"Christ's New Homeland - Africa" - Book review
- Cardinal Sarah and other African Prelates demolish Pre-Synod Documents
Cardinal Sarah and Bishop Adoukonou
Strongly Criticize the Preparatory Synod Documents
a guest book review by
Dr Maike Hickson
In addition to the earlier “Eleven Cardinals Book” (Eleven Cardinals Speak On Marriage and the Family), Ignatius Press published this month a book written by eleven African Prelates – Cardinals and Bishops – dealing also with the topics Marriage and the Family, in preparation for the upcoming October Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome: Christ's New Homeland – Africa (Ignatius, 2015, transl, by Michael J. Miller)
This review deals specifially with the first part of the book, which include two specific essays in which two prestigious African prelates, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Bishop Barthélemy Adoukonou, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, have analyzed and sharply criticized the essential preparatory Vatican documents for the upcoming Synod – both the Lineamenta (questionnaire which contains the Final Report – Relatio synodi – of last year's Synod) and the Instrumentum laboris (working document). Even though I recommend reading and savoring the entire book, I shall here in the following exposition only concentrate on these important, first two contributions in the book.
First of all, Cardinal Sarah discusses the problems contained in the 2014 Synod's own Final Report (Relatio synodi) as it was sent out in December 2014 to the whole Catholic Church in the form of the Lineamenta, together with an additional set of questions inviting further world-wide commentaries. Sarah says that, in this Final Report, there is “some confusion and even some serious errors that need to be pointed out, because, coming from an official Roman body, they could very well be troubling and confusing for those whose consciences are weak.” I propose now to present a few specific points from Cardinal Sarah's fuller critique.