Liturgy And Culture: Four Paradigms

The following article introduces the reader to four different approaches to liturgical inculturation and to the variety of scholarly disciplines that can aid liturgists in thinking about the relationship between worship and culture.

Modern discussions about the cultural adaptation of the liturgy are related to fundamental theological convictions about the relationship between the Christian tradition and human culture. In general, four paradigms to the faith/culture relationship appear to be operative in modern American Catholicism. These are the conservative, liberal, radical, and neoconservative. The conservative paradigm maintains an absolute commitment to the inherited shape of Catholicism and has very little openness to modern culture. While conservatism often manifests strong commitment to traditional cultures in which religion and social life were integrated, it generally regards modern culture as inimical to authentic religious life and practice. Among the more notable examples of the conservative paradigm is the integralist movement in French Catholicism in the earlier part of this century. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St. Pius X, remains the most notable representative of the conservative position today. The conservative paradigm places strong emphasis on the cultural integrity and autonomy of Catholicism. The church, accordingly, is viewed as a perfect society, and conceptions of doctrine and ecclesiastical practice generally have a classicist character, which fails to account for change and development within the tradition. In liturgical matters, this paradigm generates strong opposition to liturgical change or adaptation. It precludes the possibility of significant use of non-Christian ritual elements and symbols in the liturgy. Indeed, it takes a generally hostile attitude towards non-Christian religions, regarding them as defective vehicles for the gospel. The conservative position is represented by those who reject or merely tolerate the liturgical revisions initiated by the Second Vatican Council. Adherents of this view generally opt for the normative character of the so-called Tridentine Mass and deny that the liturgy should be adapted or changed for cultural or pastoral reasons. Cultural adaptation of the liturgy in this mode tends to be superficial and incidental. The project here is appropriately characterized as accommodation, whereby some local or native artistic elements or customs are allowed a minor role in liturgical celebrations. The principal concern, however, remains the integrity of the Latin rite in all its elements and expressions. The liberal paradigm in modern Roman Catholicism is characterized by a commitment to intensive dialogue between the gospel and human culture. It has a strong openness to the religious significance of modern culture and the revelatory character of ongoing human experience. It seeks to overcome the rupture between Christian tradition and the modern world and tends to be optimistic about the congruence between the gospel and culture. It is enthusiastic about cultural pluralism, interreligious dialogue, and the emergence of a world church incarnated in diverse cultures. In liturgical matters, the liberal attitude is strongly committed to cultural adaptation. It is confident that Catholic liturgy can be extricated from its Roman and European forms and expressions. The project here is appropriately described as inculturation, whereby local ritual and symbolic forms are invested with Christian meaning. The goal is to create styles of worship that are authentically Christian, yet structured around the ritual and symbol systems of the particular culture. The project typically involves attempts to "?baptize?" some non-Christian rites, particularly those associated with passage and transition. Liturgical inculturation is not, however, free from considerable ambiguity. The attempts to identify and adapt non-Christian ritual and symbolic forms as vehicles for Christian expression can easily be compromised by the internal dynamics and semantic tenaciousness of the forms themselves. Accordingly, the liberal project to wed Christian meanings and cultural forms has a tendency to underestimate the complexity of the project involved. The radical paradigm is distinguished from the liberal by its commitment to a substantial reformulation of Christian faith. In general, radicalism has a limited and selective commitment to the inherited tradition and generally allows a hermeneutic of suspicion a central role in the appropriation of that tradition. The interest is not so much in opening the gospel or the Christian tradition to cultures as it is in generating a critique of both the gospel and human culture and establishing a new religious/cultural order. Accordingly, the radical project is often apocalyptic and millenarian. Radicalism favors a pluralistic view of religion, allowing other religions equal or similar status to Christianity and asserting the possibility of a number of Christ figures, or saviors. For these reasons, it is not committed to upholding the uniqueness of Christ or of the Christian faith. The radical dialogue between Christianity and other religions is appropriately described as in religionization, whereby Christianity undertakes a self-emptying into non-Christian religions so that a new religious order will emerge. What Christianity has to offer other religions in this paradigm is not particular forms, doctrines, or