Everyday is a gift from God. This awareness is the best way to spend the day happily.
May this new day bring you and me and all of us a freshness which only the Lord can give us.
The freshness can be lessened or increased in prayer.
May this new day bring you and me and all of us a freshness which only the Lord can give us.
The freshness can be lessened or increased in prayer.
For one thing or the other I (Fr. Joseph Puthenpurakal) have had the privilege of visiting all
the states of the North East at least briefly. However, a nearly-half-a-century
of my stay in the North East of India is linked mostly with Nagaland and
Manipur and that too in connection with education, culture, spiritual
animation, administration and the all-embracing-mission of the Church. This
last mentioned, namely, the all-embracing mission of the Church, is what is
generally understood as Evangelization
a word so rich that it is subject to easy misinterpretation. To ward off such a
possibility as much as possible Paul VI called a synod of Bishops and later on,
brought out the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi in 1975. We
read in it “… the Church exists to evangelize”, a lapidary statement which
includes a thousand and one way of sharing the Good News even at the cost of
one’s life… like the martyrs of the early Church (to be continued).
CATHOLIC CHURCH IN NAGALAND (1973-1997) MANIPUR (1973-1980) 1
Bishop Abraham Alangimattathil February 28, 2019
North East of India is fascinating corner of India. There are, of course, other places perhaps more captivating and even mesmerizing than the North East. However, just as one’s birthplace is incomparable with any other place, it was in the North East that I exercised the first years of my priesthood as a Salesian of Don Bosco (SDB) in India. Ordained in 1968 (Rome) I returned to India in 1971 and beganBeginnings of my ministry among the young people of the North East in Don Bosco Dibrugarh (Assam). I was hardly a year there when I was asked to go to Kohima, Nagaland’s capital, to serve as assistant parish priest among the Angami speaking sturdy, strong and loving friends at Christ King parish (1972-1973). That too did not last too long. In 1973 I was asked to be secretary to Fr. Abraham Alangimattathil (the future Bishop of Kohima-Imphal) in Dibrugarh. In the providence of God, I was asked to go and recruit some vocations from Ranchi area. It was at Bishop’s House Ranchi that I received a telegram informing me of the appointment of Fr. Abraham Alangimattathil as the first Bishop of Kohima-Imphal. When I returned to Dibrugarh I was drawn into organising along with Fr. Shenoy S.J. the Episcopal Ordination of the would-be new Bishop in Kohima.-Imphal. To make a long story short, the Episcopal Ordination took place at Don Bosco School ground in Kohima on 14 October 1973. The late supper on the ordination day at Little Flower School of the FMA, the fish curry that caused a havoc and the installation of the new Bishop in Imphal (Manipur) a few days later are part of history (to be continued).
Culture for
Don Bosco was the world of the young. He breathed young, just as we breathe
air. He was ready to give his life for their welfare. On the 14 of May 1862, 22
members of the newly-founded Society of St. Francis de Sales completed their
novitiate year and formally pronounced their triennial vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience, while Don Bosco knelt by a table on which stood a
crucifix. When they had finished, Don Bosco stood up and gave them a few
comforting words of encouragement. Among other things, he said:
“One may wonder, did Don Bosco make those
vows too? Well, as you were making your voews before me, I too was making them
in perpetuity before the crucifix. I offered myself in sacrifice to the Lord,
ready to bear anything for His greater glory and the welfare of sould,
particularly the souls of the young. May the Lord help us to be faithful to
our vows” (Chrys, 25).
The
above-mentioned vow of Don Bosco to give his life for the good of the young had
its finest expression a few years earlier. In the summer of 1846 Don Bosco fell
sick. He was at the point of death! In God’s plan he got well again. While he
was convalescing, he was able to return supporting himself with a stick to the
midst of his beloved young friends. Seeing Don Bosco coming towards them, they
got excited. In a makeshift sedia
gestatoria the boys lifted Don Bosco up and carried him in triumph. In the
chapel after prayers of thanksgiving Don Bosco uttered what came to be known as
“the most solemn and demanding words of his life”. “Dear sons, he said, I owe my life to you. But you can be sure of
this: from now on, I shall spend my whole life for you” (Chrys 25-26).
Commenting on these words of Don Bosco, Fr. Chavez, wrote, “Don Bosco inspired
by the Holy Spirit, in a certain sense made a novel vow: the vow of apostolic
love, of the handing over of his life for the young, one that he will observe
every moment of his life” GC 26, p151.
