Recently, the anthropologist Mary Douglas has pleaded for a space within the Church's pastoral life, in which women’s contributions could be fully valued. Her article might appear to some as a make-do solution, because it advocates using the area which has not been claimed by the hierarchy so as to spell out a proper task for women. The misgivings of some feminists might actually be heightened even further by her last paragraph, on the caring role of women. For has this not been the age-old role pattern? Maybe it has. But as the article was printed in a special issue on the sacramental life of the Church, there is a strong case for its argument, looking at a much neglected side of the Eucharistic tradition. I wish to highlight this by reflecting on an insight of the Nigerian sister and exegete Teresa Okure, and especially on a most revealing, new definition of the Church which emerged from the African Synod (three years ago, April-May 1994), calling the Church ‘the Family of God'.

In keeping with the hope that African perspectives may also inspire the Church at large—as the papal exhortation Ecclesia in Africa expresses it—I venture to join the research on this concept. Although the papal text openly endorses this term at the outset of the third phase of the synodal process, it does not wish to advance any specific interpretation of it yet. It sees it clearly as a notion that is still to mature in the interchange between pastoral practice and reflection.