It is increasingly difficult to find anything worth watching on TV. Your choices seem to be limited to mindless comedies, intense cop shows, talent shows, and endless talking heads on 24/7 news channels that seem to be closer to scripted “reality” shows than real news. My wife and I were roaming through the channel options the other evening when we caught sight of “Civilization” on PBS. The series explores those elements of human society that are critical to the rise of any civilization. The episode dealt with the role of religion in the formation of civilization. This is a classic and much praised series. We went no further.
The narrator explained the various social and psychological functions of religion, as the glue that holds society together over time and space. A key element in all of this is religious ritual. It is this element of religious ritual that transforms responsibility and morality into worship and transcendent religious experience. The narrator explored how this element of religious experience is apparent in any examples of religion that we encounter no matter how far back in history we might go. He also gave a few examples of how it performs the same function today in contemporary religious communities. The example they used was the ecstatic prayer of Sufi mystics in community. This shared ecstatic prayer experience of the Sufis left them feeling joyful, with deeper bonds of brotherhood with one another, and a sense of all being right with the world.
While some religious traditions stress the individual, reason and an emphasis on the “Word”, the Catholicism is a liturgical religious tradition with an important place for communal religious experience. Thus, the vision statement of the diocesan pastoral plan acknowledges the need to offer liturgical experiences that contribute to a joyful worshiping community in which members of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds feel at home. This is no easy task.
A powerful worship experience conveys its meaning through symbolism. The meaning of these symbols is conveyed through the words and actions used in the worship experience; as one liturgist explains, “it’s the smells and bells that convey meaning”! The challenge is that different cultures and language systems use different symbolic networks to convey their meaning. What can be a powerful religious experience for someone from one culture can be almost meaningless to someone from a different culture. In a context like the CNMI, where there are multiple cultures, the challenge is exacerbated in trying to find ways to tap into the symbols of various cultures yet honor the shared religious tradition.
It is helpful to remember that the largest Catholic nation in the world is Brazil, perhaps soon to be surpassed only by China. The Church is growing the fastest in Africa. Also, Asia is showing signs of amazing growth. About the only place where Catholicism is becoming a backwater religion is in Europe. Yet the theology and philosophy that underlay much of the Church’s presentation of its teachings is European. However, simply to present the Gospel in all of its ancient European glory and expect Brazilian Native Americans or Pacific Islanders to accept it and become Europeans is an insidious form of imperialism.
The Gospel is not Western. The revelation of Jesus Christ dawned in a small Semitic nation on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. If we are faithful to that revelation, we must present Christ and his message, not inherited European prejudices.
European cultural baggage is not necessary to the Gospel. Our experience of worship must be true to the Gospel, not the cultural baggage that has become attached to it over the centuries. If our worship experience is to be joyful and meaningful, it must honor the cultural and linguistic context in which we find ourselves. When this fails to be done, the Gospel message fails to be delivered. The Gospel becomes a tool for the destruction of a culture and ultimately the destruction of a people; literally, in some cases, as with Tasmania, and many Native American communities, and figuratively, as with many Pacific people and many other Native American communities.
Creating a joyful and meaningful worship experience that speaks to the depths of the faithful is a profound challenge. This task requires sensitivity to the symbolic networks of the communities who are taking part in the worship experience. It requires sensitivity to the shared Christian liturgical experience and its symbolic network that is the point of unity among the various ethnic and cultural communities in which worship is celebrated. It requires dialogue among the various ethnic and cultural communities in order to share their stories, symbols and experience with one another. It also looks to their shared experiences as a multicultural and multiethnic community to give symbolic expression to their unity as a Christian community in the Catholic tradition.