From the Meeting of the IMC Formators (Rome, July 3-4, 2003)

Introduction

There are two themes in the title of this work, and I will treat them separately: Cultural Identity (first section), and Interculturality (second section). Both these themes are connected with the notion and the realities of culture, which unifies and makes sensible the realitites that they contain.
The cultural question, which is so much alive in our present-day society, is deeply felt in our centers of formation and in our vocational centers. A lot is said about one’s own culture, about cultural differences, about shared points in cultures and about their clashes, about a universal culture, about the rapport between faith and culture and about the need of inculturating our charism. All these things generate new questions and new challenges to the formation of future Consolata missionaries – questions and challenges that demand answers.
We cannot forget that the reflection on culture has been an integral part of our history right from the foundation of our Institute. Our Founder had realized the problem very early. In the formation of his first missionaries, he himself gave certain principles that are much valid today, principles that we are happy to find in certain conciliar documents. Allamano talked about respect for the persons and for the cultures that the missionaries would meet in their work of evangelization. He taught the need to learn well the languages of the peoples in the countries we are evangelizing, with an open mind and heart. These are elements that we must keep in mind today, especially in the work of formation of our young members.
In this present study, it is very important for us to know well what we intend for culture. The concept of culture is central if we are to understand all the rest. We shall speak of it at the right moment. We will also briefly see the various cultural processes of inculturation (endoculturation) and of acculturation, lest we fall into the error of conceiving culture as a fixed and unchangeable reality. We must also see something about modernity and postmodernity, globalization and local globalization so as to place ourselves right in the heart of today’s world, which is our world, and answer the challenges that it throws at us in the present moment.

I section: CULTURAL IDENTITY

1 A personality strongly shaken by history and by the present

The reality: our young people
Once again, we are invited to reflect on the raw material that we have in front of us in our role of educators (formators) of new missionaries. This refers to the people we are training, those who are marching towards their maturity, in the full and global sense of that word.
The way to maturity must necessarily pass through culture. An individual without cultural maturity, meaning an individual who is not yet competent in his own culture, does not have the cultural foundations, the psychological balance and the human serenity which are necessary to make the future options that he will have to confront during his life.
In most of the countries where we work there still exist the historical consequences of a negated personality, because the identity of many peoples and nations was strongly shaken by contempt and the denial of the right to be oneself. The shattering of the chain of transmission of values of many societies led to a crisis in individual and community identity. Although through the course of several centuries the rings of cultural chains were broken, the soul of people stayed alive through humiliations of all kinds. Thus languages, institutions, traditional wisdom and rites were able to survive.
The deep changes in our societies have slowly brought the young to free themselves from the influence of the elderly who are the true possessors and masters of the wisdom of a people. Furthermore, the phenomenon of urbanization, especially in our times, implies the progressive depopulation of the villages in the rural areas and the exodus of the most valid forces, for the young are the ones fleeing to the cities. It’s not difficult to see the serious consequences of such phenomena that seriously endanger the economic development and the stability of the peoples, since the logical outcome of this is that they find themselves with high numbers of “young people who have no roots and elderly people who have no heirs”.
More often than not, we might find ourselves in front of a personality highly shaken and in a situation of serious dichotomy. The special Synod for Africa situates this lack of synthesis and of deep cultural harmony in the area of schizophrenia.
Let us see the causes of these situations, because, truly, the phenomenon does not have only one cause. These causes are produced by several elements and components:
-- The process to cultural maturity (acculturation or endoculturation) was not completed at an individual level. The individual has not yet become an adult, and is not competent in his own culture. He despises the elements of culture, its values and expressions, because he did not live and experience them fully, but rather assumed other elements that he considered better because they were new and came from the outside.
-- Situations of violent conflicts , imposed by wars or revolutions. We have several of these situations in the geography of our IMC: Ethiopia, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda. These situations prevent the normal development of the “acculturating process”. Often, they have severed this process at its roots and/or in its first stages. These initial stages are the most important because they foster the foundations of the psychological structures, that is to say, the foundation of the values of reference for the ethic, moral and religious behavior of the individual and of the peoples. I call these events “the revolutionary degradation” and “the violent destruction of values”.
-- The process of cultural maturity has been supplanted by an unconventional process of acculturation, a process made up without a set of reference values, without a global vision of the cosmos, or done with a vision that is incomplete or corrupt, and that confuses and exchanges values with anti-values, to the point of assuming a “culture of death”.
-- On the other hand, modernity proposes its own cultural elements and wants the new generations to assimilate them, such as: denial of objective truth, its own set of values, absolute moral freedom with its consequent permissiveness, growing secularization, consensus as the sole form of morality and righteousness, limitless consumerism, economic and technological reductionism, globalization understood uniquely in its economic and commercial dimension. Thus the impact of modernity!
-- However, we cannot forget the positive elements of our society and of our times: Today’s man is more liberated from ideological prejudices and intellectual blockages. This renders him more open to the values of the Kingdom: justice, peace, freedom, cooperation, solidarity, equality, human dignity, thirst for truth and for goodness, respect for nature; this also renders him more open to a world that is becoming, more and more, “the global village”, thanks to the new means of social communication.
-- At the religious level, too, we encounter serious deficiences in the diverse processes of acculturation, especially on account of the extensive contempt and sense of suspicion towards basic religious experiences – at the philosophical, historic and scientific level.