Equally or more daringly something happened a few months earlier in the
same year 1846. Don Bosco had been working as chaplain of St. Philomena’s
Hospital and was looking after the spiritual direction of an institute
belonging to a rich lady. One day she gave an ultimatum to Don Bosco saying
either to work as she proposed or to quit the Institute to look after his boys.
Don Bosco’s reply was immediate. Without a second thought he replied, “my dear
Marchioness, I have already thought it over for a long time. You have money and
means, and you will have no trouble in finding all the priests you want to direct
your institutes. But poor boys have nothing, and that is why I cannot and must
not forsake them… I have dedicated my
life wholly to the welfare of these poor boys and no one will ever make me
stray from the path that the Lord has marked out for me” (Chrys, 26).
Don Bosco was
at home with the young already from his tender age of 5 when he used to gather
them to revise the Sunday homily. The dream at the age of 9 marked out clearly
his mission among the young. As a priest he was someone who had given his whole
life over to God for “a special mission” among the young.
CULTURE NOT JUST OF LOVE, BUT OF LOVE THAT IS MADE FELT
The essence
of Don Bosco’s teaching can be summed up in the following words. “It is not
enough to love, but make your love felt! Don Bosco’s
fatherly and friendly role among the young was seen in the way he loved the
young. Just as God the Father loves us first and brings us into existence Don
Bosco translated it into what is known as “prevenient
love”. He went out to the peripheries in search of the young. He took the
first step to help them. He eliminated distance, came close to the young, loved
them and made his love felt by them through acts of friendliness and
familiarity. His love was both universal and personal at the same time. He had
the wonderful capacity to make each one of the youngsters feel that Don Bosco
loved him and him only! Such was the power and persuasion of Don Bosco’s love.
Many indeed considered themselves his “favourites”. Make yourself loved and not
feared, Don Bosco used to say.
Don
Bosco knew how to educate the young to responsible freedom. The strong
personalities that emerged from Valdocco, the scene of his first years with the
young. Some of these personalities are Dominic Savio, Michael Magone, Cagliero,
Costamagna and many other high profile figures. Don Bosco’s love lead the young
to a love for God.
CULTURE
OF WORK AND PRAYER
Don
Bosco used to say, “My dear children, I do not ask you to fast or scourge
yourselves. I exhort you to work, work, work!” When asked how Don Bosco managed
to accomplish so much, his reply was “Thanks be to God, hard work is for me
more of a delight and relaxation than a burden”. Fr. Caviglia was of the
opinion that 90% of his talks to the Salesians revolved around the themes of
work, temperance and poverty. Don Bosco’s process of beatification and
canonization ran into difficulties with
regard to prayer and work. It was asked when did Don Bosco pray, for he was
seen as an indefatigable worker. The counter question, “when did not pray?” won
the day. It is true that he did not
spend long hours in prayer like saints Cure’ of Ars or Cafasso. Nor was he allergic to spending long
hours in prayer. However, in the spirit of “My dear children, I do not ask you
to fast or scourge yourselves, I exhort you to work, work, work!” and “Thanks
be to God, hard work is for me more of a delight and relaxation than a burden”
(BM IV, 148), Fr. Caviglia holds that 90% of Don Bosco’s talks to the confreres
revolved around the themes of work, temperance and poverty. Fr. Ceria in his
turn affirms that the specific characteristic of Salesian prayer is the ability
to turn into prayer. In this scenario it is more easy to see work than prayer,
and yet for Don Bosco turning work into prayer, it would be evident for those
who understand him deeply to conclude that he prays while he was working as
well as when he was seen praying only. In others words he prayed always. Prayer
was everywhere in his life. No wonder he was defined as “union with God”. This
uninterrupted union with God in the life of Don Bosco made the General Chapter 26 ask every
Salesian to pray for the “grace of unity” between contemplation and apostolic
activity which would keep at bay the danger of fragmented and superficial
acitivity. What gives unity to our being, writes Chrys Saldanha, is not action,
not even prayer, but love. Here it is useful to cite in full the words of
Chrys:
“…our
reflection and experience tell us that genuine love is always expressed in two
ways which complement and compenetrate each other: intimacy and dedication. In
love which takes the form of intimacy, one desires to be near the loved one, to
see his face, to speak with him, to enjoy his presence and his word. In love
which takes the form of dedication, one wishes to work for the loved one, to
serve his interests and his happiness, even at the cost of sacrifice. Thus it
is, for example, with the wife and mother: her love for her husband and her
children is expressed and also increases both in the moments of intimacy with
them as well as in the hours of work and fatigue endured for them. A love in
the form of intimacy alone, without dedication or fatigue, would be nothing but
sentimentality or laziness. A love in the form of work alone without a
face-to-face communion, would become a lack of appreciation for the other
person. In both cases, love would be on the way to its decline and possible
death.
