Duties of catechesis for inculturation of the faith

(¹¹⁴)

203. These duties form an organic whole and are briefly expressed as follows:

– to know in depth the culture of persons and the extent of its penetration into their lives;

– to recognize a cultural dimension in the Gospel itself, while affirming, on the one hand, that this does not spring from some human cultural humus, and recognizing, on the other, that the Gospel cannot be isolated from the cultures in which it was initially inserted and in which it has found expression through the centuries;

– to proclaim the profound change, the conversion, which the Gospel, as a "transforming and regenerating" (¹¹⁵) force works in culture;

– to witness to the transcendence and the non-exhaustion of the Gospel with regard to culture, while at the same time discerning those seeds of the Gospel which may be present in culture;

– to promote a new expression of the Gospel in accordance with evangelized culture, looking to a language of the faith which is the common patrimony of the faithful and thus a fundamental element of communion;

– To maintain integrally the content of the faith and esure that the doctrinal formulations of tradition are explained and illustrated, while taking into account the cultural and historical circumstaces of those being instructed, and to avoid defacing or falsifying the contents.