2. Harmonization of the process

First of all, we need to become aware of the problem that lies ahead of us. We must make a serious effort to help those who lost their identity, so they can regain it, and so that they may take into their hands once again the acculturation process, realize and bring it to maturity and perfection. This is a necessary activity if we want to build on a solid base. It is important if we want to heal the wounds of the past and fill the gaps that were created. Thus, the process will be completed and we shall arrive at the desired maturity and cultural balance. This is the way to fashion people who will be able to opt for Christ in a solid, harmonious and balanced way.
In this kind of work it is necessary to understand clearly the concept of culture in all its dynamics and to understand the processes that are connected with it, and to look at them in the light of today’s cultural anthropology and of the teachings of Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes, 53-62).

Culture

The word cuture has several meanings nowadays. It’s enough to read a newspaper, to listen to a discussion or visit the Internet, to pay attention to what is said and written, in order to become aware of this diversity of the usage and of the meanings of the word culture. Even specialists offer a variety of definitions. Which tells us that we have not yet arrived at a common synthesis on this matter.
The concept of culture has evolved throughout history. It assumed different meanings in different times. Form the standpoint of anthropological reflection, we must keep in mind some important aspects:
a) Systematic aspect and its relevant cycles, which show and witness to cultural stability and identity;
b) differential aspect, which underlines the importance of diversity and of cultural difference;
c) the dynamic aspect which stresses the processes of intercultural interchanges, enhancing complementarity, and the transformation and the changes that take place within the cultures themselves.
Whichever be the favored definition from the many that we find in the dictionaries and in the texts of anthropology, we think that culture is central to our forms of action and thinking. Culture embraces all we do and the reason why we do it, all we desire and why we desire it, what we perceive and how we express it, what we experience and how we face death. It is our world, it is the way we see the world and how we live in it, how we live and understand our network of relationships and our models of behavior.
Culture relates to values and meanings, to our relationship with nature, to interpersonal and social relationships, to our relationship with the Transcendental -- and this through institutions and adequate expressions. These relationships are numerous and diverse, as diverse and numerous as are the cultures themselves and the historical moments in which they flourish. In its widest sense, culture may be considered as the totality of distinctive traits that characterize a society: material and spiritual, intellectual and emotional.

Cultural Processes

To speak about cultural processes means to emphasize the dynamic aspect of a culture. Cultures are continually on the go, change and transform themselves, even those that apparently are closed in themselves and inert. A culture should be considered as being between two extremes: stability and change. Between these two extremes there must be complementarity and harmonization. From this springs forth a twofold movement of function and transformation. We have to keep in mind the stability of the processes that manage it (synchronic aspect of culture), as well as the processes that transform it (diachronic aspect).