“So,
it is our vocation and fundamental attitude as apostolic religious to live our
communion of love with God in the fervor of intimacy and in the generosity of
dedication, i.e. at the level of our personal relationship with God as well as
at the level of our activity for God.
“It is love, then, that makes possible
the unity of work and prayer” (Chrys, 80-81). For years we have been
discussing as to what is more important: Work or Prayer forgetting to look at
Don Bosco more clearly. Neither work nor
prayer is what is important, but LOVE expressed through either prayer or work.
Here again, it would be futile to carry on deliberating which should get an existential
priority in the Salesian charism, or in the day to day existence for
sons/daughters of Don Bosco. Here again, let us listen to Don Bosco. He would
say: “The world is becoming materialistic, hence we must work and make known
the good that is done. If one performs
even miracles praying day and night in his cell, the world will not pay
attention to him and believe him. He world needs to see and touch. The present
world want tosee the works, wants to see the clergy work…” (BM XIII, 96 cited
in Chrys, 78).
CULTURE
OF LOVE FOR A CULTURE OF WORK
For
Don Bosco love meant loving kindness, a love that was made felt through acts of
kindness. Such a love gives birth to a chain reaction of relationships which at every point deepens
one’s friendship with others. And when one realizes that friendship is the best
form of evangelization, one can imagine the possibilities loving kindness opens
before us for sharing the Good News.
Intimacy
and dedication, the two interpenetrating aspects of love should lead one to
combine the spirit of Mary and that of Martha (Lk 10:38-42). And I believe that
the combination of the two giving birth
to a single reality of hard work (of Martha) interpenetrated by a constant listening
to the Lord (of Mary) is the contemplation in action and action suffused with
uninterrupted union with the Lord after the example of Don Bosco. And whenever we leave our work for a moment
in order to pray is “recognize and affirm that God works without ceasing” : “My
Father is still working and I also am working” (Jn 5:17).
To
realize it in one’s life Don Bosco proposes several practical ways such as,
explicitly to think of God, use of ejaculatory prayers, visit to the Blessed
Sacrament, and prayer before, during and after work. This is how our whole life
becomes a “liturgy of life” (SDB C 95) heading the words of St. Paul, “ I
appleal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to
present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).
CULTURE
OF EDUCATION AFTER THE HEART OF DON BOSCO
Don
Bosco is one of the great educators of the young. To the young he was simple
and clear. The educational method of Don Bosco is born of life he lived. The
dream he had at the age of 9 taught him to win over the young “not with blows”,
but with kindness, meekness and charity. And
he was asked to carry out the mission of education by being “humble,
strong and robust”. And that is what Don Bosco did during his life time and has
passed on to posterity. We read in letter of 1886, “Don Bosco has already been
sacrificing his life for the education and instruction of the young for fifty
years. The results of his work are so gratifying and so widespread that Don
Bosco has become the most famous educator of his times, both in the old and in
the new world. What has contributed to his fame is his Preventive System”
(Braido,115).
The
Preventive System is a spirituality-cum-educational experience. Here
“spiritual” is understood as letting God permeate the educator’s daily life:
his/her thoughts, words and actions, especially the educator’s plan for the
education of the young. It is being present to the young in different ways,
allowing them to bring out/develop what is best in them (ex “out” ducere “to
lead”
CULTURE
OF JOY
Education
cannot happen in sadness, in repression, in force. Education is a thing of the
heart. It takes place in joy, freedom
and in healthy relationship. So, for Don Bosco, the playground,
recreation, sport, music, singing, dramatics, celebration of feasts and
significant occasions, outings and picnics are all important. “I want to see,
says Don Bosco, my boys running and playing to their hearts’ content, because
then I know what they are doing” (BM V,3). In the spirit of being present to
his boys, Don Bosco encourages the educators of every age, each one according
to his ability to become, “the soul of recreation”. “Give everyone ample
freedom, we read in a write-up on the Preventive System by Don Bosco, to jump,
run and make as much noise as they want. Gymnastics, music, declamation,
dramas, outings are very effective means of building up discipline. They foster
morality and holiness” (ll sistema
preventive nell’educazione della gioventu, 295). We give below the words of Don Bosco in which we see that
he attributed to freedom of
expression as a constitutive and unique pedagogical principle. While answering
the question raised in a letter address to him namely, “What is your educational
system”, Don Bosco wrote: “It is very simple : give the young all the freedom to do what they like
most. The secret is to discover in them the seeds of their good dispositions
and help to develop them. And sin ce each one does with pleasure only what he knows he is able to do, I keep to this
principle and my students not only do their work, but they do it with love” (BM
XVII, 64, as cited in Chrys, 127).
