“Inculturation” has been a Catholic buzzword for over a half-century. It’s not the most elegant neologism, smacking as it does of sociologese. Still, it expresses a truth of Catholic missionary practice two millennia old: the Church uses whatever appropriate materials are at hand in a given culture to make the Gospel proposal come alive in that milieu.
The parables of Jesus are the biblical warrant for this method of evangelization. The Lord used the familiar cultural materials at hand to drive home key truths about the Kingdom of God breaking into history–the merchant who finds the pearl of great price, the sower of seed who waits patiently for the harvest, the mustard seed that becomes a great tree, and so forth.
St. Paul was an early “inculturator” in Acts 17, where he tried to convince the skeptical Athenians that the “unknown god” through whom they hedged their religious bets had made himself known to the people of Israel and in Jesus, crucified and risen. That didn’t work out as well as Paul hoped, but the strategy was sound. And a few centuries later, it was deployed by the Church to turn the primitive Christian proclamation–“Jesus is Lord”–into creed and dogma, through the mediation of categories drawn from classical philosophy at ecumenical councils like Nicaea I and Chalcedon.
Inculturation also has a flip side: as the Church adopts cultural materials from a given environment to make the Gospel message “hearable,” a successful inculturation then results in the Gospel reshaping that environment so that it embodies a biblical understanding of human dignity and solidarity. As I explain in Letters to a Young Catholic, the inculturation of the Gospel in Mexico as mediated through the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a paradigmatic example of indigenous cultural materials bringing people to faith, deepening that faith, and reshaping a culture.
What inculturation is not is what is happening in China today.
Under the iron rule of the dictator Xi Jinping, the religious policy of the People’s Republic of China is “Sinicization.” The gullible or duplicitous regard this as simply another form of inculturation. “Sinicization” is anything but that: it’s the perverse inversion of inculturation, rightly understood.
Catholic faith in China must be conformed to “Xi Jinping Thought;” it must not temper, much less correct, the official state ideology. Catholic practice in China must advance the hegemonic goals of the Chinese communist regime; if Catholic witness challenges those goals, or the way in which those goals are advanced through massive human rights violations internally and aggression internationally, the result is persecution, often via the corrupt legal system of which my friend Jimmy Lai is a prominent victim.
A true inculturation of the Gospel in China would call China and the despotic regime that currently controls it to conversion. “Sinicization,” by contrast, is a call to the kowtow, to obsequious acquiescence to the regime’s program of social control, which is essentially a refinement of what George Orwell described in the dystopian novel 1984 – although the dystopia is now promoted as a utopia of abundance, married to a restoration of national honor and dignity through domination of the world.
The Vatican’s stubborn persistence in the evangelically disastrous, strategically misconceived, and canonically dubious deal it made with the Xi Jinping regime in 2018 – which gives the Chinese Communist Party episcopal nomination rights, in violation of the teaching of Vatican II and the prohibition laid down in Canon 377.5 – is a countersign to the importance of authentic inculturation for the New Evangelization. That deal is not advancing the Church’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel in China. It is not putting the Church at the service of Chinese society. Rather, it is turning churchmen into de facto mouthpieces for a regime that is persecuting Hui and Uyghur Muslims as well as house church Evangelicals and Catholics. Thus recently created Cardinal Stephen Chow, SJ, couldn’t even bring himself to mention the words “Tiananmen” and “massacre” on the 35th anniversary of that atrocity (in sharp contrast to the courageous witness of his predecessor as bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen, SDB).
This inversion of inculturation is also damaging Catholicism’s reputation internationally. The great British historian Sir Michael Howard once told me that the Catholic Church’s transformation into the world’s most prominent institutional defender of basic human rights was one of the two great revolutions of the 20th century, the other being Lenin’s Bolshevik takeover in Russia in 1917. Lenin’s revolution continues in China. The Catholic human rights revolution has stalled in Rome over the past decade, to the detriment of both the Church and the world.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
The secret deal between “The-Pontiff-Francis-Vatican-Secretary-of-State-Eminence-Parolin,” and the Communist Party of China signifies the amoral nature of the “legacy-K-atholik-establishment” in Rome and across the world.
The men (and women) of this “legacy-K-atholik-establishment” are parasites living inside The Body of Christ, and fattening themselves, while dressing in costume.
Their god is Mammon, and their communion is with their soulmate, Theodore McCarrick.
“What inculturation is not is what is happening in China today.”
Inculturation is what is happening in The Catholic Church today; the problem is the culture is anti Christ and The Faithful seem to lack the desire to defend Christ and thus The Papacy against those who are anti Christ, because they lack, “The Courage to be Catholic”.
“Penance, Penance, Penance” At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved. “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.” “Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.” “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Behold your Mother.” – Christ On The Cross
As we speak, a counterfeit magisterium is being created, that denies Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, And The Teaching Of The Magisterium, grounded in Sacred Tradition And Sacred Scripture, The Deposit Of Faith Entrusted To His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church By The One Word Of God, Jesus The Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost.