Acculturation (‘endoculturation’)

When we speak about acculturation or ‘endoculturation’, we refer to the anthropological aspect of the acquisition of one’s own culture, through which the members of a society become aware, and even participants in it. It is a question of conforming one’s individual answers to the cultural models of a society. Through this process, the individual gets used to the model of life of his society and learns its forms of behavior. This process is the dominant mechanism in the formation of cultural stability and plays a very important role in the formation of the personality of the individual.
The process of acculturation involves the following steps:
a) assimilation of the dominant sorts of behavior in a society;
b) conforming the individual behavior to the cultural paradigms already assimilated by that society;
c) acquisition of usages and customs;
d) interpretation of the biological and psychological phenomena in the light of the meanings already transmitted to that society.
This is an individual process and lasts all life long. During infancy, it is very intense and receptive since it tends to easily accept all cultural messages. In adult life it loses intensity as the individual’s critical capacity grows, even though the person is not much disposed to accept a cultural reformulation.

We will analyse the processes of acculturation at the community level in the second part of this study.

3. Individual acculturation

Acculturation is a theological and pastoral process that refers to the encounter and alteration between faith and culture. We will now refer to the individual process only. At another time we shall see the acculturation process at the community level with its own problematic aspects. As to the individual process, we can say that each individual carries out acculturation based on one’s own culture, and nobody else can can effect it in the name of the other. The young people in formation are invited to make their fundamental option for Christ: a basic and radical decision in the life of a Christian. This is accomplished at the deepest level of the personality of the individual. This will help us understand where to place what we call “the personal acculturation”, which is a synthesis between the personal call by Christ and one’s own culture, a synthesis which our young students are called to make.
Acculturation starts, first and foremost, in the conscience of the individual. It is at this level that the person answers Christ’s call and where each one realizes the encounter between the faith that is proposed to him and the values that identify him culturally. At this level, the individual involved in the process can come to know in an experimental way whether the conditions to concretize that harmonious and balanced synthesis between culture and faith are present, and so overcome the contradictions and the antagonisms that, at first sight, may seem to exist between the Gospel and the culture in the mind of the candidate in formation and/or in the mind of those forming him.

4. Adult experience

This progressive encounter between faith and culture that our young people are called to realize must be accompanied by “someone who is competent (adult) in his own culture”, someone who lives the religious experience as a cultural component that unites all the others. We cannot begin from zero, meaning, working with those who have not yet reached maturity nor attained a cultural balance and harmony; and much less can it be done with those who deny and absolutely reject their own culture. In a greater or smaller way, everyone has dealt with the experience of the existence of God or has felt the mystery of the spiritual world in the environment where one was born and grew up. From the initial and fundamental stage of the cultural experience of the absolute, we pass on to the other one of the Christian experience that, without underestimating the values of cultural tradition and in the light of faith in Christ, purifies and develops these values to their highest plenitude.
Culture comprises and expresses a basic religious structure, a way of feeling and opening up to the absolute as Supreme Being -- a way of relating and addressing God, a God that is understood as source and objective of the whole cycle of life. Culture offers also the necessary ethical elements that are points of reference for human behavior, such as the sense of good and evil, justice, respect for the possessions and the life of others, sacrifice, forgiveness, helping the poor, respecting privacy, friendship… These are all rules of behavior that spring from our relationship with the Transcendent and with the spiritual world. There are values that are specifically religious which are expressed in our perception of the cosmos and of creation, in our veneration of the spiritual beings and of God, in our prayers and religious rites. It is in this context and in the practice of these values (which makes it a cultural experience) that we must realize the encounter with Jesus who is the Master who calls us to work in his vineyard.

5. The Vital Line

The process of personal acculturation must be rooted in the religious experience of the individual and the awareness of one’s own religious values that are deeply understood and lived. No one can penetrate this level of conscience but the individual himself. This maturity can only be attained by the individual who discovers the message of God in his own life, in the crucial moments of one’s own history, in suffering, in love, in the giving of self.
The individual must face these questions: To me, has God become my life, or is he merely a tradition that can be ignored? Is the religious world, with all its symbols, rites and ceremonies, something that can be rejected because it has been outclassed by modern societies? Is God only a myth?

