Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar has urged other Catholic leaders in Asia to move from ‘words to action’ when it comes to the Mission of the Church.
Addressing fellow Church leaders in the region this week, Bo, the president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), stressed the need for a “missionary Church that proclaims through witnessing.”
“Moving from words to action,” said Cardinal Bo, is the “great challenge” of the Catholic Church in Asia.
“There is a new star on the horizon, a new call, a new challenge,” the cardinal said in his homily at the start of the general conference of FABC in Thailand on Oct 12.
“The epiphany of the third millennium calls for us to ‘take a different route’ accepting the challenge to make this century, the century of Asia, the century of Christ, and the century of Evangelisation,” said Cardinal Bo.
He said “blazing challenges” to the Church in Asia “remind us of the great scene of Moses in front of the burning bush.”
The cardinal said the Asian Church “stands in front of the burning bush of existential problems of Asia.”
Bo cited “exploitation, nuclear winter, big power rivalry, despotic evil displacing democracy, the commodification of human tears, ecological holocaust, pandemic, millions in distress migration, wars and displacement, natural and man-made disasters,” among the so-called challenges.
Noting that Eastern religions offer an example to Christians, Bo said the church is called to be missionary.
“As the vast parts of the traditionally Christian areas are becoming secular, the East holds a great attraction to the West.
“The last 50 years saw an explosion of interest in Eastern spiritual traditions.
“The interiority of the Asian religions, the simple mysticism, the prayer methods, and the popularity of mindfulness and meditations – all point to a great thirst for experience.
“The East has insisted on experience. Not many explanations!” Bo said.
According to the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, there are currently nearly 383 million Christians in Asia out of a total population of 4.56 billion.
Over half of the Christians in Asia are Catholic, and the only two majority-Christian countries on the continent – the Philippines and East Timor – are predominantly Catholic.