Cardinal: Challenge Is Linking Culture and Faith, Pontifical Council Celebrates 25th Anniversary

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 18, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Today's culture is marked by secularism and materialism, but local Churches should see this as an opportunity for evangelization, says the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Cardinal Paul Poupard made these remarks Wednesday during the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the dicastery's founding by Pope John Paul II.

John Paul II instituted the Pontifical Council for Culture on May 20, 1982, writing: "Since the beginning of my pontificate, I have held that the Church's dialogue with today's cultures is an important field, where the destiny of the world in this last part of the 20th century is at play. […] Mankind lives a fully human life thanks to culture."

Cardinal Poupard said that "25 years later, we see the historical importance of those words, and the profound intuition that inspired them, their prophetic nature, their intrinsic force, that have certainly contributed to the epoch changes that can be seen above all in the 1980s, and are exemplified in the fall of the Berlin Wall."

The connection

Illuminating the connection between culture and faith, Cardinal Poupard again quoted John Paul II: "The link between culture and faith is not only necessary for culture but also for faith. A faith that does not become culture is a faith not fully embraced, not fully appreciated and not faithfully lived."

After noting accomplishments made in this area, the 76-year-old cardinal pointed out that "there are many obstacles to the process of deep change, both interior and exterior, personal and communal, in which the faith is truly and fully embraced, entirely appreciated and faithfully lived."

But "the life of the Church, and therefore the itinerary of faith of believers, cannot be lived outside of or on the sidelines of daily life and culture of a people, of a nation," Cardinal Poupard explained. "The dynamism of the incarnation asks us to live and express our faith while remaining fully part of the culture and the reality that surrounds us in order to proclaim the Gospel of life, love and hope."

The task of the Church, Cardinal Poupard explained, is to make it so that "faith 'becomes culture,' able to illuminate and profoundly inspire the ethos of peoples, giving them that spirit and those essential values without which every reality, every institution risks becoming inhuman, and therefore useless."

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