Inculturation defends human, cosmic
life
By PABLO
RICHARD
In the light of the words of Christ, this poor South will
judge the opulent North -- John Paul II
Colonization produced the Third World. The colonial expansion of
the West in Latin America, Africa and Asia was from the outset a global process
that was ethnocentric, authoritarian, patriarchal and destructive of nature.
The global paradigm of the conquest identifies the domination of
the Spaniard over the Indian with the domination of man over woman, of adult
over child and of humans over nature.
Ethnocentrism follows the same logic as androcentrism,
authoritarianism and the anthropocentrism that oppresses nature. The schema is
presented as just and based on the natural law.
The paradigms most important element is the identification
of all the dominations with the supremacy of the soul over the body and of
reason over appetite. The Spaniard, the man, the adult and the human represent
the spiritual (soul) and the rational (reason); the Indian, the woman, the
child and the animal are only body and appetite. Spirit and reason are
consequently not present in the Indian, the woman, the child or nature.
This Western and colonial paradigm provides a perfect
justification for destroying the indigenous, the woman, the child, nature and
the very body itself. The modern process of globalization, now based on the
free market economy, follows the same colonial, ethnocentric, androcentric,
authoritarian logic, a logic that is spiritualistic and destructive of nature
and of the body.
The crucial issue of inculturation was present from the first days
of colonization. Many missionaries as well as some indigenous thinkers offered
inculturation as an opponent of colonization, identifying it as the defense of
life, especially the endangered life of the indigenous peoples and of nature.
Inculturation not only defended human and cosmic life but in addition affirmed
the presence of the Spirit precisely where colonization denied it: in the
Indian, the African slave, the woman, the body and nature.
Inculturation was opposed to the destructive and excluding
globalization, but it was not opposed to the universality of humanity or to the
catholicity of Christianity. Every colonialization and globalization that is
excluding is by definition less than universal. The Western colonial conquest
and contemporary market globalization are contrary to universality and
catholicity. Only the defense of life, of the Spirit and of the cultures of
excluded peoples have the dimension of universality and catholicity. The
oppressed people demand universality and they need the catholicity that
Christianity offers them.
The church must choose
The church has to choose between inculturation and globalization.
The churchs catholicity can only be established in defense of life, of
the spirit and of the cultures of the peoples who are oppressed and excluded by
Western and modern globalization. Today, the churchs catholicity faces
the challenge of confronting a tradition that is still alive, a tradition of
globalization that is ecclesial, Eurocentric, patriarchal, authoritarian and
hostile to the body.
A Christianity that reached the Third World by the path of
European colonial expansion can only regain its authenticity by the path of
inculturation. If colonial and modern globalization traveled from the North to
the South, inculturation will travel from the South to the North. Globalization
oppresses the South; inculturation judges the North.
Inculturation of the gospel or incultured evangelization is the
great tribunal of history in which the West is called to judgment. In this
judgment, the church must be the defender of the life and the cultures of the
oppressed in opposition to globalization.
Inculturation insists that the church break with the paradigms
that are proper to colonial domination and Western modern globalization.
Inculturation is possible if the church rejects Eurocentrism, authoritarianism,
patriarchism and the spiritualisms that are destructive of nature and of the
body. This entails also the declericalization and decentralization of the
churchs own structures.
By responding to these challenges of inculturation, the church
will be a truly universal and Catholic church, a church meaningful for the
peoples of the Third World. Our Third World peoples desperately need a church
that is catholic, inculturated and universal. That is why we who live in the
Third World have such a deep love for the church.
Brothers in ministry
Inculturation does not cause fragmentation or sectarianism.
Fragmentation results rather from the exclusion that globalization produces. An
inculturated church, to the extent that it defends the life of all, is a
universal church. Only a church that accepts and appropriates all the cultures
of the Third World is really universal. This universal, inculturated church has
greater need than any other of the primacy of Peter, which in the Catholic
church tradition is exercised by the bishop of Rome.
We believe that papal primacy can be exercised in many different
ways. The pope himself, in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint, places himself on the
side of a communion of communities model when he relates the
primacy of the pope to the universal collegiality of the bishops: When
the Catholic church affirms that the role of the bishop of Rome corresponds to
the will of Christ, it does not separate this function from the mission
confided to all bishops, they also being vicars and ambassadors of
Christ. The bishop of Rome belongs to his college, and they
are his brothers in the ministry.
The problem arises when the Roman curia interferes between the
primacy and episcopal collegiality. Primacy and collegiality are of divine
origin. If the curia, an administrative entity of human origin, assumes a role
higher than that of the universal college of bishops, the papal primacy runs
the danger of following the logic of global authoritarianism. On the contrary,
by communion with all the bishops, the pope ensures the catholicity and
universality of the entire church, according to the logic of inculturation.
Episcopal collegiality enables the primacy to exercise unity in a
church that is inculturated, multiethnic and pluricultural. This exercise of
the primacy integrated into episcopal collegiality is more necessary than ever
for the churches of the Third World, churches that are threatened by the danger
of sectarianization and fragmentation as a result of the process of
globalization. Because the Roman curia is more vulnerable to the authoritarian
process of globalization, it should be under the control of the primacy of the
bishop of Rome and of his episcopal college. It is the local churches, united
to the bishop of Rome, that ensure the catholicity of the church.
Were the Roman curia to impose an authoritarian globalization on
the local churches, it would make impossible the churchs catholicity.