At a recent interview, Archbishop Gallagher of the Secretariat of State, in a masterful understatement, remarked that the provisional agreement was “not the best possible deal” (reported in Inside the Vatican).
What if, earlier in 2020, China’s Cardinal Zen had been listened too (synodality!) when he claimed that Cardinal Parolin had mislead Pope Francis in 2018 about the merits of a provisional agreement? And, what if, also in 2018, Bishop Sorondo, former chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, had not been so duped as to report that “at this moment, those who best realize the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese”?
And yet, there are the scraps that fall from the table: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/08/27/china-officially-recognizes-formerly-underground-bishop-vatican-says/
But, regarding internal Church tensions, what if the Synod on Synodality were not on track to render all of the “hot-button themes” as (what’s that word again, or yes) “provisional”? All now on the side tables of ten ongoing study groups until long after the booster-rocket Synod has fallen from the screen? Themes to be recycled in permanent orbit by some sort of ongoing synodality (yes/no)? The process IS the product…
Sinicization versus inculturation? “Time is greater than space!” (Evangelii Gaudium, 2013)…
Synodality = Sinicizality?
The wisdom of the Holy Father in desiring that persons be attracted to the Gospel – not by playing big brother to remind cultures of past evils to humiliate and alienate -same thankfully is easier in our times – esp. through the Divine Will lessons as given by the well known Rev.Fr.Iannunzi, well connected with Cardnl Tagle -from the East too ! https://www.ltdw.org/doctorial-dissertation–publications.html
Hope there would be many in all countries who look eagerly into his You tube series of lessons – to be awed at the richness of our faith -to
hear those words of St.John Paul 11 with more trust – ‘Be not afraid !’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXbHPOMpfr8&t=2145s
Blessings !
Your word choice is curious. You credit Francis for not being “big brother” in his appeasement and eager cooperation with the Communist government of China. You probably still don’t see the irony.
“The Catholic human rights revolution has stalled in Rome over the past decade, to the detriment of both the Church and the world” (Weigel). I prefer bottom lines that are to the point regarding responsibility.
Francis I is not expected to champion national violations of human rights when it’s not in the interest of furthering a secular egalitarian universe. China is considered a model of end of process secularization and egality. A Vatican hierarch had famously declared China a model for the West. We’ve not seen any meaningful opposition to that heresy. Indeed, the clerical standard bearer for justice in China Cardinal Zen has been refused even the courtesy of an interview with Francis I. Heroic Jimmy Lai never mentioned.
This is an opinion although I believe the facts are in favor of considering it. Perhaps new management can make the changes that will revitalize Catholic Christianity.
Is the Jesuit leadership mis-stepping in China in a misguided effort to settle the 17th and 18th-century Rites Controversy in their favor, over the Dominicans? A Church fractured by subliminal infighting between religious orders?
The 21st-century “provisional agreement” is floated after the Chinese landscape has been totally disrupted by the 20th-century Sinicization (!) of the imported Western heresy of atheistic Marxism-Leninism? The notion that today’s Rome and China are both thinking the same about “the long-term” is groundless.
Historically, we might also recall the 19th-century Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), an earlier “paradigm shift” (!) which took up to 20 million lives through combat and starvation (nearly 30 times the loss of life in our Civil War during the same moment in world history, 1861-65). The insurrectionary cult leader, Hung Hsui-ch’uan, was only partly trained in Christianity by the Protestant missionary, Issachar J. Roberts, and imagined himself to be the younger brother (!) of Jesus Christ. Part of his later failure to capture Beijing and overturn the fading Manchu Dynasty is pinned on the eventual military fragmentation of his own movement, including competition from one of his generals—who came to fancy himself to be the Holy Spirit(!).
Then there’s the earlier case of the monotheist Muhammad in Arabia, whose understanding of Jesus Christ was vastly distorted by neighboring Byzantine heresies and infighting. This sorry picture as seen through the lens of a lingering pagan predisposition which perceived the Triune One as just another polytheistic triad.
So much for the self-disclosing Triune One above historical processes! Just two more examples of derailed inculturation!
SUMMARY: The perfect storm!
How to BE faithfully the perennial Catholic Church with a Magisterium, in a triadic world of septic Secularism in the West, expansionist Chinese totalitarianism, and resurgent 7th-century Islam armed with modern technology?
For the hearts of the dictators over one billion Chinese to be converted, there first needs to be a conversion of heart for the head of the Vatican City-State.
Faith and willful endurance. The triad leaves us no other viable option. Be prepared for sainthood. John the Baptist’s example in the midst of a hostile Sanhedrin, a pagan Herod Antipas, a small band of struggling faithful compares.