CULTURE
OF OFFERING VALUES
Don
Bosco summed up these values in three simple words: health, wisdom and holiness.
In this connection I would like to share a conversation I had recently on the
occasion of the conclusion of the international Terra Madre in Mawphlang, Meghalaya yesterday (Saturday 7 November,
2015).
Introduction
From
a comprehensive understanding of culture we move on to focus our attention on
Inculturation, a word not easily met with except in post-Vatican II documents.
A similar word “enculturation” was familiar with cultural anthropologists.
Enculturation was introduced into theology by Pierre Charles. But it was Fr. J.
Masson who first coined the phrase inculturated
Catholicism in 1962. I remember him using this term often in our Missiology
classes in Rome. Julian Saldanha says, “According to Y. Congar, the term
“inculturation” was coined in Japan.[1]
The
term inculturation is a loaded one. It stands for all what we know about
incarnation of the Word and about culture. Seriously taken both incarnation and
culture are beyond our human capacity to understand them exhaustively. Limiting
ourselves to inculturation we may say summarily that it is the process of
giving birth to “culturally rooted Churches, rooted in the life and culture of
the people.” It is to plant a Church and attentively seeing and caring for its
growth through different phases of its maturity. It is a process humanly
speaking will never end except in Eternity. Here we must affirm that to plant a
Church is much different from transplant a Church, a Church that has grown in
another culture or community.
Two
citations are very important at this point. The first is from Paul VI’s
Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi.
The other is from John Paul II.
The
first, succinct and powerful reads, “The split between Gospel and culture is
without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore
every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more
correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the
Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not
proclaimed.”[2]
From
John Paul II we have the following programmatic utterance. He writes, “a faith
that does not become culture is a faith not fully accepted, not thoroughly
thought out, not faithfully lived.”[3]
This deepest link between faith and culture is brought out by the same John
Paul II when he writes in the encyclical Redemptoris
Missio, “Through inculturation the Church, for her part, becomes a more
intelligible sign of what she is, and a more effective instrument of mission.”[4] We
are also told that , “Inculturation is a slow journey, which accompanies the
whole missionary life. It involves those working in the Church’s mission ad gentes, the Christian communities as
they develop, and the Bishops, who have the task of providing discernment and
encouragement for its implementation.”[5]
Before
proceeding with the other aspects of Inculturation some brief terminological
clarification may be in place.
Adaptation: Adapting the Christian
message to make it intelligible and understandable to the people sounds good.
At the same time it remains subjective. The term does not express the
indissoluble link between Christian message and local culture. Adaptation
should make it clear whether it is of the missionary or of the message. It
denotes something external.
What
applies to adaptation can also be said of other similar terms like accommodation, contextualization (originally
referred to theological education in non-western countries) to, indigenization (stresses promotion of
local ministries) and localization.
Acculturation: It denotes contact between cultures (other
than one’s own) and the ensuing change. In Anthropology it simply means culture-contact.
Interculturation: It stresses the
interdependence of cultures for mutual enrichment.
Enculturation: It is the process by
which an individual becomes part of a given culture.
Incarnation: It is the process
specifically of Christian religion. It means God became Man. He was born of the
Virgin Mary. Incarnation is the basis and model for inculturration.
Inculturation: It is the process by
which a particular Church expresses its faith and life in and through the local
culture. Inculturation has to be always accompanied by interculturation
(Vincent Anthony). ‘Since every culture is limited both in its vision and
expressive resources and no single culture can exhaust the depth of Christian
faith, any attempt to live the Christian faith exclusively in one culture
restricts its scope and makes the local Church get isolated into a ghetto”
(Jose Panadan and Vincent Anthony in Inculturation
and Local Church, footnote, 332). It is in the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae (1979) of John Paul
II the term “inculturation” appears for the first time in a major papal
document.
The
Process of Inculturation
A
genuine understanding of the local Church will always stay with the heart of
the Good News. And Inculturation touches the heart of the Gospel. How the Good
News takes root in the hearts of those who believe in Jesus is do0ne through a
process called inculturation.