6. The Religious Experience

As it occurs in any other happening, the religious experience must be shared with the members of the community to which one belongs. In our formative centers, the diverse religious experiences connected with one’s own culture of origin should be described, and what lies in the innermost being shouild be verbalized and manifested. How is this reality lived in our seminaries? What impact has the other member’s religious experience on the community?
In this area, too, culture and its elements are very important. The person who experiences God and interior life, also perceives the need to share it with others. For that to take place, he needs to use a common language and the parlance that he knows best. It is thus that we can enter the world of symbols and rites -- a reality that we too easily ignore or depreciate. In fact, there exists a code of interpretation, which changes from group to group, to which we must pay serious attention if we want to understand what people are saying as they use that code to tell others their experience in the religious field.
We must be aware of and sensitive to the experiences that the others have of the multiform action of God and of the ways He expresses himself, so as to insert in it the experience we have of Christ. We are called to share the religious experience of all the members of our formative communities. We will thus come to know their members. We will be able to better understand them. And we will then promote an enrichment and a deep communion bewteen the various individuals.

7. Attitudes

In the religious experiences of our youngsters we might discover several kinds of behavior. These spring up from their original cultures, from the cultures they encountered during their still brief but intense life experience, from the messages they receive in the academic centers where they study, and also from the spiritual life of each of them.
I will mention only three kinds of possible behavior from the standpoint of culture.
First, the ethnocentric model. This is the most negative, since it contains superiority complexes shown in expressions such as, “Only my culture…”., even when referring to the Gospel, and in other conversations or attitudes that show contempt or total ignorance towards others.
Second, the model of adjustment: This is less negative than the first one. Here, the individual is led to adjust himself to the others, without offending them, without rejecting their culture or separating himself from them. It is a limited model: through it, the individual is unable to develop a synthesis of the diverse values presented by the community.
Third, the incarnational model. It is the most positive of the three. It has openness and availability to recognize and welcome the values and the good of the other person. It shows capacity of assimilation and the ability to make other syntheses, and generates a new way of thinking and of acting.

8. Coordinated Lines of Action

In order to understand in an adequate way the historical and socio-cultural reality of our youngsters, and find a liberating and realistic formative way, we must first understand their culture and the afore-mentioned processes: acculturation, inculturation and ‘endoculturation’ (‘multiculturation’).

Vertical Encounter: Word—culture

Proper cultural foundations
These processes must be rooted in the cultural patrimony of the individual: It is there that the authentic culture is born, a culture that is not restricted to reiterating the past, but is projected towards the future, and is always capable of renovating itself, of equiping itself in an appropriate way so as to live modernity. Says Pope John Paul II: “The incarnation of the Son of God is also a cultural incarnation” (Address at the University of Coimbra, 1988).

Attachment to Christ
Faith in Jesus Christ must be understood in its most authentic meaning: to receive the word of God, to adhere to Christ and to witness to the Lord. Without culture, this process is not possible. If it is true that the word of God does not identify with any one culture, it is also true that it does come to us in a purely hypothetic state. It always used and uses cultural media determined by space and time. Jesus Christ, the Universal Man, was born in a certain cultural area; he was an authentic Jew and spoke the language of his people; he followed its traditions and used its ways of expressing itself, although his message was not sealed shut within the Hebrew culture.

Horizontal encounter
Denial and exclusion are harmful effects that may easily show up in cultural processes. In the process of his human, religious, Christian and missionary maturation, the individual cannot do totally without a culture. The denial of culture develops people without roots or personality, and at the same time prevents them from authentically acculturating themselves, because it rejects one of its basic foundations.

Open-minded encounter
These processes must be receptive along the lines of giving and receiving, openness, respect for the other and renewal. In fact, culture is selective and must be continually reformulated.


SECTION II: INTERCULTURALITY

Introduction

Education to interculturality: actuality of the theme
In our centers of formation, the theme of interculturality becomes ever more pressing for several reasons:
-- Our formative communities are becoming ever more international and pluricultural. The same can be said of our apostolic communities;
-- The countries where we do our mission have grown in number. The same has to be said about cultural diversity in our Institute. Just recently we entered South Korea, Mongolia and Djibouti.
-- In a world that tends to be more and more like a global village, present-day society is deeply characterized by interculturality. The encounter among many cultures is a daily fact;
-- The global world of today, so often tormented by divisions, sectarianisms and fundamentalisms, can discover the novelty of the Kingdom of God in the witnessing of a communion that knows how to harmonize diversity. This should be a necessary requirement of our missionary vocation.

