No perfect culture
Opinion
As we celebrate Migrant and Refugee Sunday on September 29 Fr Dean Marin reflects on our ever-increasing multicultural congregations and missionary priests.<br />
Towards the end of last year, I was in Brisbane to visit the Holy Spirit Seminary at Banyo.
While there I made a time to meet with Bishop Tim Norton, the auxiliary Bishop of the Brisbane Archdiocese. As a member of the Divine Word Missionaries or SVDs he spent several years in Mexico as a seminarian and then as a priest.
He’s been the SVD provincial in Australia and from 2014 until 2021 worked full time in Italy with consecrated men and women teaching interculturation. Given our ever-increasing multicultural congregations and our missionary priests, I was keen to speak with him as a recognised expert in the area.
From my time with Bishop Tim, I came to appreciate firsthand the difference between inculturation and interculturation. We might think that with new migrants arriving from all around the world we need to induct them into our culture. This is inculturation, not assimilation, but nevertheless, we are saying ‘you’re here now so come to be like us’.
Interculturation is different. We accept and respect your culture that is part of your way of life and that of your families; share it with us as we share ours with you. Here’s the meeting of different cultures based on mutual respect and then moving on together.
The goal then is for interculturation not just inculturation.
I asked Bishop Tim if he would come to Adelaide and speak to the clergy about interculturation. Consequently, on June 5 in Adelaide, he addressed a gathering of priests and deacons, people from our Archdiocesan offices and the Diocesan Pastoral Council as well as priests from the Port Pirie Diocese.
What did I learn that day?
Firstly, that every nation has its own culture, which is important because it helps to give meaning, identity and commonly accepted order to a community’s way of life. That there are two extremes: Ethnocentrism, which means, ‘my culture is best’. If this is exaggerated, it becomes racism. Or, cultural relativism, that is, ‘any culture will do’, with no further discernment.
We are all formed by the culture of our families and country but we are also architects of culture. We are never totally determined by our cultural upbringing. I also learned there is no perfect culture and we need to appreciate the weaknesses in our own culture, taking a critical look, appreciating the shadow sides, being open to conversion and giving a renewed sense of meaning, identity and common order. It’s dynamic and not static.
Here’s the point of connection with our faith in Christ. He is the Word of God made flesh. God has entered human life and is the source of unity beyond all differences of cultures, languages, and races. The early Christians came to discover that their faith in Jesus could not be confined just to one race or cultural group, the Jewish people.
As the Catholic or Universal Church, we are formed by our cultures but are called to be architects of an emerging unifying culture, centred on the values of Jesus. Our liturgies will always be expressed in different languages and with cultural elements, but with Christ as our source of unity.
Finally, as our local Church is becoming more multicultural, let’s take up the challenge of interculturality. Let’s welcome and get to know our missionary priests and our new migrant parishioners. Let’s encourage all to share their culture with us, in the liturgy and in parish life. And again, the key message: appreciating the cultures that have formed us, now in Christ we are called to be architects of an ever-unifying common culture of faith.
Fr Dean Marin is Vicar General of the Adelaide Archdiocese.
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