(Bishop of Man, Ivory Coast)
We are faced with an "integral and concrete incarnation", to listen to the terms of Pope John Paul II (Discourse at the University of Coimbra, in May 1982). The Son of God made man lived all the peculiarities of the human condition in a given time and place, enlightening in this way, from within, the mystery of man himself created in the image of God (GS 20). The Word, which is God, has become the seed rooted in humanity, as in soil, where the divine dew elaborates the nourishing strength that promises abundant fruits (cf. AG 22).
Inculturation therefore would be the effort to immerse the Gospel to its roots in culture, to fertilise it from within (cf. EN 22). At the same time it would be the englobing passage which integrates all the evangelised aspects of this culture into an organic whole. Because a culture is a system of organised values and not the agglomerate of disparate and isolated elements. It is this way for those in Africa, even if they haven't been taken up within the rational discourse of a Cartesian type. In our efforts for evangelisation, we must avoid the danger of cuts and pieces of the cultural patrimony, at the risk of mutilating man again. The praiseworthy attempts which arise here and there on marriage, translations, art, liturgical wear, gestures, dances, rites, symbols, etc., should permit man, who is the beneficiary, to find himself thanks to a harmonious vision of a whole in his group of insertion.
The consequence that we can pull from this is the need to evangelise at their source, there where they have been elaborated, that is, in the existential thread of the life of a people, all the identified elements. Because it is there, little by little, that they have forged and that their significance has emerged, taking flesh in the daily lives of these people.
This is a difficult and delicate task. It requires the collaboration of persons knowing the authentic traditions of their people, capable of extrapolating the true sense and justifying it, and also to indicate their evolution within the modern context. It requires as well, the collaboration of theologians having enough recoil to find the possible places to a global approach to faith. The field of this investigation would be at the same time the "natural milieu and that of the Christian in which already one can see an essay of inculturation of his faith".
With just title, Pope John Paul II said that "the inculturation process of the Church in the cultures of the people needs a great deal of time." (cf. RM 52). This word should be like a call to hurry our steps, so as to help the greater blossoming of our people on their way towards the third millennium.
Original text: French