1. A Theme already present at the moment of the foundation of Our Institute

A theme strictly connected with our charism

The intuition of the Founder
Internationality and the parallel process of acculturation are themes that were present in the teachings our Founder gave to his missionaries right from the beginning of the foundation.
Our Institute was born as a regional organization: only later did it develop on a national basis. But it had soon to face the problems of the encounter with people from other cultures. I am not referring to the culture of the members of the Consolatas in the beginning, since that was flatly homogenious, but to the cultures our first missionaries met in their first apostolic experiences. Our Founder’s intuition in this matter was clear: He would often invite his disciples to show respect for the persons and the cultures. He offered them advice concerning the study and the use of the local languages as a specific requirement of the missionary vocation. In a prophetic intuition he said to his missionaries: “How wonderful if you could learn Kikuyu right here, before leaving for the missions.” These were teachings given by a man who never traveled outside Italy, in 1907, six years after the foundation of the Institute. We will find such a clear teaching fifty years later in the conciliar teachings of Vatican II on the formation of future missionaries: “Whoever is to go among another people must hold their inheritance, language and way of life in great esteem” (AG 26).

Our tradition
The study of the cultures and the usage of the languages of the peoples where we go must continue to be part of our tradition in an authentic and permanent way. Our first missionaries studied the cultures and the local languages in their contacts with the people, in the liturgy and in their catechesis. Furthermore, they collected abundant and precious ethnographic material, and they composed the first grammar texts and dictionaries of several African languages, such as Kikuyu, Emakakhuwa, Xitshwa… I’d like to mention here a little anecdote: During a celebration in the cathedral of Maputo, the Vicar General, Msgr. Mabuiangue, presented us to the community with these words: “These are the Consolata Missionaries, the ones who speak our language.” Today, this our tradition is called upon to widen its horizons towards the great challenges innate to the problem of the acculturation of the Christian faith and of our charism.

From the heart of the mission
The IMC opened its doors to non-Italians: Africans, Asians, Americans, Europeans. Thus, we have become an international entity. This is a process that is going on at present, a course born form the heart of the mission, which has become very concrete indeed. Internationality and ‘multiculturation’ are now part of the identity of our missionary family. Our Institute cannot become ‘monocultural’ once again: it is called to live and witness to a communion that renders diversity harmonious.

2. Integrating cultural diversities

The times are ripe for our missionary family to grow in the lines of our own tradition and in the light of new realities.

The acculturation process

The encounter within our Institute of persons who come from diverse cultures can enrich us mutually as individuals, as a human group and as a religious community, in the measure that the process of acculturation is lived by us. In our case, what do we mean by the process of acculturation? How can we develop it? Let us see what cultural anthropology has to say about it.

First of all, what is this all about? We refer here to the anthropological process of cultural exchanges, meaning, the transmission and the cultural interaction between groups and individuals who, by acting with one another, originate new phenomena and new changes in the respective cultural models of their origins.

How does this process come about? During any cultural contact, groups and individuals exchange and mutually assume new features. This means that these individuals, and the groups that they represent, are not totally passive. In these processes, individuals interinfluence one another, even in the cases of dominant cultures. History is full of incidents in which small groups influenced bigger groups. There also were times when even the most powerful groups were not able to impose their culture to minority groups.

At this point, it is good for us to see what happens in this process. The concept that can help us understand better the evolution of acculturation is the concept of selectivity, which, basically, implies a ‘reformulation’ of the culture, or of the cultures, in question. It happens that some values of a culture are put aside, or even completely abandoned, while other values that come from other cultures with which we are in contact are integrated as new values in the life of the individuals. Certain other values stay unchanged and are kept in place as components of the permanent nucleus of the culture of origin. This operation produces a new cultural synthesis, which is concretized in the formation of a model of life that is different from the previous one, and the formation of a new cultural behavior.

If this process is to have a positive outcome, we must let ourselves be guided by the anthropological processes that help us overcome ethnocentrism, inferiority or superiority complexes towards individuals and/or cultures, absolute relativism and any kind of reductionism. At the same time, attitudes of tolerance and welcoming are necessary. At the same time, criticism of everything that is new and culturally different, as well as rejection of all negative ideas of culture are to be avoided.

