Thesis: The church is catholic or universal through inculturation and different interpretations of Christianity in many different cultures. In order for the church to be catholic, it must be able to spread the Gospel with respect of the cultural diversities. Culture is the beliefs, customs, and arts of a particular society. Across the world, there are many different cultures. Throughout many of these different cultures, the Catholic faith has become a central part of them. Yet, through inculturation, the Catholic faith is lived differently in each culture (classroom notes 10-13). In Shusaku Endo’s book, Silence, inculturation is shown through the two cultures of Portugal and Japan. For example, the Portugal culture lived a more transmitting culture. Given the country’s state, they were able to spread the gospel more and evangelize during the late 1500’s. In comparison to the Japanese, they lived a more receiving culture of the Gospel. Because the majority of Japanese believers of Christ were peasants and put through hard labor, they saw the Catholic faith more as an outlet for hope. Endo writes in regard to Christianity …show more content…
Like Rodrigues and the rest of the Portuguese missionaries, the church is often narrow minded when spreading the Good News. Cultures deserve mutual respect and dignity because the faith needs to be developed specifically through the culture. It took Sebastian Rodrigues a long time before he realized his way of Christianity wasn’t the right and only way. Consequently, he made progress in evangelization when he told Japanese villages how the local village of Tomagi practiced Christianity compared to how the church in Europe practiced. Change is one of the hardest challenges for a culture, so Christianity needs to be eased in with flexibility. As a church, we must be considerate of all cultures, and when we try to evangelize, we must put ourselves in other cultures’ shoes
With the hindsight of the 1960s, it is easy for us to view how influencers of the era have reformed and revitalised the Christian tradition to a great extent. Because of this hindsight of the 1960s, an era in which the zeitgeist was full of intellectuals, poets, musicians and authors, we can see the traditions of Christianity were considered to be backward to a world that was changing in terms of beliefs and ethics as society embraced these social reforms. The statement then clearly reflects Pope John XXIII and his impacts on Catholicism. Pope John XXIII recognized these changes and through his leadership, the impacts he had on Christianity had a substantially large influence over the Catholic Church as he ultimately altered the Christian tradition by creating the Vatican II. By doing so, he adjusted traditional Church Scriptures (ressourcement), involved himself with promoting ecumenicalism and also interfaith-dialogue as well as becoming engaged in the modern world (aggiornamento), therefore meeting the needs of the evolving society by revitalising the old traditions.
Through the close study of two of the aspects shown in the diagram, their contributions allow Christianity to be considered a living religious tradition. The significant contributions of Pope John XXIII, during both his papal and Pre-papal life have had everlasting effects on not only Catholicism, but Christianity as a whole and lead to the sense of Christianity being a living religious tradition. His works include two Papal encyclicals, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris, along with his work being Apostolic Delegate of Greece and Turkey. Moreover, The significant practice of Baptism has further contributed to Christian being considered a living religious tradition as it accounts for the premise of most Christian beliefs to be initiated, especially in terms of salvation and affirming the beliefs in the trinity and following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Chapter one, ‘Beginnings at Assisi,’ offers a vivid description of the social, political, economic, cultural, demographic description of Assisi and its inhabitants. Here, the author describes the life of Francis and the situations and circumstances prompting his journey to spread the ideal gospel life to the world. This chapter is relevant in determining the circumstances that instigated a need for reforms in the Catholic Church. This chapter is applicable in my life because it offers insight on the fundamental Christian I can rely on in my daily life.
The Study of Christian history and Christian practices, from my perspective, is imperative in the journey of any seminarian. Every major event of today has its roots in the history of our society and the history of the world. In the same way, Christian practices have their roots in the both the history and the historical practices of the Christian church. Our readings the Context Matters portal course and specifically the practices of the Christian church, are important for this same reason If we are to understand the “why” of why we do things we must look at how they have been done before and how they have been practiced in the past.
This is not a paper on the Catholic doctrine or reformation theology of visible versus invisible church, but an essay on the tangible (visible) and non-tangible (invisible) of Christianity. Christianity is a belief grounded in history, in where God revealed himself neither in doctrinal statements nor in theoretical studies, but in actions through men an...
Catholicism's Theology as explained above is of an inclusive nature. Therefore, as explained in the Gospel of Christ humanity is called to him and hi...
