Mission, Communion and Relationship: A Roman Catholic Response to the Crisis of Male Youths in Africa

Mission, Communion and Relationship addresses the urgent need for the churches in Africa to positively respond to the crisis confronting the continent's young men. It calls for the church to commit itself to providing alternatives to the various crises confronting male youths in Africa (dislocation, illiteracy, streetism, unemployment, emigration, crime, imitation of foreign cultures, consumerism, drug abuse, promiscuity and HIV/AIDS). Mission, Communion and Relationship argues that communion and solidarity with male youths is a missiological imperative of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, which must work in concert with other Christian denominations, as well as Muslim and African Traditional Religion leaders. This interdisciplinary book brings together insights from ecclesiology, church history, theological anthropology and the social sciences as well as African and Western philosophy with concrete ecclesial and human experiences. Mission, Communion and Relationship sets forth a framework for dealing with the cultural formation and religious development of male youths in ways that are authentically African and Christian, socially oriented and pastorally engaged.

The Author: Born in Kumasi, Ghana, Peter Addai-Mensah has a diploma in theology (Legon, Ghana); a licentiate in sacred theology (Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, Massachusetts); a master’s in education (Boston College, Brighton, Massachusetts), and a doctorate in sacred theology (Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge, Massachusetts). A Roman Catholic priest, Addai-Mensah is the author of Do Diocesan Priests Have a Spirituality? A Ghanaian View (1997); Doing Christian Religious Education in Ghana Today (1998); The Church and Its Evangelizing Ministry in the World (2000); and Growing Up in the Spiritual Life: Some Selected Essays (2002).