As Consolata Missionaries, we must integrate and harmonize our diverse cultural differences. Humanity, so often characterized by divisions and sectarianisms, needs our witnessing to communion. This is a necessary requisite in a missionary institute. Culturally, we must be masters of opening up to others, we must have and show attitudes of esteem, consideration, hospitality, respect, appreciation and integration.

3. The process of acculturation of our charism

The charism of our Institute must be reevaluated along the lines of the process of acculturation and in relation to the other cultures, and this must be done in a relation that is dynamic and evaluative. It must become incarnate in the pluricultural reality of its members. This process, which the Special Synod for Africa considers “a priority and an urgent question in the life of the local Churches” , is also a priority for a missionary institute that wants to do a solid kind of evangelization. It is a priority for us too. Let us see what is in question here. Let us take a look at the principles that regulate it so that we may be able to apply them to the acculturation of our charism.

Acculturation is not just an external adaptation of the Gospel message, since it presumes the intimate transformation of the most authentic cultural values by integrating them into Christianity, thus rooting Christianity in the various cultures.
This is a theological and cultural process of encounter between faith and culture. Fr. P. Arrupe says of it: “Acculturation is the incarnation of life and of the Christian message in a concrete cultural area, enabling that life and that message to express themselves in elements that are proper to the culture in question and, at the same time, making them the inspiring, regulatory and unifying principle that transforms and recreates that culture, giving birth to a new creation.”
There are two fundamental elements in the process of acculturation:
Faith: In our case, we talk of charism, which is a nucleus that has been interpreted in a historical way, a nucleus that presents itself in a certain culture, that has developed in a parallel way to the development of the Institute. Beginning as an individual idea, it became a shared and communitary patrimony; it must reach and enlighten all the aspects of the life of the single individuals and of the whole community as such: thoughts, behavior, expressions and intuitions.
Culture, taken as a dynamic and historical entity (synchronic and diachronic aspects). It is a principle of stability, identification, performance, and also of change and transformation.

At this point, we must remember that our Institute will never again be monocultural because of the cultural diversity of its members. See the reflection on the concept of culture in the first part of this paper.

The post-synodal exhortation of Ecclesia in Africa points to four theological bases in the process of inculturation:
1) The Mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, the God who truly became man; all is assumed, all is redeemed. Thus must the Gospel be incarnated in the cultures.
2) The Mystery of the Cross: It shows the way we must follow, the kenosis, Christ’s annihilation of himself, for without the Passion there is no salvation: it is at the light of the cross that discernment must be made on what has value and what is inane.
3) The Mystery of the Passover of the Lord, Easter: it witnesses to the transforming function of the Gospel in any culture. As they meet Christ, cultures can never be the same, they renew themselves and are reborn.
4) The Mystery of Pentecost: it shows the result and the fruits of the whole process (of acculturation), meaning, the universal communion and the respect for diversity.

The acculturation of our charism is the urgent and logical consequence of the acculturation fashioned by faith: the founding inspiration of Allamano must continually be recalled and reexamined, so that we may interpret our charism in a significant way in the new sociocultural contexts of our Institute, of the Church and of society.

The historical moment that we are living at present as a missionary institute is the moment of creativity and experimentation, because the inculturation of the charism is an open question that does not give one-sided solutions nor pre-ordained and sure recipes.

There also is the factor ‘time’. Anthropology teaches us that the factor time is an essential component in the cultures changes. Consequently, in our case historical patience is needed. We must know how to wait actively and begin the road of the inculturation of our charism, always aware that the Holy Spirit is with us and guides us through this process.
In order for us to begin this segment of road, we are called, according to the evangelical logic, to abandon what is old and obstructs our advancement. For us, this is a time of kenosis, a time to liberate ourselves of the incrustations that might, at least in part, have deformed the original charism of the foundation.

The personal and communitary reform that we have to concretize in a systematic way demands a deep understanding of our Founder, a perception of our history and tradition. It also comprises the study and the acquisition of data concerning the cultures of the members of our Institute, concerning the countries where we work, concerning the signs of the times that are present in today’s society and in the life of the Church. When we have all this information, then we can ask ourselves the right and concrete questions on how to build unity in the diversity of our communities scattered in four continents; how to share the one charism of our foundation with missionaries of different and very diverse origins, missionaries who do their apostolic work in ecclesial and social situations that have their own characteristics. Our answers will open new paths and ways to our Institute.

