Traditional Catholic worship takes place in Churches which the Faithful have put up for that purpose. Worshiping or praying requires some degree of concentration, which to some people, is only possible when their immediate surrounding is quiet. With increasing city encroachment on some Churches the question now is, how is this affecting or could affect traditional Catholic worship?
Wherever there is a settlement, there is bound to be other institutions or establishments to cater for people’s needs and wants. No wonder drinking joints and markets soon find themselves competing for space either with people’s homes or with a church. In its strive to meet people’s needs and ensure order, the government comes up with development or urbanisation plans.
By the time such plans are implemented, church buidings, which in many cases, were the first structures to be erected in those areas, find themselves sand-witched from every direction by either busy roads, public schools, markets or commercial centres.
One negative effect which results from such encroachment is noise pollution, which makes worship, especially on Sundays, not only difficult, but sometimes unbearable. In Buea Diocese churches like the Regina Pacis Cathedral Small Soppo, Buea, Holy Family Parish New Town Limbe, Sacred Heart Parish Fiango – Kumba and especially St. Charles Lwanga Church Molyko – Buea, are victims of noise pollution from city encroachment.
Almost directly opposite the Molyko Church is the renowned Bilingual Grammar High School, the Buea Municipal Stadium and a make shift market. To the right are a student residential quarter and several beer parlours. The amount of noise from these places is indisputably disconcerting to church activities. The Molyko church is of great importance to Buea Christians as it is strategically located and so hosts many church events. The parish also hosts the first ever institute of Theology for the Laity in Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province, the John Paul II Institute of Theology, JOPASIT.
The parish’s three Sunday Masses are equally very highly attended, even though there is a full-fledged University Parish church not far from there. No wonder Molyko neighbourhood makes a suitable area to construct a co-Cathedral for Buea Diocese. Seemingly, Molyko Mission Station Christians do not care, take note of or better still, bother about the effects of urban encroachment on their spiritual activities.
A parish Christian, Susan Ebai, says she is very proud to belong to Molyko Mission Station and has no plans of adhering to a different parish as long as she lives in Buea. She adds she notices the noisy surroundings only when she leaves the church and that definitely means only after her prayers or worship sessions. Mrs. Ebai agrees, however, that if it were possible, she would like to see the church building moved from its present to a quieter site as it is not easy to concentrate for long in a noisy surrounding like Molyko Mission Station’s.
The Bishop of Buea’s position
In a chat with the Bishop of Buea, His Lordship Immanuel Bushu, on urban encroachment and how it could either affect or is affecting traditional Catholic worship, he points out that Catholic Christians have the Eucharist as the presence of Christ among His people until the end of time. He stresses this presence is everywhere; in the countryside as well as in the city. He explains as a result of God’s omnipresence, the church in Buea in particular and the Universal Catholic Church in general, does not really consider urban encroachment and its ensuing noise as a major problem.
Mgr. Bushu explains Christians are supposed to worship God wherever they are. So, if it is a noisy place, he notes, Christians have to create internal silence and adore God amid the noise as they cannot really run away from that. “We cannot claim we shall build a church away from noise. But if we are in a noisy area, we should create an ideal space therein to worship God. So, we cannot really change because of noise and we would not be changing because of that,” Bishop Bushu said.
For the time being, the status quo continues, for as Bishop Bushu says, there are no plans to address the problem because in some areas the church has no other option than to erect churches in noisy areas. In rural areas there is no problem building a church in a quiet place. The best way out therefore, remains in adapting to the prevailing situation.
The Bishop’s position struck us remarkably as we understand technological advancement could provide a way out of this difficulty. In Japan, for example, the problem noise poses is considered when drawing plans to construct church buildings as they are constructed using noise filtering materials.
When the Bishop noticed our worry he explained further that to worship God, “--- we adapt ourselves to our present situation; the situation in which we are worshiping Him. So, if you are in your private home, you worship God, if you are in a church in assembly with brothers and sisters, you worship Him, if you are in an airplane, you say your prayers, if you are in a church in a busy street, you pray there. So, we really try to create a situation or the circumstance of worship when we find ourselves in the noise. We then try to find ourselves in a peaceful situation, just by adapting to the noisy situation."
Asked whether the new Cathedral will consider noise when it is constructed, Bishop Bushu said that aspect has not been considered. “We just have a beautiful plot we want to use and it is certain that many people will also come to build around there, as the plantations are going to be closed shortly after that. We will just do our worship there as we do elsewhere, regardless of whether there is noise or not”.
Bishop Bushu said Christians can learn from Muslims as far as the prayer environment is concerned. “--- A Muslim prays anywhere as long as he is able to touch the ground with his forehead. He does not care whether the environment is noisy or not; he simply creates the prayer environment. So too, Christians should try to create the sacred space for worship.” He explained that it is not a church house that matters, but the prayer disposition that should prevail. Mgr. Bushu, however, concluded that the worry should be when surrounding noise surpasses the preacher’s voice. If this is the case, he suggested that the church’s sound system be improved upon.Churches too also encroach
Just as Christian worship suffers from city encroachment, there are some neighbourhoods too that suffer in the reverse direction, that is, encroachment and noise pollution from some churches. This is particularly true of mushroom churches which seek to attract attention and membership, or simply demonstrate their religious fervence through the volume of noise they make.In Douala, administrative officials have been forced to step in to establish order by ordering that some of these churches be closed after they failed to respect appeals to respect their neighbours’ privacy. These churches worship as if God has gone into a deep sleep and needs a lot of noise and shuffling to wake up.
It is true that churches and homes have historically grown hand in hand, but nowadays churches that disturb the peace of a given neighbourhood are taking short cuts and expanding before they are legally permitted to do so. Residents complain that some churches are transforming their neighborhood into a noisy area and decreasing privacy and property values.
Worship can never stop and development has also come to stay. One cannot erase the other; so the way forward then is to find acceptable middle-of-the road approaches and establish clear cut limits.
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