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FAITH AND CULTURE: SOME GUIDELINES

2. The Church is the messenger of Christ, the Redeemer of man. She keeps in mind the cultural dimension of the person and of human communities. The Second Vatican Council, particularly the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World and the Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity, the Synods of Bishops on the evangelization of the modern world and catechesis in our times, extended by the Apostolic Exhortations Evangelii Nuntiandi by Paul VI and Catechesi Tradendae by John Paul II, offer precious teachings in this respect, further specified by subsequent special Assemblies, continent by continent, of the Synod of Bishops and the Holy Father's Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortations. The inculturation of the faith was the object of a detailed reflexion on the part of the Pontifical Biblical Commission(⁴) and the International Theological Commission.(⁵) The Extraordinary Synod of 1985 for the Twentieth Anniversary of the Conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, cited by John Paul II in the Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, presents it as «the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration in Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human cultures» (52). In many addresses during his apostolic trips, like those to the General Conferences of Latin American Bishops in Puebla and Santo Domingo,(⁶) Pope John Paul II has updated and specified this new dimension of the Church's pastoral work in our times, for it to reach human beings in their culture.

The careful examination of the different fields of culture proposed in this document show the breadth of what is meant by culture, this particular way in which persons and peoples cultivate their relationship with nature and their brothers and sisters, with themselves and with God, so as to attain a fully human existence (Cf. Gaudium et Spes, 53). Culture only exists through man, by man and for man. It is the whole of human activity, human intelligence and emotions, the human quest for meaning, human customs and ethics. Culture is so natural to man that human nature can only be revealed through culture. In a pastoral approach to culture, what is at stake is for human beings to be restored in fullness to having been created «in the image and likeness of God» (Gn 1:26), tearing them away from the anthropocentric temptation of considering themselves independent from the Creator. Therefore, and this observation is crucial to a pastoral approach to culture, «it must certainly be admitted that man always exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that man is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures demonstrates that there is something in man which transcends those cultures. This 'something' is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition of ensuring that man does not become prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with with the profound truth of his being» (Veritatis Splendor, 53).

In its essential relation to truth and good, culture cannot only spring from the experience of needs, centres of interest or basic requirements. «The first and fundamental dimension of culture», as John Paul II stressed to UNESCO, Ais healthy morality, moral culture».(⁷)« A When they are deeply rooted in experience, cultures show forth the human being's characteristic openness to the universal and the transcendent» (Fides et Ratio, 70). Marked as they are by the very tensions aimed at achieving their fulfilment and the human dynamics of their history (Cf. Ibid. 71), cultures share also in sin and, by this very fact, require the necessary discernment of Christians. When the Word of God takes on human nature in all things but sin (Heb 4:15), he purifies it and brings it to fulfilment in the Holy Spirit. Revealing himself in this way, God opens his heart to mankind «by deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other» and lets men discover in human terms the mysteries of his love Ain order to invite and receive them into his own company» (Dei Verbum, 2).