an institutional order but a liberating dynamic for self-expression and freedom. The radical approach is operative in some strands of Christian feminist thought and practice, which seek a reconstruction of Christian tradition in order to overcome perceived structures of patriarchy, sexism, and oppression. Some feminists, critical of both Christian tradition and patriarchal culture, promote a process similar to in religionization, whereby Christianity enters into dialogue with non-Christian feminist and utopian traditions and generates new ritual and symbolic expressions. In the radical paradigm, adaptation brings about a profound reconfiguration of inherited liturgical forms. It favors local religious elements and symbols and rejects those imported from other cultures. It accords scriptural status to nonbiblical readings and gives narrative and mythic expression to minority or "?suppressed?" voices. The neoconservative paradigm shares with the conservative an absolute commitment to the priority of the Christian tradition, but is distinguished from it by a more sophisticated appreciation of change and development within the tradition. This paradigm shares with the liberal an appropriation of the positive values of human culture and the need for the church to have a credible presence in diverse cultural environments. However, it incorporates a fundamentally critical and cautious attitude toward modern liberal culture and is aware of the danger to Christian faith in a wholesale embrace of liberal values and philosophical schemes. Accordingly, neoconservative scholarship is acutely attentive to social-scientific analysis of the anti-institutional, atomistic, and individualistic character of modern culture. These four paradigms of the faith/culture relationship are not, of course, rigidly self-contained or mutually exclusive. Considerable overlap is evident in theory and practice; and depending on the issue, there is considerable movement back and forth. Developing Methodologies The study of the relationship between liturgy and culture is carried on today in a variety of ways and incorporates methodologies developed in a number of different fields. The philosophical and scientific study of religion (Otto, Eliade, Van der Leeuw), philosophy (Ricoeur, Langer), psychology (Freud, Erikson, Jung), and sociology (Berger, Palmer, Bellah) have been usefully appropriated in the study of Christian rites. Of particular importance are the methodologies and findings of ritual studies, the study of popular religion, and the literature of cultural criticism. Ritual studies is a relatively new field unifying the study of ritual traditionally carried out in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and art criticism. Though the methodologies employed in ritual studies remain quite diverse, they share a common appreciation of the highly dynamic role of ritual and symbol in cultural and religious communities. Much of the work in the field is carried on through minute study of the internal dynamics of official elements and systems. An increasing number of liturgists have begun to attend to the operations of Christian liturgy through the insights that are gained from the field of ritual studies. Among the theorists whose work is relevant to liturgical studies are Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Ronald Grimes. Liturgical scholars are, as yet, however, only at the beginning of the process of developing an adequate methodology for the application of ritual studies to the study of Christian liturgy. An area of study that provides significant insight into the culture/liturgy relationship is that of folk or popular religion. Here attention is not so much upon non-Christian religious communities but upon traditional Catholic societies where a fusion of Catholic ritual and pre-Christian rites and customs has long been effected. While study in this area has traditionally embodied the conviction that folk religion represents a corruption of Christian practice and an unhealthy syncretism, more recent study has come to regard popular or folk religion as expressive of a positive and pastorally appropriate concretization of the gospel in particular cultures. Impetus for a more positive appreciation of popular religion in Latin America was provided by the meetings of CELAM at Medellín in 1968 and at Puebla in 1978. The study of Hispanic folk religion has since then become an important feature of church life in both Latin America and North America. Considerable attention has also been devoted to the insights for liturgical adaptation that may be gained from the study of Filipino Catholicism, black Christianity in North America, and analyses of Polish, Spanish, and Italian Catholicism. The literature of cultural criticism also provides important elements of reflection for liturgical scholars concerned about cultural adaptation in modern secular societies. American culture critics (Lasch, Sennett, Meyerowitz, Bloom) have analyzed the individualistic, subjectivist, and atomistic character of American culture and have generated caution among some theologians and liturgists about the prospect of an indigenized American Catholicism. The compatibility of American culture with Roman Catholicism has been the source of debate among neoconservatives, with some (Schlinder, Olsen) arguing for fundamental incompatibility and others (Weigel, Novak, Neuhaus) arguing for a fundamental compatibility, despite the present disorder of American culture.