The Vatican News portal reports on a gathering of theologians from the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (IMBISA) held at the Padre Pio Retreat Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, from which emerged a concerted effort to redefine Catholic marriage and worship in conformity with African cultural practices. The workshop, framed by the final report of Study Group 10 of the Synod on Synodality, focused on the “pastoral challenges” of polygamy and the broader project of inculturation, including the veneration of ancestors (Ubungoma). Sister Ester Lucas, an author of the SECAM document on polygamy, was invited to defend the process after complaints from unnamed “bishops” about insufficient consultation. The IMBISA Secretary General, Fr. Enrico Parry, declared that the African Church must “take responsibility” for those in polygamous unions regarding marriage and the Sacraments. The sessions employed the “Conversation in the Spirit” methodology, the hallmark of the synodal revolution. This assembly constitutes not a defense of the Faith, but a formal capitulation to naturalism, polygamy, and idolatry under the guise of pastoral care, exposing the conciliar sect’s definitive rupture with the immutable law of God.
The Synodal Engine: A Mechanism for Dissolving Divine Law
The very architecture of this workshop reveals the satanic logic of the conciliar revolution. The “Synod on Synodality” — a neologism unknown to the Church before the Second Vatican Council — functions as a permanent revolutionary tribunal, generating “Study Groups” tasked not with defending the deposit of faith, but with dismantling those doctrines which obstruct the world’s agenda. Study Group 10, entrusted to the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), was explicitly charged with examining “the pastoral challenges surrounding polygamy in Africa.” Note the phrasing: not how to convert polygamists to the unity of Christian marriage, but how to manage the “challenges” they pose to the sect’s “Sacramental and pastoral life.” The document was shuttled to the “Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith” — the rebranded Holy Office, stripped of its doctrinal teeth — and returned for “further work.” This bureaucratic ping-pong is the procedural hallmark of the neo-church: lex orandi, lex credendi has been replaced by lex synodalis, lex mutanda (the law of the synod is the law of change).
Polygamy: The “Pastoral Challenge” That Demands Conversion, Not Accommodation
The article’s central focus — the “pastoral challenges of accompanying those in polygamous situations” — betrays a theological bankruptcy so total it constitutes apostasy. Polygamy is not a “cultural reality” to be “accompanied”; it is a grave offense against the natural law and the sacramental economy, explicitly condemned by the Council of Trent: “If anyone says that the marriage bond can be dissolved for the cause of heresy… or that the Church errs in teaching that the bond of marriage cannot be dissolved… let him be anathema” (Session XXIV, Canon 7). Pius XI, in Casti Connubii (1930), declared with unshakeable authority: “This sacred bond, once contracted, cannot be dissolved by any human power… For the Lord says: ‘What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder'” (Matt. 19:6). The unity and indissolubility of marriage are not disciplinary rules subject to “inculturation”; they are of divine law (de iure divino), rooted in the creation of man and woman “in the beginning” (Gen. 2:24) and elevated by Christ to a sacrament signifying His union with the Church (Eph. 5:32).
The conciliar sect’s “pastoral” approach is a diabolical inversion of the Gospel. Christ did not “accompany” the Samaritan woman in her irregular unions; He told her: “Go, call thy husband” (John 4:16), exposing her sin to lead her to living water. The Apostles did not study “pastoral challenges” of polygamy among converts; they demanded “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6) as a condition for ecclesial office, implicitly for all the faithful. The workshop’s premise — that the Church must “respond to African cultural realities while remaining faithful to its teaching” — is a contradiction in terms. One cannot be faithful to the teaching of Christ on marriage while simultaneously constructing a pastoral framework that legitimizes its violation. This is the heresy of “gradualness of the law,” condemned by St. John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (though he himself was a usurper, the principle stands): “There are no ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the truth” (n. 103).
Inculturation: The Trojan Horse of Religious Syncretism
The workshop’s expansion beyond polygamy to “the wider question of inculturation,” specifically citing Ubungoma and “respect for ancestors,” unmasks the true objective: the synthesis of Catholicism with African traditional religion. The term “inculturation,” coined by the Jesuit Pedro Arrupe and elevated by the antipope John Paul II in Slavorum Apostoli (1985), is a modernist novelty foreign to the Church’s lexicon. The true Catholic mission is evangelizatio: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), baptizing and teaching “all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). The Church does not “inculturate” the Gospel; she supraculturates it, judging every culture by the standard of revealed truth.
