The Catholic Church as social and political actor: An analysis of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, 1960--1990

National Conferences of Catholic Bishops throughout the world have assumed new postures as watchdogs regarding state policies and programs in the post Vatican II period, and increasingly asserted themselves in the public arena with emphasis on social action and human rights issues resulting in confrontations with the political arm of the society and multinational corporations. Within Nigeria, these efforts were directly counteracted by the decolonization and secularization programs of the state; programs that dislocated the Church from its platform of public presence with consequences for the Church's institutional arrangements and its locus of civil society activities. Using historical comparative method and content analysis, and three inductive response categories developed from a conceptual framework of organizational response to change, this study analyzes the Joint Pastoral Letters and Communiques of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria to understand their responses to the policies and programs of the state from 1960 to 1990. The findings suggest that the Bishops were socially innovative and politically confrontational actors as well as pastorally adaptive-reactors. This study involves an examination of the relationship between a religious organization and the state, and contributes to substantive advances in our understanding of the responses of religious organization to rapid sociopolitical change. It also helps illuminate how a church, planted during the colonial period adapts itself to maintain a presence in the public sphere in the modern world.