THE CHANGING SPIRITUAL CLIMATE, CATHOLIC IDENTITY AND 2023 SYNOD: BURNING ISSUES
The competition in the current spiritual climate beclouds any claims to any spiritual hegemony. There is evident deconstruction within the religious domain and collapse of denominationalism. Spirituality is now open to hybridization and the most hit religious sects are the conservative ones because the development touches the core of their identity. For those who are familiar with postmodernism, decentralization is just one of its many traits. From a Catholic religious perspective, this phenomenon has a lot of implications because it shakes the very foundations of the Catholic identity in a multi-variant spiritual sphere. This chapter engages the Catholic identity especially within the Nigeria context., identifying its inherent challenges amidst the changing spiritual climate of the time. Employing the exploratory method, the work discusses these challenges in line with the forthcoming 2023 Synod and calls the Universal Church to consider them as issues that pose grave danger to the Ctholics spirituality in the nearest future. The work contends that the 2023 Synod is a timely opportunity to track new strategies of safeguarding the Catholics identity within the Nigerian content especially and the world at large.
