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The process of globalization, in fact, generates
the homologation of cultures, extinguishes particularity and penalizes
diversity, threatening personal and cultural identities, and creating
inferiority/superiority complexes among cultures, while it exalts the power and
monopoly of the culture of communication in the hands of a few patent holders.
Think of the effects of this process in the area of consecrated life, in our
institutes by now more and more multi-cultural, and, being international,
always more involved in globalization.
In fact, we are living a time of change perhaps
never before registered in history, which has activated in western countries a
profound crisis in the way of thinking of themselves and their identity, in the
way of perceiving and living reality, to the point of modifying almost
radically the paradigms that hold up culture and cultures. And these
transformations have also touched
religious life up very close, inducing processes of rethinking not only lifestyle but even identity.
In the context of a culture of globalization,
which brings with it demands of pluri-centrism and intercultural openness, the
complex identity of religious life demands a deep process of inculturation
which, if on the one hand focuses on the otherness of differences and cultures,
at the same time refers back to the essence of being, to a dynamic identity
that is confronted/compared and challenged.
“Identity,
culture and vocation” then become a decisive topic for the future of
formation to consecrated life as also for evangelization. The topic, even
though oriented toward indications of an operational nature, presents itself
from a rather complex theoretical point of view, because it touches problems
that are not at all marginal, but rather conjunctural (situational), especially
if you take into account the very close inter-connection there is between the
terms placed in relationship. How much
identities, of persons and institutions, are formed, transformed, improved or
impoverished by culture and cultures, is a fact that is immediately learned,
even just starting off from experience. Against the background of these great
cultural transformations piloted and accelerated by the phenomenon of
globalization, the identity of persons, as male and female, and the very
identity of religious life must be rethought and re-understood, in order to
design formation courses adapted to the new needs deriving from the changed
situation, especially that of youth. In a society dominated by science,
technology, fiction, by standard models of behavior and lifestyles, the
interpretive outlines of the life course of religious appear uncertain,
ambivalent and not very comprehensible by current reasoning, especially by the
new generations. Moreover, it is right
at a time of change, such as happens for every growth, that religious life can
find in itself new models of life and
mission, new keys for reading itself and its history. There are many
attempts to read future prospects, based on the new socio-cultural, political
and economic phenomena, and on the new demands that come from within
consecrated life itself, like the inculturation of the charism,
interculturality and internationality, the evangelizing mission in relationship
to the culture of communication and the challenges that this brings.
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