Vatican Ii and the Challenge of Marriage and Family in Africa

It is generally known that the teaching of Catholic Moral Theology before Vatican II focused especially on the aim of the marriage. It emphasized the three aims which St Augustine pointed out: proles, fides, sacramentum. Love seemed to be secondary because children were seen as the highest good of the sacred bond between wife and husband. From this viewpoint the Constitution Gaudium et spes of Vatican II sounds revolutionary when it states: “But marriage was not instituted solely for the procreation of children [...]. Even in cases where despite the intense desire of the spouses there are no children, marriage still retains its character of being a whole manner and communion of life and preserves its value and indissolubility.” 2 This has played an important role in further discussions on the understanding of sexuality when we take for instance the whole debate on the Encyclical Humanae vitae into consideration. In Africa, however, this fresh impetus of Gaudium et spes might not have been decisive on the new reflections initiated concerning the inculturation of marriage. The text which highly influenced the theological reflections was rather that of the Decree Ad gentes, no. 22, where the Council encourages young Churches to borrow from their cultural inheritance “to praise the Glory of the Creator, manifest the grace of the Saviour and contribute to the right ordering of christian life.”