virtue of baptism, is a missionary disciple. All this simply means the Church exists in order to evangelise, and we are all called equally to evangelise irrespective of whether we are ordained or not. The early disciples saw this duty as the highest calling. That is why St, Paul says, Woe unto me if I do not preach the Gospel (1 Cor. 9: 16). Evangelisation is, therefore, the first duty-call to all Christians. It is a command! Catholics were late in using the word evangelisationor evangelise. It has become prominent in our vocabularly only in the post-conciliar era.
THE SECOND DUTY-CALL
The second duty-call is the practice of Charity. Jesus says it is the new commandment (Jn13:34). Charity is superior to all the virtues (CCC 182 6). It is the pinnacle of love. Charity is defined as To love God above all things for his own sake and your neighbor as yourself for the love God”. Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI teaches that Charity is at the heart of Christian Life”. To be able to fully comprehend why Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI says that Charity is the heart of Christian Life, let us advert our minds to the predominant occurrence of love the poor message in the Gospels. First, before Jesus stepped out to begin his Ministry He read in the Synagogue Isaiahs treatise in the Scroll to outdoor his purpose as follows:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed. (Luke 4: 18).
Every teacher, at the beginning of his lesson, set out his purpose or objective in his teaching notes, and this was what Jesus did in the Synogogue. His purpose was clearly for the good of the poor. Second, Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes). Here again, it was about the poor; those who hunger and thirst; those who mourn, etc. All these are living categories of poverty. Third, Jesus again commanded: love one another as I have loved you and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus use of the word neighbour baffled the scholars and so they asked But who is my neighbour? Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate his point. Here again, Jesus drew their attention to the poor and asked them to practice love to the poor person even if he is an enemy. To crown His Teaching on Charity, He asked his followers to identify him with the poor. The Apostle says for your sake He became poor. Jesus canticled the characteristics of the poor as follows:
I was hungry and you gave me to eat
I was thirsty and you gave me to drink
I was a stranger and you welcomed me
I was naked and you clothed me
I was sick and you cared for me
I was in prison and you visited me
So, the essence of Charity runs through Jesus Ministry and the bottom line is: Seek the poor and attend to their needs. Do not ask where to find the poor they are all around us. Jesus said: För the poor you will always find around you. Indeed, the statistics is staggering; around the world there are over 800 million people who go to bed every day hungry and have no roof over their heads. We have in our country some of these 800 million poor people. Look for them and do the needful. It is then that you would merit a place at the Church Triumphant.
THE DYAD OF EVANGELISATION-CHARITY
5.1 EVANGELISATION
When you have given a personal affirmation to the Creed (faith), your critical action needed to complement your affirmation, is to Evangelise. In our modern world, going from door to door to evangelise is probably outmoded. The callajero de la fe which is predominant these days among mushroom Churches, is not suitable. The Second Vatican Council advises that new methods must be found for evangelisation. What new methods can we adopt for this all important duty? Preaching of the Word alone no longer suffices in the modern world. We need to allow witnessing to do more of the work. The modern man is more influenced by witnessing than teaching. If he listens to teachers it is because he sees them more as witnesses than as teachers. So, what new methods can Marshallans adopt to evangelise?
CHARITY
This is where Charity offers itself as the option to adopt. Charity is the pincer movement, the critical path to follow. Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI teaches in the Caritas Deus Est that the Gospel is not only informative but also performative. St. Charles Borromeo also taught: Preach, but first, with the way you live otherwise people will say that you say one thing and do another. So, display your Christian love by concrete action.
In the Praedicate Evangelium, Pope Francis has instituted a new Dicastery called Dicastery for the Service of Charity. It is listed third after the Dicastery of Evangelisation and Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith in the hierarchy of Roman Curia. It shows how important Charity is in the Churchs life. The Dicastery has assumed the function or instrument for bringing solace to the poor and vulnerable, and for emphasising the practice of the Churchs principle of preferential option for the poor. In view of this, Caritas Internationalis has been reconfigured by Vatican to serve as the major agency of the Church to express the Mercy of God in real-time situations. Almost all countries have established Caritas Agencies. In Ghana, our Bishops have set up CaritasGhana at the national level and at the Diocesan level. I am pleased to mention at this time that a member of the Noble Order in this Province has done a yeomans job to promote and stabilise CaritasGhana and CaritasAfrica. This Mashallan is no other than Worthy Brother Samuel Zan Akologo. The President of CaritasAfrica is also from Ghana, namely, Archbishop Gabriel Anokye. Certainly, the face of the Catholic Church in social life is set to change and we all have indispensable role to play in it.