In
this process there are three factors: first, there is the
Good
News. This good news is not in the air, because it reaches man in one cultural
form or another. Jesus himself was not someone abstract. He was born a Jew. He lived in Palestine bound by time
and space: He was born in a particular year and in a specific place. He was
culturally conditioned. But the Good
News he came to communicate helped to transform Jewish culture and all other
cultures. In this sense the Good News is not Greek or Aramaic or English. It is
what Jesus communicated to us in Aramaic, and we now, in English or in any
other language of the world.
Therefore
the effort to separate the core of the Gospel from its cultural expressions or
the effort to convey the same (namely, the core
or essence of the Gospel) with others in any language or form or means is
a process. This process may take a long time and much energy. It may last one’s
whole life too. Paul VI reminded the Church of this life long task when he
wrote of the importance of “assimilating the essence of the gospel message and
of transposing it, without the slightest betrayal of its essential truth.”[6]
The
second factor is the evangelizer himself /herself who has his/her own culture/language/ways
and means of communication. Then there is the culture of the community, say the
parish community. These various factors have to be seen in the culture of the
universal Church which has develop a culture of her own.
Hence
when we realize that inculturation has to take place in this scenario of
multiple cultures, it becomes a
multi-layered process. The way to go forward through this multi-layered
process is DIALOGUE at all levels. And dialogue calls for understanding of
culture/s at different levels and in depth along with strengthening the various
network of ideas through bringing in the Spirit of Christ through individual
and community prayers.
Stages in Inculturation
1.
The response of a culture to the first and on-going announcement of the gospel
2.
The process by which the Christian life
and message insert themselves into a particular culture
3.
The process which makes the message of Christ penetrate a socio-cultural
ambient, promoting its genius and values.
These
points are summed up forcefully by FABC when it said, “Inculturation consists
not only in the expression of the Gospel and the Christian faith through the
cultural medium, but includes, as well, experiencing , understanding , and appropriating
them through the cultural resources of a people.”[7] The strong and weighty observation made by
David J. Bosch in Transforming Mission
is worth citing here:
“The
[above] process of inculturation had been so successful in the West in the
past, says Bosch, so much so that Christianity had almost become the religious
dimension of that culture. In the course of time, unfortunately, Christianity
got so highly domesticated by the Western culture that it did not easily allow
the gospel to go through the same process in other cultures.”[8]
In
its final analysis, the process and the fact of Inculturation clarifies,
strengthens and affirms the over all and specific IDENTITY of the local Church. It realizes more and more its place
in the Universal Church. Fr. Pedro Arrupe says it all when throws light on the
concept and reality of Inculturation as a central element
in the reality of evangelization: “Inculturation is the incarnation of
Christian life and of the Christian message in aparticular cultural context, in
such a way that this experience not only finds expression through elements
proper to the culture in question, but becomes a principle that animates,
directs and unifies the culture, transforming it and remaking it so as to bring
about a new creation.”[9] In
the same vein Kavunkal concludes, “ Becoming a local Church through
inculturation would thus mean becoming a dynamic, prophetic, and counter
cultural presence in the presence of other cultures and religions, which will
include transforming the dehumanizing elements in those cultures.”[10]
Jesus’ exhortation to be salt of the earth and the light of the world sums as
simply as possible the inculturizing effort of any local Church. Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi describes concretely
what should be the result of a Church
that is inculturizing and inculturated.
The process of inculturation affects through the power of the Gospel “…people’s
criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought,
sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word
of God and the plan of salvation.”[11]
To
conclude this reflection on the process, stages and content of Inculturation it
is good to cite fully the simple but convincing words of Samuel Rayan and
Parmananda Divakar.
Rayan
writes, “ The faith falls like a seed into
the folds and furrows of every new historical situation –a new culture, a new
age, new society, and new religious conceptions and sensitivities. There it
dies and rises to new existence; and the sapling draws sustenance from the milieu, builds itself up with the human
and religious that is there, and waxes strong in God’s light and air without
let or hindrance. The faith will bear its own flower and fruit, but in terms of
the light , soil and air with which it builds itself, in terms of the situation
and the needs, possibilities and experiences of the people whose faith it is.
No living thing frows according to rules written down in a book or orders given
from far or near. Life develops from within according to its own inner
dynamism. Any pruning found necessary is done
not for uniformity’s sake but to
secure greater fruitfulness, and it is done
by the responsible, believing, reflecting community itself. There can be
no question, then of importing or exporting made and canned liturgies,
theologies, Church structures and dogmas. These in the process of the
communication of the Gospels, have to
keep dying and rising , sprouting
and growing afresh in every locality and every age within the context of
concrete needs and challenges…”.
Divarkar says, “ This is the challenge of
inculturation that faces the Church everywhere, whether in areas and
communities that have just been evangelized or in the traditionally Christian
ones: new ways of living the faith must
be found to satisfy new and more varied needs, arising from new and perhaps
strange situations –ways that are rooted in the past but creatively alive to a
preent that is so quickly overtaken by the future; hence also, men and women
must be found who can trace these ways for others, people who are solidly
established in tradition but alive and vibrant to the Spirit as he acts in all
the ambiguities of the present hour, opening out into the uncertainties of the
future.”
Rayan
adds:” A faith or Church which does not grow from seed or sapling, which does
not pass through the risks and pains of growing up, but is ready-made and
imported, is likely to remain static and sterile.”[12]
After
having seen that Inculturation is the best way to allow the Good News take root
in the culture (life ) of a people, we
shall have a look at the different milestones of the long journey to
“Inculturation”.
1.
It was Pierre Charles who introduced the
concept “enculturation” into missiology
from cultural anthropology.
2.
J. Masson a Jesuit Missiologist coined the
phrase inculturated Catholicism in 1962.
3.
It gained currency among the Jesuits as
inculturation.
4.
In 1977 the Jesuit Superior General, Fr. P. Arrupe
introduced the term in the Synod of Bishops on Catechesis.
5.
The Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae took it up and gave it universal currency.
6.
It was soon accepted also in Protestant circles,
and is today one of the most widely used concepts in missiological circles, for
the Christian faith cannot exist except as translated into a culture. It was so
in the early Church…so we have the Pauline Churches : Jews, Greeks, Barbarians,
Thracians, Egyptians, and Romans … feeling at home with the Good News.
7.
The same was true of the post-apostolic Church:
the faith was inculturated in a great variety of liturgies and contexts:
Syriac, Greek, Roman, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Maronite and so forth.
Moreover, during this period the emphasis was on the “local Church” rather than the Church Universal.
8.
In all the cultures where the Good News reached,
it transformed them.
9.
With or without the Western colonial expansion,
the Christian faith too reached many a shore. Together with it came also
Western culture and Western theology. And it was simply assumed that both
Western culture and Western theology were superior to others. Through adaptation and accommodation or indigenization
( in Protestant circles) some effort was made to make the Good News more at home.
10.
All through the process the idea that persisted
was that the essence of Christianity –Faith in Jesus Christ - was considered as
the unalloyed kernel, whereas the “cultural accoutrements of the people to whom
the missionaries went “ were thought of as
“expendable husk.”
11. Rare
exceptions to the kernel-husk approach were people like Robert de Nobili SJ (1577 – 1656) and Matteo Ricci SJ (1552-1610).
12. The Rite controversy : the Jesuit praxis was condemned in
1707 and in 1715 by two papal decrees at the recommendation of Card. T.M.
Tournon…. In 1773 the Society of Jesus was suppressed. Jesuit missionaries were
recalled.
13. The
oath introduced was repealed only in 1938.
14. The
rigid system of accommodation could not last long: the emergence of nationalism
in the Third World countries, the rise of anthropological thought and the
distinction between classical and anthropological understanding of culture, the
maturation of younger Churches, greater sensitivity to peoples of different
cultures, demand for autonomy of younger Churches (in the Protest circles), the
three selfs idea (self-government, self –support, and self-propagation)…helped in the fall of
accommodation theory and greater appreciation for inculturation theory.
15. Pope
Bendedict XV in his encyclical Maximum
Illud (1919) was one of the first to promote the right of the “mission
churches”… and stood for the right to have local clergy and bishops.
16. Rerum Ecclesiae (Pius XI, 1926), and Evangelii Praecones (Pius XII, 1951)
elaborated further along the lines of
and towards moving to what today we call Inculturation.
17. Increase
in the number of Christians in the so-called mission territories than in
traditionally missionary-sending Christian areas: some 914 million as compared
to 597 million.
18. Soon
after World War II several adjustments had to be made both in Catholic and
Protestant circles. In 1949 the Communists won in China. With it
the entire missionary work suffered. And the formation of World Council of
Churches (WCC) which brought together all autonomous Churches from all corners
of the globe among Protestants.
19. Among
the Catholics the greatest event was the Vatican Council II with its 16 major
documents….inject a new vision of Church and society…ushering in the recovery
of “the Local Church”.
20. The
birth of Basic Christian Communities, first in Latin America and then
elsewhere. They meant much to the growth of the self-image of the local
Christian communities in the Third World…so much so that Leonard Boff (1986)
refers to it as “ecclesogenesis” or re-inventing the Church.
