African Psycho-Religious Understanding of `Ratum ET Consummatum' Versus Catholic Church's Teaching
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Date
2001-02
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
On Friday 2ld Jan. 2000, the Holy Father received the prelate Auditors, Officials
and Advocates of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota for the solemn opening of the judicial
year. Addressing the Jurists in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope
spoke of the possible juridical effect of the current divorce mentality on the marital
consent and reiterated the church's constant teaching that ratified and consummated
marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power not even the Roman pontiff. The Holy
Father insisted on the church's finidamental duty to reaffirm strongly as the Synod
Fathers did, the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage (FC.20) in order to dispel the
shadow that seems to be cast over the value of the indissolubility of the conjugal bond by
certain opinions stemming from theological and canonical research (L'osservatore
Romano, 26th Jan. 2000).
Looking at our African situation whereby the marriage issue is one of the major
challenges in the pastoral work in the parishes and this declaration of the Holy Father to
all Christians, I started to ponder about our church here in Africa where there is a lot of
an accentuate increase of marriage dissolution_ Reading in the Newspapers, maga7ines
and articles we find a lot of marriages broken e.g. separation of ratified and consummated
marriage, divorce, cohabitation and the like.
Reflecting on what might be the causal factor, I realized that there is
misunderstanding between our African culture and traditional understanding of marriage with that of Catholic Church's teaching. For instance, African culture, which allows
marriage separation, polygamy etc., differs with the church's teaching on indissolubility
and monogamy of marriage.
It is in line with this, we made an assumption that African psycho-religious
understanding of ratum et consummatum versus catholic church's teaching is a pastoral
issue today which requires an immediate solution for the betterment of African Christian
people. It is from this assumption that we were prompted to carry out this research work
for the justification that African psycho-religious understanding of ratum et
consummatum versus catholic church's teaching is a pastoral issue today. The results,
discussions carried out are placed in this research work. All findings placed in this
research work are emanating from the responses of the respondents from Arusha
Archdiocese in Tanzania. The data were discussed and analyzed in which the
recommendations and practical pastoral suggestions for the future research were
developed.
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Keywords
African Psycho-Religious, Ratum ET Consummatum, Catholic Church's Teaching, Pastoral Issue