WHAT IS THE PICTURE OF THE RETROSPECT
Without doubt, what we see of ourselves in retrospect, is nothing good to write home about. With respect to evangelisation, can we, looking back, say we have paid our dues? What does the scorecard show? Can we be proud of our performance? If we are honest with ourselves, we do not have satisfactory answers to these questions? If we are not preaching the Gospel to win souls for Christ, we are failing in our primary obligation. How do we explain the fact that the Churchs membership is dwindling in our country? How come that we have allowed non-essential practices to take precedent over this core duty Christ himself gave us? We should not run away from these questions.
With respect to Charity, even though we have it enshrined in our motto we have generally paid lip service to it. Our best has only been a once-a-year affair or a quarterly affair. That is woefully inadequate. Of a truth, the condition of the poor is a daily occurrence and, therefore, our acts of Charity, should be seen occurring daily. I know it is a big challenge but we cannot afford to ignore charity if we are determined to do the critical will of Christ. Remember that the original name of the Noble Order was Association of Charity”. We have in our Manual the Acceptance Speech of the late Kwesi Aaba when he was installed the second Grand Knight of Council One. In that speech he said the way to let your light shine is to love; love for others Pope Francis has said in Gaudete Et Exsultate that though the primacy is our individual relationship with God, “the ultimate criterion upon which we will be judged will be what we have done for others”. He further says that the practice of Charity should be a Christians ID. Let us carry it with us daily and wherever we go. Marshallan population in Ghana alone is in the neighbourhood of 14,000. Imagine if we all put on this Christians ID, what a great impact it would make for the glory of God! In retrospect, we can see the necessity to assume a different posture and follow a new path in our discipleship if we desire to remain Catholics. While the modern man is largely not prone or susceptible to messages of gospel preachers, everyone can appreciate an act of charity. Therefore, if we can intensify our acts of charity and carry it wherever we go as our Christian ID, we would be evangelising all the same, and perhaps even better. Charity is a great virtue.
So for me, in our world today, and putting everything together, the way to carry out evangelisation is to do acts of Charity continuously and frequently. Let our acts of charity do evangelisation.
SOME IMPEDIMENTS TO OUR PERFORMANCE
9.1 Taking The Order For A “Social Club”
In retrospect, one can identify a number of factors that serve as constraints to our effective performance as a Catholic society. I can only list four of these constraints. The first constraint is that we, consciously or unconsciously, have taken the Knights of Marshall and the Ladies of Marshall to be a social club; a place we go to fraternise and entertain ourselves. We know that is not the purpose of the Noble Order. In a recent chastisement by the Supreme Spiritual Director, he decried some behaviours of some of us, especially the indulgence in unhealthy amorous relationship and that the Club offers such members a safe rendezvous or haven. He has a dossier on the issue from confidential, verifiable reports but he would not release details. He has written to the Supreme Council and the Grand Court on these issues, expecting to see a change. A Catholic lay organisation has the onerous duty to promote the image of the Church and to lead its members in the march towards the salvific mission of Christ. It is never meant to be a social club. How do we redeem ourselves in such circumstance, going into the future?
9.2 Inadequate Knowledge About the Church
Another constraint to our effective performance is the paucity and porosity of knowledge we have about the Church. The average Marshallan is not well versed in the knowledge of the Church. If we were to subject ourselves to a Quiz about Catholic Church, you bet we would cut a poor figure of ourselves. We have always taken refuge in the expectation that our priests would lead us to acquire the necessary knowledge. This is a regrettable situation in the face of eschatological reckoning we all will encounter. My question is: What credible programme can we adopt in this province to equip ourselves with authentic knowledge about the Church? As you may have observed in the last 4-5 years, our preoccupation is shifting imperceptibly to the organisation of Church parades. They are beautiful and lovely to watch and indeed they have become a source of attraction to the public. But can they enjoy a priority or precedence over programmes for acquiring vital knowledge of the Church? Let us be more serious.
Flagrant Flouting of Rules and Directives
There is evidence to show that some Councils and Courts dont give regard to directives issued by our leaders – Council and Court level and even at the Supreme Council and Grand Court level. Grand Knights sometimes treat official instructions from the Supreme Knight with disdain. What should not be lost to us is that as an Order, our strength largely depends upon the extent that we obey our leaders and observe our rules and regulations. The rules of precedence, for instance, must at all times be observed, especially in public. It doesnt matter whether you are older member in age. Seniority should at all times be respected. Higher officers must be acknowledged and be treated with deference.
- Structural Suffocation
There is yet another constraint that is probably at the root of all the constraints. It is the structural constraint in the governance of the Noble Order as a Church society. I call it structural suffocation.
