(Essay written by Chidozie Chukwubuike)
The Catholic Church in Nigeria boasts of a collection of some of the most brilliant minds any society could wish for among their priests. But they are condemned to devoting that intellect to studying philosophy and theology. They spend eight years of their youthful years doing this. Only very few daring ones break away from this restricting policy, often after the eight years, to explore other fields. Imagine if these brilliant young minds go into tech, artificial intelligence, medicine and its ancillary disciplines, engineering, performing arts, etc, the society will be the better for it. Igbo land is the most affected by this misfortune. In Nigeria the Igbo nation boasts of the largest demographic constellation of Catholic priests. This is a double tragedy for the Igbo society because, not only that the Igbo nation lost in these men the opportunity of the multiplication of genius due to the Catholic doctrine of celibacy for her priests, it equally denied the society the opportunity of applying the genius of these young men to areas that add value to modern idea of development. What a tragic loss for a great people.
It has therefore become exigent that the Catholic Church in Igbo land reviews its curriculum for the formation of priests. Theology and Philosophy can be made additional but compulsory courses (minor) while pursuing a major course, something like a General Studies course. For instance, someone studying Electrical Engineering could take Introduction to Philosophy as one of the First Semester first year courses and do same with Theology, perhaps in 2nd year. They can design their curriculum to have three philosophy courses and three theology courses in any discipline one decided to pursue and award diploma certificates, which becomes a prerequisite for the ordination of a priest, to anyone who completes those courses. The Catholic Church in Nigeria needs to appreciate the peculiarity of the needs of the Igbo nation. Having lost the civil war and with a deliberate policy of underdevelopment, the church should know that ndi Igbo need their best brains to go into fields like Engineering and Agriculture to rebuild. Also having been depopulated by the civil war, it is totally unreasonable to retain the celibacy policy here in Ala Igbo. The Igbo nation cannot afford to have brilliant and viral young men yet not multiply in population. It is trite and delusional to wish the Catholic Church away from Igbo land. However, the Catholic Church in Nigeria is influential due to its Igbo population, which by extension implies that among her priests too the Igbo is an influential Bloc. The Igbo Catholic community therefore can approach Rome with its own peculiar needs and where Rome refuses to grant it they can threaten to do what the Anglican community in Nigeria did... Break away from the source. It may not come to that anyway but the point of this essay is that the Catholic Church in Igbo is, perhaps unwittingly but, significantly contributory to the underdevelopment of Igbo land and therefore needs to act to redress the situation.
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