Inculturation

In the summer of 1978 my wife and I were visiting British Columbia. One Sunday, our host found us a Catholic church on an Indian reservation called Lilluet. Mass had started, so we tried to go in as unnoticed as possible.

Next thing the priest stopped the Mass until we found a place where to sit and then addressed us: "Welcome, brother and sister". The church and the altar were adorned with tribal motifs, so were the priestly vestments. All six altar servers were women dressed in long gowns.

The prayers of the faithful were just that. Individuals in the congregation expressed their anxieties and worries about the world, their community and their families. After that, the priest said a prayer for the Big White Chief who died the night before.

We wondered who had died. He meant Pope Paul VI, who had died the previous night. While travelling in the boonies we had lost touch with the news. At Communion the priest addressed each person by their name. When it was our turn to receive Communion, he addressed us as brother/sister. Before Mass ended, the priest announced that Berta, one of the ladies on the altar, will be conducting a marriage and a funeral during the coming week.

The experience of that Mass was something very special. You felt that the community came alive through the celebration of Mass. But the most important aspect of it all was the way in which Christ's presence at that Mass happened within a cultural context that was meaningful to every person in that congregation. We as visitors could only appreciate that fact and in turn mourned the absence of such experiences in the numerous Masses we had attended elsewhere during our adult lives.

The term that is used to celebrate the sacraments within a specific culture is "inculturation". It has been defined by Aylward Shorter as "the creative and dynamic relationship between the Christian message and a culture or cultures" (Toward a Theology of Inculturation, 1988) .

Vatican II had given a great boost to the concept of inculturation, building on the work initiated during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. But in some countries the effort seemed to have stopped at having the liturgy celebrated in the vernacular, with suspect translations which are still the subject of litigation between Episcopal Conferences and the Roman Curia.

The move from Latin to the vernacular should only have been the beginning. In the words of the liturgist Fr Anscar Chupungco, the liturgy must "think, speak and ritualise according to the local cultural pattern" (Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramen-tals, Religiosity and Catechesis, 1992).

Inculturation has been raised by several bishops during the Synodal discussions in Rome. At a meeting held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Synod as an institution, the Archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, Mgr John Atcherley Dew, recalled how during the Synod of Bishops from Oceania, held in Rome in 1995, the occasion was marked by dancing and singing which are an intrinsic part of liturgical celebrations in the Pacific.

Some Curial officials took exception to the sight of tattooed Samoan men in traditional dancing gear in St Peter's Basilica. He claimed this was indicative of the gulf which existed between those striving for inculturation in the liturgy and those making judgments on it from outside the culture and from within their own cultures.

In the Synod proper, as expected, African bishops took a lead in the discussion on inculturation. Many African dioceses have made great strides in implementing the norms set forward by Pope John Paul II's document Varietatis Legitimae published in 1994 - not without the suspicion and direct and subtle criticism from Roman Curia prelates.

Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaryahen of Abuja in Nigeria defended inculturation in the African Church, urging the synod to focus less on abuses than on accomplishments. "Solemnity and sacredness can be expressed not only in plain chant and the organ, but also the gong, the xylophone and the tam-tam." He pleaded for a degree of decentralisation in governing the process of inculturation.

Bishop George Cosmas Zumaire Lungu from Zambia agreed with this plea. He criticised the working document issued before the synod for the importance given to the organ, Gregorian chant and even the use of Latin in international gatherings as an attempt to return to these instruments of worship universally. "Our hope lies in the future and not in the past."

Bishop Rafael Massahiro Umemura of Yokohama, Japan, asked for greater freedom to be given to local bishops' conferences to adapt the liturgy to local culture norms, to reflect elements of local festivals and to make decisions about the translations of liturgical texts.

One has to keep in mind that the growth of the Church is happening in countries where cultures are vibrant, totally different from those of the western world. It is a fact though that some of these cultures draw heavily from pagan and witchcraft practices and there is therefore the danger that Christian worship becomes diluted in such a way that is no longer "in accord with the dignity of the place of worship and does not truly contributes to the uplifting of the faithful." (Varietatis Legitimae)

It is also a fact that two-thirds of the Catholic population is now living in the developing world. The challenges of preaching the gospel in alien territories has always been a huge challenge for the Church. The mistakes of the past when Catholic missionaries acted as colonisers still have a bearing on the present structures of the Church and its forms of worship, hence preventing a meaningful discernment of "the cosmic Christ both in the human community and the natural environment" (Varietatis Legitimae). The challenge remains that of remaining faithful to the tradition concerning Jesus and to the authentic values of Christianity and culture.

Proposition 26 of the Synod Fathers on inculturation simply appealed for an equilibrium to be kept by maintaining the criteria already in place and if necessary adopt new adaptations.

Next week: The shortage of priests