Today as I was teaching a catechism class to parents, the subject of culture came up as we were discussing how we catechize our children. Culture, in the true sense of the word, is the means by which a society passes on what is its own. In a more profound philosophical sense, culture expresses the heart of a people through education and the aesthetic.
What can we say of culture in the United States? The United States was known as the “melting pot” of the world. Those who migrated to the Union would abandon a great deal of their language, heritage and even their own names in order to become a part of the melting pot that was the United States. This abandonment was not absolute. There were still Polish communities and Irish ghettos. However the process of deculturation strengthened as one of the vehicles of culture, education, became public and universal. With an increasing push to assimilate to American life and the publicization of education, later generations either let go or forgot their cultural roots.
This would not have necessarily been problematic if the amalgam of the melting pot was something other than increasingly secularized and bereft of spirituality. But this is not the case.
So we have successfully become a melting pot, and that is precisely what has happened to our cultural heritages. Their rich textures and flavors have melted together into a syrupy goo, destined to be slopped over the hands of our children as they feed themselves with it, ingesting the flavors of secularism with all of its possibilities and problems.
This constitutes the culture of the American public square and the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel effectively in it. Culture serves, served, and always will serve as the means by which society teaches its beliefs. When we exchanged our cultural heritage for that of the Secular Amalgam, we lost our ability to effectively spread the faith. Any success we have had in the secular culture was through the positive means already available within it: desire for happiness, emphasis on personal relationship, strong work ethic, sense of the common good (which is dwindling), desire for success, creativity, originality, patriotism, etc. However, this culture is fundamentally broken and self-destructive. It is a culture in which the good life is identical with the aquisition of goods, and the economy thrives on it. It is a culture that denies the dignity of the human person by categorizing them as a means to an end, or a problem to be eradicated, or a mouth to be fed. Finally, it is a culture whose only way of approaching religious and political plurality is by eradication of the tension by political process, or by complete apathy. Such an environment prevents growth and dialogue and short-circuits the advantages of this culture.
Of course, there is always hope. Besides a posture of embracing this culture as a Christian people we also have a changing attitude towards culture itself. The establishment is no longer the melting pot, but the salad bowl. We preserve our cultural heritage. We live together but remain different, respecting and celebrating each other’s differences as well as what binds us together. In this new attitude we find that the hispanic communities feel more welcomed to maintain their identities in America.
Guess what segment of the population is renewing Catholicism in America: the new group of immigrants who are coming at a time when cultural preservation is encouraged, the hispanic communities from Mexico and other Latin American countries. They bring with them their culture, which is their built-in method of conveying the Catholic faith. Just look at their music, artwork, devotions, family activities, and you will see what I’m talking about.
Now, no culture is perfect and this culture has its own set of challenges. However, those challenges ARE NOT the absence of faith, lack of spirituality nor loss of Catholic identity. Nor does this culture encourage individualism and negligence of the family. I think I will leave this post alone and see your responses to what I have said so far. There is so much more to be discussed here.
November 18, 2007 at 10:00 pm |
As i live in a bicultural parish, i am becoming increasingly aware of the need to evangelize culture, yet i equally realize how daunting it is.
JP2 was dead-on when he encouraged the re-evangelization of the family, which in turn generates culture. He did not limit it to the Mexican / Hispanic cultures, which were already predisposed to transcendent, spiritual things, as well as a consciousness of family life. He earnestly wanted the ‘mainstream’ American culture to be evangelized, because he saw that the US culture was one of the most-influential ‘exports’ of our country. So goes the US, so goes the world.
I can certainly see that there is a good to be gleaned in the hispanic culture, but i am reminded of my own heritage, each of which just as disposed to the Gospel and Family life: German, Scotch-Irish, French. However, somewhere in the mix of assimilation, we lost it.
The 1st-generation immigrants hold onto their faith and their culture as if it means the world to them. And it does. For them the two go together. Their children, however, are largely lost. No longer really ‘of’ their country/culture of origin, they flounder without the cultural support of what it means to be ‘mature’ in a given society. They fall, potentially starting a deep cycle of being lost and being value-less. Nature abhors a vacuum, and where ‘good’ is lacking, there evil lies.
Obviously, this would be terribly bleak without grace. I am ALSO convinced that Grace works in-and-through every culture. If Christ came to redeem humanity, then he comes to redeem humanity in-and-through culture. As the saying goes, where sin abounds, there grace abounds all the more. We’ve got a tough road ahead. Just beginning this journey, i realize i can only to a little, but i pray that the little i can do is what i’ve been called to do and no more.