Our Mission and Culture

A Summary of Decree 4

What follows is a summary of Decree 4, one of 26 Decrees dealing with the Mission of the Society Jesus today issued by the 34th General Congregation [GC34] of the Society of Jesus. The congregation met in Rome in the first three months of 1995. Its work affects the immediate future of Jesuits worldwide.

I. Introduction

Bringing together Jesuits from all over the world for GC 34 has heightened our awareness of the diversity of cultures in both the world and the Society of Jesus. The Church has made this theme a central point of reflection. When it preaches the Gospel to different cultures, it offers something new while also adding elements of those cultures to the richness of the Gospel. This process is a form of incarnation of the Word of God in all the diversity of human experience. It has always been a part of the life of the Church.

Challenges today:

• Contemporary secular culture often excludes religious faith from among its accepted values;
• The great cultures of Asia still do not regard Christian faith as a living presence at the heart of the Asian experience;
• The increasing pace of urbanization leads to impoverished millions in the great cities;
• Among indigenous people, there has been a resurgence of consciousness of their distinctive cultures;
• In Africa there is a great desire to create a truly African Christianity and a desire to free the Gospel from a colonial legacy.

II. Jesuit mission and culture

As Jesuits we bring the particular quality of our faith into dialogue with members of the religions and cultures of our contemporary world. "We have insisted on the inseparability of justice, dialogue, and the evangelization of culture." This "is rooted in the mysticism flowing from the experience of Ignatius which directs us simultaneously towards the mystery of God and the activity of God in his creation."

Our service of the Christian faith is "directed towards working in such a way that the line of development springing from the heart of a culture leads it to the Kingdom." Our efforts are false when we fail to recognize "God's presence in the cultures which the church addresses" or when we claim sole ownership of God's affairs. "We want to recover a reverence for culture as exemplified by the best of our predecessors."

We recognize that:

• "We have often contributed to the alienation of the very people we wanted to serve";
• "Jesuit evangelizers have often failed to insert themselves into the heart of a culture";
• "We have failed to discover the values, depth and transcendence of other cultures";
• "We have sometimes sided with the 'high culture' of the elite."

Within their own cultures, Jesuits will enter into dialogue with their own cultural world, witness to the creative and prophetic Spirit and thus enable the Gospel to enrich these various cultures.

III. God's dialogue with the world

The gospel brings men and women, who share the mystery of unity, into contact with God's mystery of salvation, thus opening hearts to the mystery of fullness. The Paschal Mystery touches every religion, culture and person. Only God knows how. One way of serving this mystery of salvation is through dialogue with others to enable people to become aware of God's presence and to assist them in evangelizing others.

IV. Our mission and critical postmodern culture

"We recognize that many of our contemporaries judge that neither Christian faith nor any religious belief is good for humanity." So it is only when we make sense of our own experience and understanding of God that we can say things which make sense of contemporary agnosticism. This ministry should not ignore the Christian mystical tradition.

A starting point should be "a genuine attempt to work from within the shared experience of Christians and unbelievers" and "built upon respect and friendship." The Gospel always provokes resistance, challenges men and women and requires a conversion of mind. "Unless a Christian life distinctly differs from the values of secular modernity, it will have nothing special to offer." Jesuits can contribute by showing how structural injustice is rooted in value systems promoted by a global powerful modern culture.

V. Change and hope

"We commit ourselves to accompany people" as their cultures make difficult transitions. We commit ourselves to develop an inculturated evangelization within our mission of the service of faith and the promotion of justice.

VI. Perspectives

Cultural changes are slow; thus, inculturation may be slow. We need to respect diverse cultures in their self-affirmation. "We must recognize that the salvific work of God's revelation is already present." Evangelization is toward people not cultures. Every culture contains ethnic cultures and subcultures. The call to inculturated evangelization applies no matter where we work. We need to begin to understand the cultural experience behind statements that God does not speak for some.

VII. Guidelines

1. The option for the poor should reach out to their culture and values;
2. The lifestyle of Jesuit communities should bear credible witness to countercultural values of the Gospel;
3. We must focus on transforming cultural values sustaining unjust and oppressive social orders;
4. Formation programs should root us in the cultures of the people we serve;
5. There is a need to integrate the dynamic of inculturation and the apostolic renewal of Jesuits and those who work with us;
6. An experience of another culture results in a vision more open to what is universal and more objective about our own native culture;
7. Our educational institutions are important in linking Christianity and other cultures;
8. It is important to commit ourselves to the creation of local churches;
9. The international Society of Jesus is able to draw upon a range of cultural experience to promote an intercultural dialogue.

Synopses of Other Decrees which are available.

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