Episcopal collegiality, joined to the primacy of Peter, makes possible
inculturation and catholicity at the same time. Let us not forget that most of
the local churches are in the Third World, and that the future of the church is
in the South rather than the North.
The ministerial structure of the church today follows the logic of
globalization more than that of inculturation. Ministries are structured in a
hierarchy of power within a model in which authoritarianism, patriarchalism and
ethnocentricity predominate.
Inculturation demands a new ministerial model that can evangelize
the excluded and all who live on the periphery of the system. Inculturation is
possible only in a missionary church that stretches beyond the limits imposed
by globalization. The social space of the excluded and marginated peoples is a
space abandoned today by a church that follows the excluding logic of
globalization.
The space the church has abandoned is the privileged location for
the activities of the sects, the new religious movements and the free churches.
Its present ministerial structure makes the church incapable of evangelizing
the suburban conglomerations of the big cities. A church that follows the logic
of globalization cannot reach the excluded and marginated.
Ministry for the excluded
This logic, however, is beginning to be overcome today by the
Christian base communities, by the experiences of religious life inserted into
the community, by religious movements that arise inside popular social
movements, and by experiences of evangelization from inside indigenous
cultures. All these incultured experiences teach us that we need to reform the
churchs entire ministerial structure. Let us hope that this reform is not
delayed until too late, namely, when the church has irretrievably lost the
majorities that the system of globalization excludes and marginalizes.
The current exercise of the priestly ministry is distinguished by
a certain type of academic preparation, by obligatory celibacy and by the
exclusion of women. In sociological terms, quite apart from the theological
bases, this confers on the churchs ministerial structure an androcentric,
authoritarian and ethnocentric character based on the logic of
globalization.
Evangelization, according to the logic of inculturation, requires
-- and that on a privileged level -- the participation of women, of indigenous
peoples, of people of African descent and of all those who are excluded by the
system of globalization. The intellectual training, the obligatory celibacy and
the exclusion of women all follow the same logic, a logic that also excludes
the indigenous, people of African descent and the poor in general.
Celibacy is not in itself the problem, but only the logic of its
imposition as obligatory for the exercise of the priestly ministry, the same
logic by which women are excluded.
The Third World church finds itself extremely challenged, not so
much by modernity and secularism as by the process of globalization and its
neoliberal ideology. The church that defends the life of all, but especially
that of the excluded groups and of nature, is a church that places itself in a
position of radical contradiction to the economic, political and cultural power
of the system of globalization. This church, opting not for power but for the
poor, enjoys today in the Third World an overwhelming power that is specific to
it: the power of the Spirit, of the word and of theology.
The church is not able to construct an alternative to the system
of globalization, but it can construct an alternative to that systems
spirit. The church lives in the system, but does not have its spirit. We cannot
live outside the system, because globalization encompasses everything, but we
can live in opposition to its spirit. The church is in the world but not of the
world. Globalization, to the extent that it is authoritarian, patriarchal,
ethnocentric and destructive of nature, has a culture, an ethic and a
spirituality that is more of death than of life.
Resisting the system
The church that defends the life of the excluded and does not have
the spirit of the system of globalization can construct within that system a
cultural, ethical and spiritual resistance to the system itself. As St. Paul
says: For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but
against the sovereignties and powers who originate the darkness in this world,
the spiritual army of evil in the heavens.
The church, as the communion of saints that defends the absolute
sacredness of life, would thus be what is holding back the mystery of
iniquity, the Pauline expression that denotes the globalization of
death.
The word of God, communicated and listened to, is the highest
authority in the church, as Vatican II formally taught. Hermeneutics, the
science of biblical interpretation, can be practiced in the church with
different -- and even contradictory -- understandings, depending on the model
of church adopted. A church of power, structured according to an authoritarian,
patriarchal and ethnocentric logic, will have a hermeneutics consistent with
its structure and logic. The church as people of God, communion of communities,
the apostolic church faithful to the tradition of the kingdom as preached by
Jesus and his disciples -- this church does not interpret the Bible with the
spirit of the system but with the Spirit with which the Bible was written.
In this Spirit the word of God recovers the liberty and authority
that are its birthright not according to the logic of globalization but
according to that of inculturation.
Every historic transformation is possible when a theoretical space
exists that makes it possible. The rise of a new practice of faith and of a new
model of church in the Third World became possible only because of the
development of liberation theology. In the world of the poor and of the
excluded, theology is more necessary than ever, just as the power of the Spirit
and of the word is more necessary. The theology of liberation is a new way of
conceiving the Spirit and the word in the contemporary situation of the Third
World.
At the present time more than ever before, this theology is
acquiring the rationality of inculturation, the logic of a society in which
there is room for all women and men, and in which the defense of life --
especially the life of the excluded -- is posited as an absolute. If the
universal church seeks to adopt the logic of inculturation and not that of
globalization, it should also adopt the historic power of those theologies that
are being born today in the Third World.
Pablo Richard lives in San José, Costa Rica. He has
degrees in theology and scripture, and a doctorate in sociology from the
University of Paris. As director of the Department of Ecumenical Investigation,
he trains pastoral workers for all of Latin America and the Caribbean. His 12
books include Death of Christendom, Birth of the Church, and a recent
study of the Apocalypse.
This is the 10th of 11 articles, edited by Gary MacEoin, that
will be expanded and published as a book, The Papacy and the People of God,
by Orbis Books.
National Catholic Reporter, December 19,
1997
|