EDUCATION AS A TOOL FOR EVANGELIZATION IN NORTHERN IGBOLAND

Abstract

The Church in her Universal Magisterium emphasizes that her missionary character reveals her truest nature and deepest identity. A very remarkable and critical component of mission is evangelization through education. The Holy Mother Church participates actively in education across centuries and continents in order to fulfill the divine mandate she received from her founder Jesus Christ to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20, Mark 16:15). She has, therefore, the dual responsibility of education and evangelization. This work discusses education as a tool for evangelization. Generally, education is costly but cheaper than ignorance. Catholic education for instance, transforms the whole person integrally and qualitatively for self actualization and eternal vocations. The findings of this paper show that financial constraints constitute obstacles to effective procurement and proper execution of education ideals by the Church in many respects. As she struggles untiringly to educate her children as Mother, the possible consequences of her monetary deprivations could become the exclusion of the indigent but intelligent pupils and students from her literacy schemes. Another could be varied compromises of excellent standards in many fronts like quality teachers, among others. Therefore in the face of this problem, the Church is encouraged by this work to continue with her excellence in education and ardent zeal in evangelization. The relapses in any of the two areas will endanger and eclipse the desired missionary goals. One of the persuasions of this paper is that the government at all levels should give suitable helps in finances (grantin-aid) and support in the provisions of facilities to mission schools to ameliorate their difficulties since the children so evangelized and educated are also the citizens of the state. The methodology employed in this study is descriptiveobservational which means that the operations of mission schools and their effects on evangelization were observed and studied over time.