Romero states, “It is the poor who tell us what the world is, and what the church’s service to the world should be.” In Silence, Rodrigues’ and Garrpe’s sheer presence in Japan helped the oppressed Japanese Christians. Both Jesuits recognized the need for their missionary work in Japan to proclaim good news to and for them and to defend them. However, Rodrigues battles with his life as a missionary among great suffering, “But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful...the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.” If God is there and exists, then their work and missionaries are saving those whom Christ died for. However, if God remains silent then Christians are suffering in a hard life that will only lead to death.
Yet, the priests still managed to overcome the difficulties of spreading the word of Christ by having visitors discretely come to them during the night or in secrecy to learn about and practice Christian beliefs. It was at these times that baptisms, confessional, and other priest-reliant practices were observed. When apart from the foreign missionaries, the Japanese Christians were responsible for the continuation of their religious practices within their villages and
Dr. Young cites the entrance of Christianity into Japan at 1542 when a ferocious storm found two Portuguese sailors shipwrecked on the southern island of Tanegashima. The Japanese accepted the Romish syncretism of the gospel, but were more interested in the goods and technology that came with later Roman Catholic missionaries who arrived in 1549. The priests¹ attempts at proselytization were not very difficult; the spirit in which their efforts were received is aptly demonstrated : ³The images of Buddha, with slight application of the chisel, served as images for Christ. Each Buddhist saint
In conclusion, it is important to realize that it was not one single factor which was responsible for the spread of Christianity, all these figures came together to give the perfect platform for a new religion to develop, " Never before in the history of the race had conditions been so ready for the adoption of a new faith by the majority of the peoples of so large an area" (K.S Latourette).
Charles Kraft was a mentor by practice, teacher by trade, and functioned in the classic sense of a professor taught what he practiced. In the 1950s, he served as a Brethren missionary in northern Nigeria and, leaving the field, taught anthropology and African languages. Moving into the faculty at Fuller Seminary, he taught Christian anthropology from a Gospel centered, critical realist approach. Pioneering the field of ethno-theology (Paris, 2015, p. 81), he taught that to navigate effectively across cultural boundaries one needed to, in face of the scripture, deconstruct their own culturally based perspectives, discover the meaning of the original culturally based message, and then - with dynamic equivalence - reconstruct the original meaning into the form of a new language/culture. To illustrate, he gave us a book to read by a Donavan, a catholic missionary’s story of the gospel given to the Masai of Kenya (Donovan, V., 1982).
Archdiocesan Essay Assessment Activity Catholics are often asked questions like, “Why are you catholic,” “Why do you have to be catholic,” Aren’t all religions as good as one another?” and “What makes the catholic religion special and different than the others?’ And members of the Church often find it difficult to answer all these questions. This essay will answer what it means to say that to be a catholic is to be a member of the one true Church of Christ, an explanation of how Christ willed that the Catholic Church be his sacrament of salvation, an explanation of how courts established his Church as both a visible and spiritual reality, I will illustrate how all people are offered the possibility of salvation through the Catholic Church
There is rarely an in between and we rarely appreciate other cultures uniqueness as we compare it to our own. The Christian community has seen example after example of how missionaries have fallen short in their missionary purpose. In focusing more on the cultural differences missionaries erroneously shifted their focus to substituting how these cultures live their worldly life rather than how they think of their spiritual lives (Johnson-Hill, 1995). For that reason when dealing with a cross-cultural community, Christian’s always should exhibit a desire to learn about the different ethnicities and their cultures so they may appreciate their
The desire to know more about this religion led me directly to Catholic Church to attend a Sunday service. As a result, this assignment will explore various aspect of Catholic Church as a
Cultural anthropology known as the comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development. Cultural anthropology is also known as the study of human cultures, their beliefs, practices, values, ideas, technologies, economies and other domains of social and cognitive organization. Cultural anthropology studies how human cultures are shaped or shape the world around them and it focus a lot on the differences between every person. Human societies has been culturally involved throughout generations because of human development and advanced. The goal of a cultural anthropology is to teach us about another culture by collecting data about how the world economy and political practices effect the new culture that is being studied. However, cultural anthropology has gave us a understanding of world affairs and world problems, the way to interpret the meaning of social actions by putting them in as much context as possible, and a deeper insight of humankind-at all times, in all places and of yourself as part of a culture.