Paragraphs 115 through 118 of Evangelii Gaudium develop the notion that the Roman Catholic culture with which each of us identifies is tempered and affected by the culture into which we were born and matured. As our world has grown smaller through the various forms of communication and media that have been developed, the various cultures of our world have become better known. Most people in the developed world's nations no longer live their entire life time without experiencing the variety of cultures that populate this world. Gone are the days when a person is born, lives and dies without ever leaving their community except in the remotest areas of our globe.
My entire immediate family lives in the southeastern area of the State of Wisconsin. Since I was thirteen years old and left home to attend the Franciscan seminary in Illinois, I was and still am the one member of my family who lives furthest away from my birthplace. As I continued in the seminary and was eventually ordained, I experienced several of the other fifty states that make up this nation. My diaconate internship was spent in Nebraska. Two years after my ordination, I was transferred to Ohio; then after another two years I was sent to Missouri. From Missouri, I moved to Indiana and then back to Illinois. I am really a denizen of the Midwest. However, I have also traveled to the east and west coasts of our nation and have twice left the North American continent and visited both Europe and the Middle East.
When I was a college student, I was asked by my religious superiors to help some Franciscan friars from Mexico to learn English. Ever since that time, I have found myself repeating that activity. This past summer, I found myself teaching four different friars: one from Mexico, one from Brazil, one from Korea, and one from Vietnam. When the Mexican friar returned to his studies in Rome in September, my little class was joined by a second friar from Vietnam. I serve as spiritual director for a friar from Peru. All of these relationships as well as the various journeys that I have made have introduced me to many different cultures. I belong to a world-wide religious order and have had the broadening experience of relating to and coming to know men and women from throughout our world. This is in stark contrast to the preceding generation of my family, many of whom never ventured beyond the confines of the Midwest.
One of the most humorous exchanges I ever had with my predecessor as administrator of CUSA concerned an invitation to join with the Section Leaders of CUSA at a meeting in Belleville, Illinois. She invited me to come to celebrate Mass for the Section Leaders each day. At the time she made the invitation, I was living in Chicago. I explained that I would be happy to accommodate her request if I could find a place to stay. She was amazed to learn that it was a six hour commute between Chicago and Belleville. After all, she had lived most of her life in New Jersey in the shadow of New York. The eastern states tend to be somewhat smaller than the Midwestern states!
I offer these anecdotes by way of illustrating the effects that rapid travel and communication have had on our world view. Consequently, these paragraphs of Evangelii Gaudium seem almost self-explanatory to me. However, I know that that is not the case for many others. We are all products of our specific culture. I once conversed with a man who had grown up in a Franciscan parish and had no idea that Franciscan priests were any different than secular or religious priests from other Orders. He had a great deal of difficulty wrapping his head around the fact that secular priests were not bound by a vow of poverty and could own property. He simply had not experienced the variety of the ordained members of our faith. Imagine, then, how amazed he would be to experience the religious culture of other countries or rites!
Missionary activities must take cultural differences into consideration as we continue to preach the Gospel as commissioned by Jesus. We must look for ways to bridge the cultural gaps so that the Good News of the Gospel will take root in other cultures and flourish. We cannot impose the European culture of the Roman Catholic Church on the non-European parts of our world. While anyone who has studied missiology since Vatican II has heard these words before, the Holy Spirit has given us our first non-European Pope. I am sure that we will hear more about this topic as his pontificate develops.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator