The delicate task of inculturation

THIS is a task that has to be made more known because it
is supposed to be done by all of us, albeit in different ways.

            Inculturation here refers to the inculturation of our
Christian faith in our common religious beliefs and practices as a
people, as a portion of Christ’s Church. It is making the spiritual
and supernatural gift of faith our very own as a people.

            It is professing, living and expressing our faith in our
own distinctive ways as it impacts on our popular piety, liturgy, as
well as in our social customs, our business and political systems and
mechanisms,

            In fact, since our faith has to animate all areas of our
life, the task of inculturation involves a continuing process of
making our faith the living principle in our own distinctively
Filipino ways of doing business and politics, for example, and all the
other fields of endeavor that enter into our identity as a people.

            These fields of human endeavor and interest can include
our professional work, our sports and entertainment, our studies, our
sciences, arts and technologies. As we can see, there is a lot of work
to be done in this regard.  Judging at how things stand at present, we
can consider ourselves still in the primitive stage of inculturation.

            So far, we can say that even the term ‘inculturation’ has
not really entered yet into our common vocabulary. And if it has in
some way, it is often understood in a very reduced way. So far, it is
restricted only to religious matters as in things of popular piety and
liturgy. It practically has not entered yet into our secular world
where it is most needed.

            The basic assumption here is that both our faith and our
culture come from God, and therefore, there is a certain connaturality
or fittingness between them. Even without considering yet the effects
of sin, inculturation would already involve tremendous effort to
uphold and defend that fittingness between the two. With the effects
of sin considered, the effort becomes even much more demanding.

            To be sure, the task of inculturation is a most complex
effort. It is not supposed to detract from the absolute and essential
content of our faith, even if such content also has come to us in a
historical process and therefore with some cultural influences and
conditionings. Thus discerning the unchanging essential part of faith
can be tricky.

            What are of great help are the catechisms and the
different magisterial doctrinal definitions. These definitions, of
course, can still stand more development and progress in a homogeneous
way as time passes by and as more considerations have to be made.

            And a people’s culture itself is a very dynamic animal. It
is subject to a numberless variety of factors and conditions,
historical, social, political, etc., which can interact with each
other in a most dizzying way.

            Even the climate of the place, the color of the skin, the
more or less common genetic make-up of the people, etc., contribute in
the making of a people’s culture. Not all of these factors and
conditions though have the same value. And figuring out the proper
hierarchy for all these factors can be very confusing also.

            Inculturation, to be sure, does not mean that the culture
is one monolithic phenomenon. Its basic identity and unity can include
a certain plurality of things, of options, opinions, preferences. What
is certain is that we can say that a particular way of looking at
things, of understanding and reacting to them, even if they can
different and conflicting, is our Filipino way, is our Filipino
culture.

            Inculturation involves humanizing and Christianizing all
aspects of our Filipino culture. It can involve many things we share
in common with other cultures, but it has its own peculiarities also
that need always to be respected, upheld and even fostered.

            Inculturation involves a certain openness to whatever
comes in life but somehow keeping one’s own identity and distinctive
culture. I would suppose that the original model and animating
principle for this is none other than Christ, the Son of God who
became man, adapting himself to us in all things except sin itself,
though he made himself like sin, for the purpose of our own salvation.

            This is also a most crucial element in inculturation. Its
ultimate purpose and reason for being is our human redemption. It’s
not simply a matter of our self-identification and affirmation.

            For inculturation to be truly operative, meaningful and
successful, it has to aim at our eternal salvation. Otherwise, it
would just be an exercise in vanity.