B. Adoukonou:

Jalons pour une théologie africaine:


Essai d'une Herméneutique chrétienne du Vodoo dahoméen.


Adapted from a fine little book we just got in the mail yesterday afternoon: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI's classic work of 1977. Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church's Marian Belief.


Pages 77 - 78.

Regarding the Catholic Church's Infallibly Defined Doctrine of Mary's Assumption into Heaven, the then newly - appointed "archbishop of Munich and Freising" ponders:

"The way human life is, implanted in a world where death is the condition of life, birth is always ambivalent, simultaneously a dying and a becoming.

"The words of judgement in Genesis 3:16 describe exactly this fate of man, and the ambiguity of biological becoming: birth is part of death, it happens under the sign of death and points to the death that it in a certain sense anticipates, prepares, and also presupposes.

"[35] The religions of the world frequently express this in a profound way.

"Important references references to this are found in the still unpublished dissertation written at Regensburg by B. Adoukonou, Jalons pour une théologie africaine: Essai d'une Herméneutique chrétienne du Vodoo dahoméen.

"In the voodoo religion treated by Adoukonou (the form practiced in Dahomey, Benin) after a child's birth the placenta and umbilical cord are carried in solemn ceremony to the grave and buried in a circle symbolizing time; on top of it a tree, the symbol of life, is planted: this ritually shows the undivisible alliance of birth and dying, life and death, which stands at the center of this whole religion.

"To give birth to life always signifies at the same time to open oneself to death.

"Now, if Mary is really the one giving birth to God, if she bears him who is the death of death and is life in the full sense of the word, this being the Mother of God is really a new birth (nova nativitas): a new way of giving birth inserted into the old way, just as Mary is the New Covenant, even as a member of the Old Covenant.

"On the other hand, the title [Mother of God] points to the Assumption: from this birth comes only life, no death..."