Inculturation in the post-Christian world

Tomasz Terlikowski

Inculturation in the post-Christian world

Secularization has become a fact. And the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions accelerated this process by "at least ten years". Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), expressed this opinion in an interview with the daily newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano".

It would be difficult to argue with this argument, because the same can be observed in Poland. At best, the opinion is thought-provoking that the cardinal himself is not particularly worried about the acceleration of the processes, because it would have happened anyway, and he said about the decreasing number of believers that those who left were "just cultural Catholics". Of course, it would be difficult to disagree with the essence of the statement. A person who met God in his life and - despite his stumbles - tries to stay by his side, will not leave the church, but this phenomenon still worries me. Why? Because cultural Catholics could also draw on the wisdom of the Church, and the path to meeting Jesus was easier for them than for cultural agnostics. Regardless of how we evaluate this phenomenon, we cannot avoid the question of what to do with it all. What Christian answer could we give to it? We live in post-Christian times, in a time that not only needs persistent evangelization, but also needs to constantly search for new forms of evangelization, to approach people in a new way, whose language and thinking are very different from the language used by the church. Currently, inculturation is our biggest challenge, which is not easy, since the anthropology and metaphysics of the postmodern world and Christianity are very different from each other. Strengthening those who are convinced of their faith, consolidating the message that we should not lose anything, will not be effective in the long term, and if we believe that as Christians we have something really important to convey to the world, if we believe that Jesus is the cure for all of humanity's ills, then we need to find new ways to reach people.