The command system of the Noble Order has given rise to a pyramidal authority that largely obscures the prominence of the Supreme Knight or the Grand Lady and totally disregards Good Governance in general. The function of the Supreme Knight has been reduced to a nebulous Chief Administrative Officer and this deprives him of bringing his vision to bear on the forward-march of the Order and exercise effective control and authority. This system has created a situation where an over-all controlling group has the sole power to, for instance, technically select who should lead the Noble Order and who should be office holders. The result is that only those who sing to the tune of this small group are obviously nominated for balloting for election to the office of Deputy Supreme Knight or Deputy Grand Lady and the other positions, most of which are by appointment. This system suffocates the election of suitable candidates who rather hold different leadership styles or orientation that the generality of our membership would be glad to vote for in elections. Most of such eligible brothers and sisters become frustrated and develop lukewarm attitude and eventually withdraw into oblivion. This deprives the Order of selecting from a wider range of leadership qualities and capabilities that Marshallans possess. There are many younger Marshallans with progressive modern ideas that can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the Order but they do not have the opportunity.
The original idea of the Founders was never to establish such a command system for the Order. From the views of some old members who have passed on, the idea was to have a Coordinating Centre and not centrally-controlled mechanism for the Order as the numbers grew with the years. The unkindest cut of all this is that those constituting this pyramidal authority hold their positions for life. The suffocating structure has degenerated to the extent that the direction and orientation of the Order as a Catholic Lay Society now lacks focus on the promotion of Catholicism. Self-referentiality has taken hold of the leadership character of the Order and this is frowned upon by the Church because it is the threshold of relativism. This suffocating structure that exercises the pyramidal power in the Noble Order is the Supreme Cabinet for the Knights, and Committee of Past Substantive Grand Ladies, for the ladies. These two structures (not the people wielding it) have grown rusty and do not fit in the present era of Good Governance. This particular structure is, to say the least, otiose and altogether, oppressive. It runs counter to the demands of a Synodal Church and inflicts great pain and ruin on Church principles of subsidiarity and human dignity. Many Marshallans in private discussions speak against this system but unfortunately would not raise their voice formally. This is the tragedy of our time. We may not have noticed but the reality is that the Noble Order, imperceptibly, risks building a system or a dynasty of sycophants from which our ultimate leaders would forever be selected. Indeed, the Vatican issued an authoritative directive in June 2021 urging all lay movements in the Church to discontinue forthwith the practice where some leaders remain in power beyond five years. Why cant the Noble Order implement this directive? Indeed, the time has come for the Noble Order to be restructured so that the management of our affairs would become characterised by the tenets of Good Governance and Church law. I am looking at a situation where the Supreme Knights office and the Grand Ladys office would be where the buck stops and not beyond.
It is my humble submission that the Noble Order in the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province should discuss these four impediments at this Conference and submit concrete proposals for the consideration of the Supreme Council and the Grand Court for the good of the Order.
CONCLUSION
I wish to once again congratulate the Noble Order of the Knights and Ladies of Marshall in the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province for holding this landmark Re-union Conference. I urge you to take advantage of the sterling leadership competence present in your membership to chart new paths for the growth of the Noble Order in particular and the Church in general. In retrospect, I am of the view that it should be possible for us to have a competent Supreme Knight or Grand Lady who hails and lives in the Province. It is also my opinion that you can rise to become the pillar of lay leadership in this part of Ghana. Take advantage of the Synodality wind of change to strengthen the unity among yourselves and strengthen the bond between you and the Provincial Ordinaries as well as the priests. You stand to gain from that.
My greatest concern, however, lies in the central thrust of my presentation, which is that, the time is now, “Kairos”, for us to embark upon a programme of Evangelisation-cum-Acts of Charity in a sustained manner in this Province. Aim at eradicating the devastating conditions the poor face hunger, thirst, disease, lack of clothing, isolation, love, illiteracy, etc. Such conditions injure a persons dignity. It should be your duty to restore the dignity of your fellow human being. You have the capacity and capability to do it if you put on your Christians ID. Set the standard for the whole Noble Order. What you need is effective planning and Christian commitment. The Church depends upon you in this modern era to make the reign of Christ more prominent and impactful. It is your prime apostolate. You have to do it. If you dont, no-one else will do it for you. But remember, you will either save yourselves or perish with it.
Thank you.
THIS PRESENTATION WAS MADE AT THE RE-UNION CONFERENCE OF THE
NOBLE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS AND LADIES OF MARSHALL
IN THE TAMALE ECCLESIASTICAL PROVINCE