The reference to Ubungoma — the Zulu/Xhosa practice of divination and communication with ancestral spirits — is particularly damning. The “bishops” and “priests” on the ground are “expected to provide immediate answers” to communities seeking guidance on these matters. The only Catholic answer is the one given by the Council of Laodicea (Canon 35) and reiterated by the Holy Office under Pius XII: all forms of divination, necromancy, and invocation of the dead are gravely sinful and incompatible with the Christian faith. The First Commandment admits no “inculturated” exceptions: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). The “veneration of ancestors” as practiced in African traditional religion is not a benign cultural custom; it is the worship of demons (daemonia), as St. Paul teaches: “The things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God” (1 Cor. 10:20). To study how to “pastorally” integrate this is to study how to offer incense to Baal.
The “Conversation in the Spirit”: Democratizing Apostasy
The methodology — “Conversation in the Spirit” — is the liturgy of the new religion. It replaces the Magisterium’s magisterium authenticum with a collective discernment of the “people of God,” a category redefined by Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium to blur the distinction between the teaching Church (Ecclesia docens) and the learning Church (Ecclesia discens). The workshop “combined theological presentations with group discussions… encouraging participants to listen to one another, share experiences and discern possible ways forward.” This is the parrhesia of the devil: truth is not discerned by sharing experiences; it is received from the Apostles and guarded by the bishops in communion with the Roman Pontiff. As St. Vincent of Lérins defined the Catholic rule: “Id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” (Let us hold what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all). The synodal method substitutes this quod semper with quod nunc placet (what pleases now).
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Read the article again. Search for the words “grace,” “conversion,” “baptism,” “state of grace,” “eternal salvation,” “hell,” “judgment,” “Cross,” “repentance,” “faith.” They are absent. The entire discourse is horizontal, sociological, anthropological. The “theologians” speak of “pastoral circumstances,” “cultural practices,” “responsibility for developing appropriate pastoral responses,” “strengthen theological reflection and pastoral discernment.” This is the language of the NGO, not the Bride of Christ. The conciliar sect has no supernatural mission because it has no supernatural faith. It reduces the Church to a cultural accommodation agency. Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), thundered against this very secularism: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” The IMBISA workshop is a microcosm of this shaking: building a pastoral house on the sand of cultural relativism.
The False “Padre Pio” Centre: A Symbol of the Counterfeit
The venue — the “Padre Pio Retreat Centre” — is a grim irony. The Capuchin stigmatist, whatever his private graces, has been canonized by the antipope John Paul II within the conciliar sect’s fabricated sanctity process, his legacy now used to host a workshop undermining the Sixth Commandment. The true Padre Pio, who wept over the sins of the flesh and demanded modesty and confession, would have driven these theologians out with a whip. The centre bears his name as a brand, a marketing tool for the neo-church’s “spirituality” devoid of the Cross.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in Southern Africa
This IMBISA gathering is not a peripheral error; it is the logical fruit of the conciliar revolution. By treating polygamy and ancestor worship as “pastoral challenges” requiring “inculturated” solutions, the “bishops” and “theologians” of the neo-church formally deny the kingship of Christ over all cultures and the absolute immutability of the moral law. They are the blind leading the blind into the pit (Matt. 15:14). The true Church in Africa — the remnant faithful to Tradition, served by validly ordained priests who reject the novelties of Vatican II — must reject this synodal poison. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord” (Jer. 17:5). The only “pastoral response” to polygamy is the call to repentance, separation from the illicit union, and entrance into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church through baptism or penance. The only response to Ubungoma is the exorcism of the demons and the proclamation of the First Commandment. Non possumus. We cannot, we must not, we will not obey the synodal decree to betray the Gospel.
Source:
IMBISA theologians study challenges of inculturation in Africa (vaticannews.va)
Date: 06.11.2026