4. Towards an intercultural sensibility

In order for us to attain an intercultural sensibility, it is important to be aware of the relativity of culture. In its beginnings, cultural relativism was born from a reaction to ethnocentric absolutism (absolute relativism) of a specific culture. It then arrived at a very strong claim to cultural diversities, to the point of denying, at the cultural level, even the existence of universal and common elements. It was only later that the reflection focused on and reformulated a more balanced relativism (relative relativism), which combines the universal aspects of culture and the specific and particular ones. This type of cultural relativism, which respects the integrity of cultural differences, is basically important to a pluricultural community such as ours.
In synthesis, on the one hand we afirm that we recognize cultural diversity and the diversity of values, all the while maintaining openness to other cultures as a structural component and a dynamic factor. On the other hand, we reject the superiority of any culture over the others and the incommunicability among cultures.
Possessing an intercultural sensibility means to recognize and welcome our diversities as rich possessions; it means to become aware of one’s own cultural values and to appreciate the values of the others, always believing that the diversities are not absolutes.
Consequently, each one of us should answer some questions: How do I live diversity? How do we educate and form people so that they will possess an intercultural sensibility? How do we behave towards what is culturally remote and different?
Let us now see some stages that may become our guide in this our reflection. We will begin with the more negative ones (that we will call ethnocentric: refusal, defense, minimization). We shall afterwards see some positive ones (which we will call ethnorelative: welcoming, adaptation, integration).

5. Ethnocentric stages

Stage of refusal

This is the most negative stage that we may feel as we face the culture of the other. In this situation, we are not able to think or understand cultural diversities, nor maintain a positive relationship with the other.
The attitudes that characterize this stage of cultural refusal produce the isolation from the group, intellectual blockages, the building up of barriers and mechanisms of defense which produce separation. As an effort to overcome this stage, the purpose must be well established: to arrive at the acknowlegment and the admission that there are cultural differences in the community in which we live.
At the conceptual level, we must open our mind in order to change the negative vision that prevents us from seeing positively another person as possessor of values, to see the other as a person with whom we can build intercultural relations. The objective of our pedagogical work consists in collecting a lot of information on our own culture and on the cultures of the persons with whom we live, and practicing attitudes of trust, availability and cooperation.

Stage of defense

In this stage, we find ourselves in a superior level in relation to the stage of refusal. However, this stage too is obviously negative. As an ethnocentric stage, defense means to consider our culture so superior to all the others that we must defend it from potential enemies. Cultural defense is characterized by superiority and inferiority complexes and prejudices that lead to a negative evaluation of other cultures.
Our pedagogical initiatives will aim at overcoming this stage by underlining universal values, equality and cultural similarities. This formative effort challenges us to live horizontally the cultural diversity; it leads us to reflect on the historical and social contexts of the individuals with whom we live, it spurs us on to find out which are the common needs and the common purposes, notwithstanding the cultural diversity of our origin. In fact, all of us have the same basic needs as individuals and as members of our religious community and of civil society. From the pedagogical standpoint, we propose emotional self control as our objective, education to tolerance and respect of the cultural rhythms that differ from ours.

Minimization

We always have the tendency to simplify cultural differences, and even to deny them. Deep down we say that we are all the same. This tendency to minimize the differences is characterized by a superficial vision of the cultural traits, mainly because we do not study them in depth and do not ponder their roots. We cannot deny the fact that biologically we are all equal, that we all have a reference culture, and that, as far as values are concerned, no culture is superior to another. There are no superior and inferior cultures, even when certain cultures are more developed in their technology. However, we cannot deny the existence of cultural differences. We cannot deny that peoples have given their own answers to their own fundamental needs. Diversity is a fact, and, at the same time it is a form of wealth for humanity.
The purpose of our formative effort is to develop in the individual the elements of a cultural self-consciousness, so as to bring the individual to recognize, accept and integrate his or her own culture in a harmonious way, and, at the same time, be able to evaluate the dominant culture.
Pedagogically, we will try to promote in our young people an openness of mind and will; we shall educate them to reflect on their own culture, to listen to the others, to live a life free from prejudice and judgment-criticism of values.