21. The
growth of local theologies: Asian and more particularly Indian theologians…
impacting and correcting the ideas ”about a universally valid theology” –
farewell to a “Euro-centric” theology.
22. EN 20 : Evangelization is Evangelization of
Cultures.
23. Johan
Paul II : A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully
absorbed, not thoroughly thought and not faithfully lived.
24. The
setting up of the Pontifical Council Council for Culture in 1982 by John Paul
II.
25. Among
Protestants/Evangelicals : 1)
Consultation on Gospel and Culture 1978 in Willowbank, Bermuda, and its report on
“dynamic equivalence” model of inculturation (a varition of Translation Model)
following the pioneering works of Eugene Nida and, more recently Charles Kraft.
26.
In Inculturation the primary agents are the Holy Spirit and the Local Community,
particularly the laity. Inculturation is possible if all form one community together.
27. In
inculturation the Local Church is the focus: the one Universal Church finds its
true existence in the particular Churches (LG 23,26). It involves the totality
of contexts: social, economic, political, religious, educational, etc.
28.
Inculturation follows the model of the
Incarnation. The kenotic and incarnational model…Good News to be enfleshed,
embodied in a people and their culture.
29.
Going against the idea of Faith as kernel
and culture and culture as husk…a better
metaphor would be seed implanted in the soil…of a particular culture.
(Ag 22 employs the same without of course using the term Inculturation.
30. Like
culture which is an all embracing reality, Inculturation
too is all embracing. See EN 20…employs
“certain” elements of culture…It should
be “all” to make the encounter between Gospel and culture more incisive and
inclusive….to transform culture from within.
Limits of
Inculturation
1)
The Gospel challenges culture in its work of
transforming it, creating a tension between the Good News and culture. Hence, one cannot take it for granted that
the Gospel is at home in all cultures and cultures are at home in the Gospel
(the indigenizing principle affirms that the Gospel is at home in culture, and culture is at home in the Gospel).
2)
Along with the indigenizing principle is the
“pilgrim” principle which “warns us that the gospel will put us out of step
with society, for there are societies/cultures which may imprison the gospel instead of being transformed by it.
3)
However, authentic Inculturation will view the
gospel as the liberator of culture instead of imprisoning it.
4)
In words of Pedro Arrupe (cited earlier in
this paper), [Inculturation’s concern is
to become] “a principle that animates, directs, and unifies the culture,
transforming it and remaining it so as to bring about a ‘new creation’ .“[13]
Interculturation
Inculturation is never ready-made. It is a process unending.
And the realization that all theologies need one another -challenging, influencing, invigorating and encouraging each other.
Today no one works alone. It is applicable also to cultures.
Hence Interculturation.
Both inculturation and Interculturation can impact all areas
of Christian life.
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR INCULTURATION
Introduction
- Christian faith is not just
a private or a personal matter. It is something that is also lived in
society, in community, in history in the flesh and blood of a people. If
it were not so, inculturation would never be necessary. Therefore,
expressing the Christian faith in the cultures of peoples is an essential
part of evangelization. We cannot proclaim the Gospel except in and
through people’s cultures.
- Hence, the far reaching
words of Pope John Paul II, “a faith that does not become culture is a
faith that is not fully accepted, not thoroughly thought and not
faithfully lived.”
- What then are the
theological foundations for inculturation? In other words, how do we link
inculturation with the fundamental mysteries of faith regarding CREATION,
INCARNATION, REDEMPTION [through the Paschal Mystery] and PENTECOST?
CREATION
- The Genesis account of
creation shows God serenely and freely creating the world. [This should be seen against the
Babylonian myths of the origin of the world where there is conflict and
chaos].
- God like an artist rejoices
“in the sheer goodness of his finished work”!
- With creation a continuing
relationship is established between the Creator and the creatures, “God
blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill
the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of
the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground …” (Gen
1:28).
- In this relationship man is
made co-creator with God. Thus beginning the long adventure of dialogue
between God’s creative word and human cultures. In the words of St. Paul
we are “fellow-workers with God” (I Cor 3:9)…creators of culture/s.
- God’s creative action and
his saving word continue through us through the instrumentality of human
cultures. Cultures are touched by God, and hence are holy. As we step into
other people’s cultures we are stepping on to a ‘holy ground’.
- This vision of cultures
goes beyond the empty understanding of culture often seen in political and
secular thinking.
- This is because almost
right from the dawn of human history, the history of cultures, we see
something turning “sour”. The result is sin, exile, violence, Babel…What God
creates is good. And what man creates in freedom and love too should have
been good and beautiful … This is the story of a broken relationship which
has affected cultures too.
