THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL ON CULTURE AND FAITH

Abstract

Many contemporary challenges to the Christian religion are in the area of the relationship between faith and culture. The tension heightens whenever the zeal for the faith encourages an undue dichotomy between the religious life and the cultural life. Some contemporary religious movements, inspired by some biblical passages, tend to undermine the cultural life mm the way they preach and practice the faith. This syndrome cuts across many belief groups, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims. As a matter of fact, the cultural life 1s not an additional extra to human life. It is, rather, the very way of being human. So, for any form of religious life to be authentically human it has to be properly cultural. Thus, when the Church talks of culture, she is actually talking of that which makes human life authentically human. But because culture is a human creation, it suffers the fate of every human creation, its imperfection. This makes it subject to change and reformation.