6. Ethnorelative stages

Accepting the other

Accepting cultural diversities is the first among the ethnorelative stages. Ethnic relativism is its foundation: no culture is considered superior to another. At the same time, intercommunicability and complementarity among cultures are affirmed. This stage implies a respect of such a latitude towards cultural differences that it gives rise to a consequent behavior in the sociocultural context, and an awareness of one’s own ethical references and their acceptance.
In this stage, the cultural contrasts that are present in the group must be analyzed. Their identity must be meditated upon and likewise their causes, incidences, and solutions must be sought. It is important to make use of cultural categories, both proper and specific, by seeking their motivations, so as to favor discussion in the group. To do so, we could use reflection, personal dialogue and group work.
In this stage, our ojective is to arrive at a more specific knowledge of the cultures of the various members of our community, to come to respect the values and beliefs that those cultures possess, and tolerate any possible ambiguity.

Adaptation

In the stage of adaptation, we acquire the capacity of having several reference contexts to live together inside the group. It is necessary to develop attitudes of intercultural adaptation and communication: to help members understand, feel and share the thoughts and the emotions of the others; to accept multiple cultural tendencies and ideals to live together within the same community.
Our job is to develop basic norms of behavior and of orientation so as to be able to make choices. We must also be able to develop the cultural identity of the members of the community, and help them become aware of their own cultural models and sensibility: this will lead them into sharing their life experiences.
We give ourselves the purpose of facing the risks, looking for solutions and managing the dynamics of interpersonal relationships within the community.

Integration

The stage of integration is the final one in this process. It stands at the acme of the pyramid of the various cultural stages that we have studied. It comprises: a regular and progressive interiorization of the diverse contexts of ideas and meanings; an awareness that the individual is a dynamic process (a being in ongoing formation); and that, at the same time, one’s identity may be considered marginal in relation to the other cultures. The attitude that charaterizes this stage is a capacity of going through several forms of understanding the world, and the capacity of sharing with the others these same forms of understanding.
Our job here is to emphasize the characteristics of the multicultural identity as enrichment for all the members of the community. We will make the effort to develop in us models of cultural mediation such as understanding the pluricultural modalities as referred to the person and to society; and the understanding of these models of ethical development.
The objective to attain during this stage is to search for the flexibility of each one’s roles and identity. In order to do so, it might be useful to undervalue oneself, one’s thoughts and condition, so that each one may become a more receptive person in front of the cultural diversity of the other.

7. Challenge and urgency

Belonging to any one culture gives no absolute precedence to any individual. If there exists some sort of hierarchy among the elements that constitute the identiy of each member, that hierarchy is not unchangeable, it changes with the times and deeply alters the behavior of the individuals (Amin Maaluouf, 1999).
The purpose of the integration that is the aim of all these processes is not to safeguard something frail, but rather to enrich ourselves with the diversity of the values and with the crucial dynamism of the Gospel so as to search for and attain the new person.

Conclusion

Here we are, at the end of our reflection.
I desired to offer you some lines of reflection in this very enthralling journey of cultural questions. Culture interests us as insofar as it refers to our identity as individuals and as members of a certain society. We are interested in culture because we are people who are called to live in pluricultural communities, people who must cultivate attitudes of tolerance and be hospitable. We are interested in culture because we ourselves must make a personal synthesis between faith and culture. We are interested because we are evangelizers, people called to discover the seeds of the Word present in the cultures of all peoples.
I tried to present to you first the problems of cultural identity and of the processes connected with it, things that interest all those in formation for, without cultural identity, one cannot attain integral maturity and, consequently, one cannot arrive a making a deep and harmonious vocational option.
In the second part, I tried to reflect on the idea of multiculturality and the processes connected with it. This is a theme that interests us insofar as we are members of a globalized society as well as members of a multicultural missionary Institute, multicultural in its composition and in the socio-cultural contexts in which it operates and evangelizes. I tried, briefly, to point out some ways to begin a permanent inculturation of the foundational charism. The charism must keep on being inculturated if we want it always to be up-to-date and active – with the ever new activity and performance of the Gospel.