{"id":329082,"date":"2017-04-11T01:10:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T23:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/gospel-charisms-and-culture\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:06:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:06:57","slug":"gospel-charisms-and-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/gospel-charisms-and-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Gospel, Charisms and Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20170411-a\"<\/a><\/em>The Gospel and Culture is a delicate topic. <\/strong>It has been widely discussed for centuries in theological, sociological, pastoral, political and educational environments. There are Church documents, such as Evangelization in the Modern World and the Gospel of Joy that are indispensable references. If you add the word \u201ccharism\u201d to the mix \u2013 which nowadays is being attributed to non-ecclesial figures and realities as well \u2013 then the search for agreement becomes challenging, especially when you put together experts from different cultures. Yet, this was the striking feature of the \u201cGospel \u2013 Charism \u2013 Culture\u201d <\/strong>conference held on April 6-7 at the Focolare <\/a>International Centre in Rocca di Papa, Italy. In her welcome address, Maria Voce<\/a> pointed out the deep goal of the gathering: to promote \u201ca culture of peace, a culture of resurrection\u201d that will have a growing impact.\u201d Experts from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe compared notes during three thematic sessions.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong> Charisms and the evangelization of the culture. <\/strong>The first session dealt with two questions: \u201cHow to respond to the urgency of the Gospel becoming culture\u201d by Archbishop Zani<\/strong>; \u201cHow to accelerate the communion among charisms in the face of present challenges?\u201d by Sister Motta<\/strong>; and how \u201cnowadays, many \u201ccharisms\u201d are born in non-religious environments, while there is not enough prophecy in the Church itself,\u201d by Luigino Bruni.<\/strong> During successive discussions the experts underlined how \u201cevery confrontation with the other is an encounter with a social family\u2019s history and culture\u201d (Guadiano<\/strong>); that \u201cthe media have their own charism for a united world, if they maintain their autonomy\u201d (Zanzucchi<\/strong>); that \u201cthe evangelization of the culture does not pass through the authority, but through the witness\u201d (Archbishop Zani<\/strong>). Finally, there was the appeal made by Bruni<\/strong>: \u201cWe need a new narrative; the young people of today do not understand a language from the 1900s.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong> From inculturation to interculturality. <\/strong>The second session was opened by\u00a0 Jes\u00fas Mor\u00e1n<\/a>: \u201cEuropean elaborations on culture are far from all there is to say about Christ. In the encounter with other cultures something is expressed that has not yet been expressed.\u201d The goal, as Philippine Andrew Recepcion <\/strong>recalled, \u201cis not a non-Western Christianity, but a beyond-Western [Christianity].\u201d Soni Vargas <\/strong>from Bolivia\u00a0 showed some passion when asking that we move on from the paradigm of inculturation, which does not express the active reciprocity required by Chiara Lubich<\/a>, to a paradigm of interculturality: \u201cNo longer \u201cmission\u201d, but \u201cinter-gift\u201d within a Trinitarian dynamic in which a superiority of one culture over another doesn\u2019t even exist.\u201d During the debate, Chinese Vania Cheng, <\/strong>remarked: \u201cAsia is asking for listening, respect and silence because the inner being reveals more than the word.\u201d Cameroonian, Raphael Takougang, <\/strong>remembered that \u201cin interculturation,the knowledge isn\u2019t communicated, it\u2019s passed on by having an experience together.\u201d Roberto Catalano<\/strong> underscored what Chiara had seen long ago when she invited everyone to \u201cmake Christ to be born in the heart of the cultures.\u201d\u00a0 Lucas Cervi\u00f1o,<\/strong> who was on a link-up from Mexico: \u201cI need to create the conditions so that the seed of God that is already inside a culture can flower . . . but never imposing the way.\u201d Mor\u00e1n concluded:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s true that there must not be control or superiority of a culture over another, but this doesn\u2019t mean that there isn\u2019t a central point: Christ is the heart of the world.\u201d Youth \u2013 faith \u2013 vocational discernment. <\/strong>The third session focused on the upcoming Synod of Bishops and was opened by Italo Fiorin: <\/strong>\u201cEducating means helping an other to find the meaning of his or her own existence. Educating is the art of accompanying.\u201d Sister Jenny Favarian <\/strong>testified to how: \u201cthe discovery of the vocation to love makes totally beautiful flowers to blossom.\u201d Maria Rosa Logozzo <\/strong>told about the contact of a group of young people from different cultures \u2013 both believers and non-believers \u2013 with the focolare in Dublin, Ireland: \u201cThe possibility of having an experience of God in a community draws them.\u201d After a rich debate, Fiorin <\/strong>concluded by underscoring the importance of the \u201cpedagogy of reality\u201d and especially of service learning: \u201clearning to serve; serving to learn.\u201d On the final afternoon, theologian Piero Coda <\/strong>gave a presentation on the question: What does it mean when we say that the Church is born from the abandonment of Jesus on the cross? \u201cA life in exile: the capacity to detach from one\u2019s own roots in order to live the other . . . testifying to the folly of God\u2019s love. . .\u201d The discussions from these two days, Francisco Canzani <\/strong>recalled, will be transformed into articles for the Gen magazines<\/u><\/em>, Unit\u00e0 e Carismi<\/em>, Nuova Umanit\u00e0<\/em>, Citt\u00e0 Nuova <\/em>that will help to reflect on current ecclesial and cultural times. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Focolare International Centre (April 6-7, 2017). A conference comprised of experts from different countries and cultures examines intercultural similarities and differences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}