- This radical ambiguity in
Man and in Cultures points to the need of redemption. But our reflection on redemption has to begin from
the Incarnation of God’s
redemptive Word.
INCARNATION
- Incarnation [the mystery of
God taking a place in history]
is the embracing of humanity by God in Jesus Christ, in spite of man’s
sinfulness.
- Inculturation, in stead, is
the embracing of human cultures by Jesus Christ.
- Both the embraces take
place, as we know, “in clearly defined circumstances of time and space,
amidst a people with their own culture/s” wherein cultures become “the
best language which God uses to speak to us, and we use to speak to God”.
This language of Cultures needs Christ to reach its fulfilment. We can
also say, that Christ too needs the language of cultures to continue and
complete his gift of the Incarnation in different human contexts.
- Just as God descended into
human culture in his incarnation, the evangelizer too must enter as fully
as possible into the human cultural realities of people to bring the Good
News to them more meaningfully. Here one should bear in mind that in the
incarnation of the Word, what descended into culture was the transcendent
Word of God, God himself. In the case of the evangelizer it is his/her
faith incultured in innumerable expressions. This throws several
challenges to the evangelizer: On the part of the evangelizer, the
challenge of rendering the faith more relevant and on the part of the
receiver the readiness and the willingness to remain open to the purifying
power of the Good News.
- This leads us to the
Redemptive Work of Jesus through his Paschal Mystery.
REDEMTPION
- Just as what happened on
Calvary cannot be understood without its link with what took place at the
Last Supper [the Eucharist], so too inculturation cannot be understood in
depth without its link with the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- The new life of the
Resurrection of Jesus purifies both the Church that shares the Good News
and the cultures which receive the Good News. In other words, both ecclesial
faith and societal cultures
– are enriched in the Gospel-culture encounter.
- To put it in another form,
the inculturation process which requires a certain self-emptying is
applicable both to the cultures that receive the Good News [since they
have to be purified by the power of the Word], and the Church that
proclaims it., [if she has to liberate herself from being linked with any
one particular cultural tradition (GS 58)]. This self-emptying on the part
of both cultures and the Church is the echoing of the kenosis of Christ himself.
- However, self-emptying is
brought in the power of the Spirit of Christ. This takes us to a brief
reflection on Pentecost.
PENTECOST
- The Spirit has already been
at work in cultures even before the coming of “evangelization”.
- Just as the Spirit at
Pentecost brought about a New Unity of cultures, the task of evangelization
today is to lead all peoples to share in the communion that exists between
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit… sharing in the unity of
cultures begun at Pentecost.
- This unity of cultures
demands the challenge of forging a new relationship among cultures, the
relationship of love, pardon, and brotherhood… in the power of the Spirit
of Jesus Christ.
- Only a Missionary Church can bring this about… reaching out into the
languages of diverse cultures across the globe.
- In this process of reaching
out into the languages of diverse cultures, ‘the primitive truth’ will
‘discover new forms’. And it is in the very nature of Catholic
Christianity to evolve ‘the most diverse forms of faith’, because of
‘widely differing cultures’. However, as K. Rahner reminds us there is no
guarantee that well-intentioned believers will always arrive at ‘the form
of faith’ which is most suitable. But the effort must continue. In the
view of the same K. Rahner, faith
risks self-destruction, if it fails to create the forms of faith demanded
by a new culture.
- These simple reflections on
the theological foundations of faith make us realize that evangelization
means seeking to reach people’s hearts shaped by the cultures around them.
This is a great challenge for the evangelizers of all times and of all
places. Mission continues, the challenge too continues.
Conclusion
The assurance of Jesus “Surely, I am with you always, to the
very end of the age” (Mt 28:20). “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28: 10) is the strength
of the missionary as the Church undertakes everything in Her power to make the
Gospel Message become the flesh and blood of the believing community through inculturation.
[1] Julian Saldanha, Inculturation (New Revised edition),
Bombay:ST PAULS, 1996. 14.
[2] EN, 20.
[3] Letter instituting the Pontifical
Council for Culture, 20 May 1982, AAS LXXIV (1982) 683-688).
RM,
52.
[5] Ibid.
[6] EN, 63.
[8]
Bosch, David, Transforming Mission:
Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. First Indian Edition, Bangalore: Centre
for Contemporary Christianity, 2006, 571, cited in Panadan, 99.
[9] Cited in Panadan, 100.
[11] EN, 19.
[12] Rayan, “Flesh of India’s Flesh” 262.
See also AG No. 22.