Evangelization and inculturation

4. Evangelization as such consists in the explicit proclamation of the mystery of Christ's salvation and of his message, for «God... desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth» (1Tim, 2:4). «Everyone, therefore, ought to be converted to Christ, who is known through the preaching of the Church, and they ought, by baptism, to become incorporated into him, and into the Church which is his body» (Ad Gentes, 7). The newness which springs which springs forth constantly from God's Revelation through «deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other» (Dei Verbum, 2), communicated by the Spirit of Christ working within the Church, shows the truth about God and the salvation of man. The proclamation of Christ «who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of the Revelation» (Ibid.), highlights the semina Verbi hidden and sometimes buried in the heart of cultures, and opens them to the infinite capacity He creates and which He fills gradually with the marvellous condescension of eternal wisdom (cf. Dei Verbum, 13), transforming their search for meaning into a quest for transcendence, and these stepping-stones into moorings for the acceptance of the Gospel. By explicitly witnessing their faith, Jesus's disciples impregnate the plurality of cultures with the Gospel.

- For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new... It is a question not only of preaching the Gospel in ever wider geographic areas or to ever greater numbers of people, but also of affecting and as it were upsetting, through the power of the Gospel, mankind'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.

- What matters is to evangelize man's culture and cultures (not in a purely decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to their very roots), in the wide and rich sense which these terms have in Gaudium et spes, always taking the person as one's starting-point and always coming back to the relationships of people among themselves and with God.

- The Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures. Nevertheless, the kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures. Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them.

- The split between the 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» (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 18-20). In order to do this, it is necessary to proclaim the Gospel in the language and culture of men.

This Good News addresses human persons in their complex wholeness, spiritual and moral, economic and political, cultural and social. The Church therefore does not hesitate to speak of the evangelization of cultures, that is to say mentalities, customs and behaviour. «The new evangelization requires a lucid, serious and ordered effort for the evangelization of culture» (Ecclesia in America, 70).

While cultures are subject to change and decay, the primacy of Christ is an unquenchable source of life (cf. Col 1:8-12; Eph 1:8) and of communion. As bearers of the absolute novelty of Christ to the heart of different cultures, Gospel missionaries incessantly exceed the limits of each individual culture, without allowing themselves to be ensnared by the earthly visions of a better world. «Since the kingdom of Christ is not of this world (cf. Jn 18:36), the Church or People of God which establishes this kingdom does not take away anything from the temporal welfare of any people. Rather she fosters and takes to herself, insofar as they are good, the abilities, the resources and customs of peoples. In so taking them to herself she purifies, strengthens and elevates them» (Lumen Gentium, 13). An evangelizer, whose faith is itself linked to a culture, must always give clear witness to Christ's unique role, to the sacramental nature of his Church, and to the love his disciples have for every person and for «everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise» (Phil 4:8), which implies rejecting everything that is a source of sin and fruit of sin in the heart of cultures.

5. «A further problem that is strongly felt these days is the demand for the evangelization of cultures and the inculturation of the message of faith» (Pastores dabo vobis, 55). The evangelization of cultures and the inculturation of the Gospel go hand in hand, in a reciprocal relationship which presupposes constant discernment in the light of the Gospel, to facilitate the identification of values and counter-values in a given culture, so as to build on the former and vigorously combat the latter. «Through inculturation the Church makes the Gospel incarnate in different cultures and at the same time introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own community. She transmits to them her own values, at the same time taking the good elements that already exist in them and renewing them from within. Through inculturation the Church, for her part, becomes a more intelligible sign of what she is, and a more effective instrument of mission» (Redemptoris Missio, 52). «Necessary and essential» (Pastores dabo vobis, 55), inculturation, the very opposite of backward-looking archeologism and worldly mimicry, is «called to bring the power of the Gospel into the very heart of culture and cultures». In this encounter, not only are the cultures deprived of nothing, but they are actually stimulated to open themselves to the newness of the Gospel's truth and to find in it an incentive for further development. (cf. Fides et Ratio 71).

In tune with the objective demands of faith and its mission to evangelize, the Church takes account of the essential fact that the meeting of faith and culture is a meeting of things which are not of the same order. The inculturation of faith and the evangelization of culture go together as an inseparable pair, in which there is no hint of syncretism:(⁸) this is the genuine meaning of inculturation. «In the face of all the different and at times contrasting cultures present in the various parts of the world, inculturation seeks to obey Christ's command to preach the Gospel to all nations even unto the ends of the earth. Such obedience does not signify either syncretism or a simple adaptation of the announcement of the Gospel, but rather the fact the Gospel penetrates the very life of cultures, becomes incarnate in them, overcoming those cultural elements that are incompatible with the faith and Christian living and raising their values to the mystery of salvation which comes from Christ» (Pastores dabo vobis, 55). Successive Synods of Bishops, including both the African and European ones, and the Fourth General Conference of Latin American Bishops at Santo Domingo, insist on the particular importance for evangelization, for inculturation to be understood in the light of the great mysteries of salvation: Christ's Incarnation, his birth at Christmas, the mystery of his Passion, the Redemption at Easter, and Pentecost C which allows everyone, by the power of the Spirit, to hear the marvels of God in his own tongue.(⁹) The nations gathered in the Upper Room at Pentecost did not hear in their respective tongues a discourse about their own human cultures, but they were amazed to hear, each in their own tongue, the Apostles proclaim the marvels of God. «On the one hand the Gospel message cannot be purely and simply isolated from the culture in which it was first inserted ... nor, without serious loss, from the cultures in which it has already been expressed down the centuries ... On the other hand, the power of the Gospel everywhere transforms and regenerates» (Catechesi Tradendae, 53). «While it demands of all who hear it the adherence of faith, the proclamation of the Gospel in different cultures allows people to preserve their own identity ... to foster whatever is implicit in them to the point where it will be fully explicit in the light of truth» (Fides et Ratio, 71).

«Given the close and organic relationship that exists between Jesus Christ and the Word that the Church proclaims, the inculturation of the revealed message cannot but follow the Alogic» proper to the Mystery of the Redemption ... This emptying of self, this kenosis necessary for exaltation, which is the way of Christ and of each of his disciples (cf. Phil 2:6-9), sheds light on the encounter of cultures with Christ and his Gospel. «Every culture needs to be transformed by Gospel values in the light of the Paschal Mystery» (Ecclesia in Africa, 61). The dominant wave of secularism spreading through the different cultures, harnessing the suggestive power of the media, frequently idealizes life styles that are opposed to the culture of the Beatitudes and the imitation of Christ; poor, chaste, obedient and humble of heart. Indeed, there are some major works of culture that are inspired by sin and can incite sin. «By proposing the Good News, the Church denounces the presence of sin in cultures and delivers them of it. She stigmatizes the counter-values and exorcises them. She thus provides a critical element to cultures ... critical of idolatries, in other words of the values that are held up as idols or of values so-called cultures hold as absolute».(¹⁰)