(Bishop of Abomey, Benin)
After having thanked the missionaries and recalled that the two ways they followed for evangelisation have led to the need for inculturation, intervention involves six proposals which result from pastoral experience:
1) Inculturation is only cultural; it must be cultural and anthropologic at the risk of only being folklore.
2) The Family-Church is a very correct intuition which must be looked into further in-depth in the mystery of the Eucharist. This is the melting pot where memory of ancestors like all symbols which bear it, and the codes of African life must be converted. Only a Church that has really converted can be really missionary and can set up institutions of consecrated life.
3) In the dynamics of this eucharistic and paschal conversion, new ministries are created and will be created for evangelising our cultural roots.
4) The Family-Church implies grasping culture from a heritage standpoint. Hence, there is inculturation pastoral work which involves the main actors of transmission of this heritage into a conversion process.
5) A new educational project of woman, mother and educator of all mankind, is a sure springboard for human promotion and tasks of justice and peace." Tant vaut la femme, tant vaut l'Eglise" ("the value of woman is the value of the Church").
6) In this patristic age of the Churches of Africa, it is necessary to restore the columns of African culture that are our wise thinkers and artists who contribute a great deal to the birth of African readings of the Bible, theologies, spiritualities and African liturgies.
Original text: French
