Within the last thirty years or so, one significant way the faith-and-cultures questions has come to focus is the whole issue now generally called inculturation. This was first taken up in mission studies under the rubric of “adaptation”—a notion already present in the Fathers of the Church. The discussion was on how the proclamation of the faith must accommodate itself, for the communication of the Gospel-message, to the demands of cultural understanding and expression of peoples to be evangelized. The notion of “incarnation” was also called upon—in analogy with the mystery of God’s Son becoming human like us, entering within our human condition and situations, in order to bring his own “more abundant life” (John 10, 10).
In contemporary Roman Catholic speaking and writing, the word “inculturation” has come to be generally accepted. Given currency since the 1970s, the word first surfaced publicly in the Synod of Bishops of 1979 in interventions of Cardinal Jaime Sin and Father Pedro Arrupe (cf. Robert Schreiter, Theological Studies , 1989, 747), finally to enter into the text of the magisterium in Pope John Paul II’s Catechesi Tradendae (1979). Although sometimes considered an “ungainly neologism”, it has become generally received, as it has come to imply the notion of a diversity of cultures in which the Gospel, faith and Church must enter, the notion too of an on-going process which develops over time—rather than a once-for-all action or encounter. It also recalls the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God and its analogous continuation through history: a transformation carried out through a process of dialogue in life.
The word “contextualization” which is more or less equivalent and interchangeable, seems to be preferred by the World Council of Churches and in some missiological circles. It appeals to many because of its seeming social science provenance and its emphasis on the more commonly understood notion of historical and social “context” as ground for dialogue.
In our part of the world, as might be expected, the faith-and-cultures discussion—focused as “inculturation” or “contextualization” from its beginning—has captured much attention and won great, even passionate, interest. From the mid-1960s, with the ending of political colonialism and the emergence of “new nations” in Asia (after World War II), it has been seen increasingly as the task of the local Churches in Asia in the pursuit of “evangelization and mission in Asia in our time.” Since the visit of Pope Paul VI to Manila in 1970, when the beginnings of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) was set in motion, the work of inculturation has been high on the agenda of the Asian Christian communities. The final statement of FABC I in Taipei (1974) has been taken as something like a “classical locus” of Asian Churches’ thought in this matter:
• To preach the Gospel in Asia today we must make the message and life of Christ truly incarnate in the minds and lives of our peoples. The primary focus of our task of evangelization, then, at this time in our history, is the building up of a truly local Church. For the local Church is the realization and the enfleshment of the Body of Christ in a given people, a given place and time. It is not a community in isolation from other communities of the Church one and catholic. Rather it seeks communion with all of them. With them it professes the one faith, shares the one Spirit and the one sacramental life. In a special way it rejoices in its communion and filial oneness with the See of Peter, which presides over the universal Church in love. The local Church is a Church incarnate in a people, a Church indigenous and inculturated. And this means concretely a Church in continuous, humble and loving dialogue with the living traditions, the cultures, the religions—in brief, with all those life-realities of the people in whose midst it has sunk its roots deeply and whose history and life it gladly makes its own. It seeks to share in whatever truly belongs to that people: its meanings and its values, its aspirations, its thoughts and its language, its songs and its artistry. Even its frailties and failings it assumes, so that they too may be healed. For so did God’s own Son assume the totality of our fallen human condition (save only for sin), so that He might make it truly His own, and redeem it in His paschal mystery. (FABC First Plenary Assembly, Final Statement, nos. 9-12.)
This same thrust is most evident in the National Catechetical Directory of the Philippines—Maturing in Christian Faith. In its early acceptance of the need of a catechesis that paid full attention to Philippine social realities and culture (pp. 20-41), it laid the groundwork for the strong thrust of the PCP II towards the creation of a more inculturated Church—a thrust that is also outstandingly clear in the Catechism for Filipino Catholics (CFC) and its efforts to teach the faith in a way that makes sense to our own mentality.